MarkD

Is the 343 going on VK's books or staying on VS?

Oyindo

It will be best the A343 remains on the UK register until things settle down operation wise. With Nigeria's track record anything is possible, if things go pear shaped. The only problem with that is that there are not very many Nigerian pilots with JAA licences. CAA validations may suffice, I don't know what the CAA policy will be on that.

oneeyed

And stupid little me always thought that companies are being established by registering them with the Corporate Affairs Commission

ac100

Surely Not,

At the risk of being batted down by your pro Virgin opinions, I am afraid to say that once again outsiders have come in and reaped the rewards of an African country.

For all you local pilots, i would not hold your breath for a flying position with VN. Having spoken insiders at an operator in Canada who were asked by VN to operate a fleet of Airbus on their behalf. The contract was a proposed for long term wet lease and not to fill the gap until VN gained operational speed. The Canadian operator declined the offer due to operational reasons.

I wish i could be more positive but the writing is on the wall and unfortunately your hopes will not aspire to anything. We can bad mouth the AON and other operators for questioning the advantagous VN have been given, but they have a point. The fact remains someone else is reaping the benefit and it is not the Nigeria.

I wish you all luck, but i am afraid the Mr. Branson has, once again, used his marketing skills to increase his bank account.

Good luck to you all aspiring aviators in Nigeria.

AC100

GlobalFlyer

If your statement holds true, then Virgin Nigeria is lying to the world in its recently uploaded Information Pack, which suggests the current wet leasing arrangement will be terminated as Nigerian flight crew are hired and trained by September 2005.

I'm sorry to disagree with you once again on this one. I don't see how high standards, 150 locally employed so far and a vast growth prospect can be a bad thing for Nigeria.

Any reason why we couldnt keep this discussion in the Virgin Nigeria thread?

Rani

ac100,

I must say your post recalls memories of nationalist sentiments. While u mean well I am afraid you miss the point. A review of the facts:

1- Obasanjo approached Branson, inviting him to assist Nigeria in forming a new flag carrier.

2- If you are talking about jobs: Nigeria Airways was sitting back, collecting royalties on all international routes it abandoned itself due to corruption. This in itself can and should be perceived as corrupt practice because it happened to the detriment of Nigerian jobs (Evil #1).

3- While AON do have a point, they lacked the organization and resources to give the govt. an alternative to the transparent formation of Virgin Nigeria. They openly refused to consolidate because Chief X will not get along with Chief Y because of their Nigerian ego. Put together their back accounts, it won't add up to anything. Did I mention that most of them are loss-making anyway? You can't possibly convince me that it is only their patriotism that inspired them to drag VN to court.

4-Virgin Nigeria is conducting modern aircraft to Nigeria. It would be a pitty for VN to compromise high standards for the sake of hiring Nigerians. The approach taken by VN seems sensible to me: Operate at the highest standards while training Nigerians to take over later.

My other thoughts:
Nigeria is perhaps the first country in the world to launch a fully-private flag carrier from scratch! We always heard of privatizations, commercialization, etc. of carriers but this is the first case of fully private flag carrier from the onset.
Having said the above, it is also worth mentioning that Richard Branson might be using Virgin Nigeria as a vehicle to spread and promote other Virgin brands into the heart of Africa. This proves that Nigeria is once again worthy of global-scale invesments and on the road to economic recovery not only for its sake but for the stability and growth of Africa as well. I don't see why this should be seen as case of "Foreigners milking Nigeria". Are we not talking about job creation?

To conclude I think that Virgin Nigeria's arrival is bound to increase capacity utilization at MMIA and ultimately lend a hand to the Lagos hub project.

chuks

There are a surprising number of Nigerian pilots with full UK ATPLs. How many do they need?

Of course, a lot of them are probably quite happy working in the UK!

This should get interesting, over the next few months. Great, heaving convulsions in the local pilot market.

ac100

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for your replies and may i start by saying i am not Nigeria nor from another African state.

