looking for contact with Alitalia Express' Pilots

[heavylanding]

hi guys
I am an EMB 145 pilot for Regional france and I need informations about career management in your company.
thank's

[clearfortheoption]

Check this out www.ppjn.com and click on Alitalia express

you'll find the address and the person you should talk to (including the phone number).


Best of luck...

Ciao

[heavylanding]

thank you for your post but I think I was misunderstood.
I am not looking for a job and I don't want to move anywhere.
I need to find out what is a career like in Alitalia's subsidiary Alitalia Express in order to compare with Regional, which is a subsidiary of Air France.
that's for the union.
you may reply in italian, my wife will translate!!!

[azdriver]

Bonjour Heavylanding,

I'm a E145 first officer for Alitalia Express. I'm not sure I understood what kind of information you want, but I try to give you a small answer. In Alitalia group if you want to have a career as pilot you usually work your way inside the pilot union, eventually get notice by the managment and maybe you get a position inside the pilots organization. Another way is to start to work for a department like Flight Safety, tech, Standardization, Human factor and so on. Both ways require to spend (especially at the beginning) some rest days inside offices, attending meeting and stuff like that. Usually the people that commute do not do that.

Let me know if you have any other question.

I'm going on vacation for two weeks so if you do not hear from me...well be patient .

see you ciao:rolleyes:

[taralluccio]

you can find azex pilots contract here (http://www.baskerville.it/flynet/aviationfordogs/download.htm)

[azdriver]

Heavylanding,
I hope I can give you a clear explanation of how things works in Alitalia Group.

Years ago, around the early 90s a company founded by a businnesman in partnership with Alisarda,a regional carrier from the island of Sardegna was acquired by Alitalia. The name of that company was Avianova. Such company provided feed to hub flights from those areas where another coompany named ATI was not operating in behalf of Alitalia. Even Ati in an earlier stage was bought and entirly merged with Alitalia.(Such brand in fact does not exist anymore). In Avianova's case, things went different. At the beginnig, right after being acquired Avianova was used to provide its Aviation certification to allow Alitalia to keep flying without going into major financial reconstruction. So, was found the so called Alitalia Team with the acquisition of Avianova. All pilots and FA of Alitali where automatically rehired under this new brand where also the Ex Avianova crews merged. Now, there was one pilot group with two different contract: the ex Alitalia Mainline and the ex Avianova (flying the ATR and for few month the Fokker 70). The Avianova Captain where very junior compare to the mainline captain. After two years or less for somes they were promoted within Avianova as captain, now they found themself into Alitalia alredy captains and muuch more junior then the average pilots in Alitalia. The company made a decision: they ceated a regional carrier to put all the planes and crews that camed from Avianova. That is Alitalia Express. The ex Avianova Captain where automatically transfered to that company with a contract similar to the one of Alitalia minus 20% but they all had a group agreement for themself only where they got more moneys in order to catch uop with the previous income they were gaining with Avianova flying big hours. The Captains to come don't even dream about those money. The pilots instead were offered a choice: transfer with Alitalia Team (Mainline) or stay inside AlitaliaExpress and get a earlier command slot but with the previos said contract -20%. Included in the deal was the chance for the ex Avianova Captain to transfer to Alitalia mainline after the most junior pilot of Alitalia Team started the commmand course.Basically after the most junior pilot from Azexp that transfered to Alitalia Team started the command course. That is not later then 2007. The other pilots have no specific agreement for a transfer to mainline beside the institution of a common seniority list. After that for years Altalia Group hired pilots for both company: az exp and az team. The process was the same , the pilot would know where to go after the selection process according to the needs of the moments. Most of the pilots went to the mainline in a ratio of 10 to 1. Mainline it's way bigger then azexp.


That was a pretty widely agreed practice from the pilot community of the Alitalia group.

Now things are changing. In the late 90's Alitalia started a trainig flight school called Alitalia Skymaster where the company could get pilots. To enroll in the school beside passing all the normal selection process and meeting the requirements you had to PAY(something like Lufthansa). Big money too. But after completing the school and getting all your licence you where hired by Alitalia Mainline only. That is because in the meanwhile Azexp with the new contract kept the newhire salary for 5 years and Mainline instead got reed of it. I went thru that school. But I was on the second course that finished in 2001 and did not get hired right away, I ended my studies in june 2001. They told us that there were a 6 month hiring freeze. Then 911 happened. And all of us were starving for a job. Alitalia mainline was and still it is in a bad situation wth not hiring for the near future meanwhile azexp were and still needs pilots. All of us made a lot of pressure with the pilot union to let us go to that company even with the 5 years salary freeze. At the end we won and the first of us got hired in may 2002. Now those pilots first hired already received a slot for command. After little more then a year. The most junior pilot in Alitalia mainline (wich is by the way at lest 14 month more senior then us)if things do not change will be captain in 18 years.
Now we are young low time low experience pilots, so many mainline pilots are complaining on how things evolved. There are talk about making the common seniority list something that actually work. For now nobody will change company from Azexp to mainline or viceversa. It's not possible. But right now as I'm writing things are changing. Probably in few month we will be ask if we want to do a command course in Azexp or change to mainline. For the Captains of both company I do not know how things will evolve. But I bet for more news to come. I will keep you post.

I hope I helped.

Best regards
Azdriver