I do, however, have a lot of contacts in Africa, Nigeria and the aviaition community. i have nothing to gain by posting the information i possess. I admire all of your confidence in the future and i really do hope things work in your favour.

The fact is that Virgin has not set up AOC to benefit any particular country or group of people except Virgin. inded, that is the motive of all businesses, however, the tone set by Virgin has been one of arrogance that they possess simply because the govt has given them advantagous that do not allow other nigerian companies to compete. Yes the aviaition minister asked all carriers to come together to create a new airline. But as you quite rightly pointed out, to many chiefs with different ideas.

So i believe they all felt that they could do something on there own, something that proved to be incorrect thinking. Again, we can not speculate on what happens behind closed govt. doors and i think to make local airlines the bad guys in this may not be the right thing to do.

All points above are valid to a degree, but we could sit here and hash over numerous points for each others arguements.

Globalflyer

You made a statement that read

"I don't see how high standards, 150 locally employed so far and a vast growth prospect can be a bad thing for Nigeria"

Well that would mean that airlines in Nigeria are of a low standard, which would then suggest that their employees are obviously not to the same standard as Virgin. i would be very careful how you put your arguement. It always depends on how you spin someones thoughtsThere was, nor is, any reason why Nigerians should not be sitting in the right hand seat of an A320 or A340.

Emirates Airlines puts cadet pilots with 300 hours in a B777 every month so why wet lease.

No company can use an excuse that it is not possible to start ops that quickly without such a tool. I disagree, having served in management at an international airline, i can tell you it is possible. Statements can be made RANI but as the old saying goes until the aircraft is parked on the apron then i will believe. I refer to the Sept 2005, which would mean selection process would be completed and course dates set. I do not think that any of the above has been accomplished.

I do not want to take away from all you positive drive, but i would move forward with caution. The Virgin franchise has not made friends with their employees around the world just be aware of that.

As mentioned i have nothing to gain, i just hate to see peoples hopes and desires being inflated and then destroyed. i have seen it to many times in my long career.

As i said in my last post in the other VN forum, i understand there is a group which is intending on creating an entity that will compete with VN. I do not have the details, but i am told that there will be some sort of annoucment in the next few weeks. my understanding is that it will be a wholly owned Nigerian Company that is all i have.

once again, please do not let me take away from what you feel you will have in the future and i truly hope that all that you wish comes true. Just knowing what i do, it makes it very difficult to see it becoming a reality.

Good Luck Everyone.

AC100

HappyPilot

Exactly!! Virgin aren't really talking much about the recruitment process, I feel they need to at least make some intentions clear, cos I know alot of guys who are simply hanging on over there in the hope that it all kicks off to a good start job wise. If JAA is what they want, they definitely will find some Nigerian guys with it(not many, but they will).
Personally, I also think this is a good idea aswell, that way, countries in Europe(mainly the UK) wont make a fuss everytime Virgin Nigeria wanted to fly in its airspace. Validations, temporarily, but if the guys who get in have in excess of 1500 hours multi crew time, then conversion to a full UK ATPL would be a lot less tedious than it is for the usual CPL/IR to CPL/IR. Either way, my advice to all who are concerned about recruitment would be to simply wait for the carrier to start off first and then attack the job hunting head on. Rather than getting wound up about what they may or maynot be planning(rumours).

HappyPilot

Solid Rust Twotter

Hope it all works out for the local guys. Any movement at the top makes space for those lower down to advance and this is never a bad thing.

How about some more info re recruiting, Shirley? Understandable if you can't speak on a public forum but any advice would help.

chuks

I don't think one usually can put 'Standards' and 'Local Airlines' in the same sentence, actually. Please tell me of one Lagos-based local airline (with the sole exception of Aero Contractors) that has its own hangar. Some seem to use the Nigeria Air Force hangar and others seem to just do everything out there on the ramp. That's cool; I never got to see anyone do an engine change on a 737-200 before, but does it present a professional image to passengers taxying past?

You see these tired old aircraft still with various easily-identifiable colour schemes from major airlines and the name of the local airline just stuckdaubed on there as an after-thought. You have fleets consisting of two aircraft, one from each of two local carriers just lumping together to satisfy the minimum requirement of having two aircraft.

All in all, it looks like a good chance for someone to exploit a big hole in the market for air travel to a reasonable standard. Of course the government will have to do its part by cracking down on sub-standard practices that allow people to fly these old clunkers until they fail, thereby offering crazily cheap tickets. Aero seem to be doing okay charging realistic prices, on the other hand.

One of my former co-pilots died in a BAC-1-11 crash up in Kano. That was the only job he could find, I think, but he probably deserved better. That colours my thinking in this.

I think it would be very unfair to think that, just because he's flying for a sub-standard operator, this or that Nigerian pilot is a sub-standard pilot. There is a great depth of experience in the local pilot population there that could be very useful to a good operation. Let's see if Virgin Nigeria take advantage of this.

The application process closed some time ago but so far, I have not heard of anyone getting a job. There must be some news of that coming soon. We are all looking at each other, wondering, 'What are you up to?' in terms of 'Are you to be one of the chosen?' Not that I am in the running!

Well, they could be looking for someone with just my qualifications... Catering Manager, perhaps?

Oyindo

The second phase of pilot recruitment has started. Oh ye men of little faith.

HappyPilot

Really?? No one told me anything, then again I'm not there at the moment. Enlighten us dear chap(lol).

HappyPilot

Oh by the way, here it is G-VBUS

chuks

I had to scroll back and forth just to see the whole A340. Do I need a bigger laptop for the modern generation of aircraft?

At least they got the right shade of green! Years ago, Airways had one wet-lease 737 in a very dark, almost black, shade of green. When I asked I was told they had sent a black-and-white photo to Aloha Airlines to show them the required colour scheme.

So what is this second phase of recruitment? Contacting the lucky successful initial applicants? C'mon, the suspense is killing!

surely not

AC100, what Emirates do is of little interest. They are not a brand new airline starting from scratch, they already have people with oodles of hours and experience in the management positions. VGN has to ensure that its early recruitment brings in the experience necessary for the candidates to be capable of filling management positions in the future, not just flyers fresh out of Flying schools

Also, there have been a fair few threads on here where pilots have questioned the operating procedures etc of Emirates. I have no idea if they were justified comments or not, but obviously not everyone thinks they are great.

Your comments re lack of opportunity for 'local' pilots is off target. Sure the first couple of wet leased a/c offer limited opportunities, but then the a/c that follow will offer plenty of opportunities and there will be jobs a plenty for pilots with relevant experience.
I am a little concerned at some attitudes on here from local pilots who have gone abroad to work and now complain that ex pats might come to their country to work as they did to the ex pats countries. It cuts both ways guys.

I heard that there were a tremendous number of applicants to the first adverts. so there were always going to be those who were disappointed when they didn't make the cut first time around, but then if they have gone away and sulked then perhaps their CRM isn't too hot anyway

Capt. Manuvar

VN has started calling local pilots, engineers had been called a few weeks back. i, as did most inexperienced local FO's i know, got an email from the DFO telling me to F##k off .......for now, will get in touch in future when they expand. Good luck to the experirnced guys, move over quickly and leave those battered 732s for us little fish.
Is Virgin Nigeria going togive their aircraft names? i'm supprised they didn't name G-VBUS "Spirit of Abacha"

GlobalFlyer

Does anybody know if the VK flight schedules to London Heathrow were governed by slots allocated from Virgin Atlantic's own? The timing of the Lagos arrival is very late (or very early in the morning).

AlternativeProcedure

Capt,

what was the DFO's name mate? Of course you dont have to put it on here, please PM/text me, just curious which Nigerian was selected for this coverted role. Oh by the by, hows IRS with their recruiting plans for the F28?

AlternativeProcedure

MarkD

Capt Manuvar

had a look at your From:

If you were holding FL-0 over LOS instead of LAG (7700km is a long way to come for interview after all) maybe he'd give you another look