Pay in Iraq

[Bubesi]

What would you guys say is the minimum that a pilot should accept, being based in Iraq.
The Yanks are on $550 a day SNT,just flying in and out of Iraq, based in Jordan. The russkies get $100 per landing (6 landidngs a day, work it out).
I know that we (SA) accept below the usual rates ( i'm not saying it's right, just stateing a fact), but this is different. Your chances of dying or getting kidnapped are real.

I've said a grand a day is the min, plus medical aid in full, plus loss of license.

[Captain Pheremone]

The guys I know working there are getting $15k/month with full med and 8/4 schedule.
Its a bit light for me taking into consideration;
No Job security - like I have now in Nigeria (sic).
Little personal security - like I have now in Nigeria (sic).
Longer time away from home than I have now.
More uncomfortable living conditions than I have now (sic). etc etc
30 k sounds good but don't think you will get it.
Me, personally - gimme 2 years salary upfront and I work for free from then on - otherwise forget it!!!!!!:= :=

[Bubesi]

Thanks Capt P
Yeah, i know 30K sounds high. But I don't want to go up there, for obvious reasons, but a grand a day might swing me.
Also, maybe it's time to set a new standard?!!

[south coast]

Are you talking about $1000 a day from a South African operator?
You will never get it!
Ask the guys who I think were flying for Solenta from Jordan in and out of Iraq. They were getting just a bit more than f*ck all!

And, to fly what might I add, Captain or Co-pilot?

[B Sousa]

www.dyn-intl.com

www.blackwaterusa.com

www.triplecanopy.com

[AfricanSkies]

Which Yanks are getting $550 a day? Blackwater? The Metro? Or the Chrome crowd? And the Russians - which ones are getting that? The IL-76's or the An-24 Skylink guys? Doubt if one crew does 6 landings a day....

There have been rumours that guys have been getting $500 a landing etc etc...but never any substantiated facts.

[formulav]

I flew a heavy jet there thru 2005, FAA certs/Ghana Registration. Based outside of. 6000 USD a month plus 200.00 per day in country, 1 or 3 landings made no difference. Flew every other day. 5 star lodging paid for plus 50 USD per deim. All said and done, 8500 to 11,000 a month.

[streetcar 1]

any operator who wishes:O to operate a DC10 can count me in. i will gladly do the Iraq operations

[cforty7]

I fly for a South African operator from Jordan into Iraq. We fly to Basra, Erbil, Suluminya and 3 times to Baghdad per day. With salary plus S&T, we get paid well above par for South African standards. If you guys are looking for fun, that's the place to go. Where else can you do a hands on spiral with 70 pax legally, and sometimes get escorted with fighter jets? If flying is your game, thats the place to be!:E

[oompilot]

Hey cforty7,
Not to pry but in the interest of the forum could you give us a ball park figure to give your post some significance. It would be nice to know if it is in the region of the amounts mentioned above. Not trying to provoke you, just wondering because ‘above SA rates’ says nothing to most. That could be a whole lot of nothing to those who actually fly for a living as apposed to those who only do it because they love it!
Woowho! Just wondering.

[B200Drvr]

If you are working for a South African company that is contracted to an NGO like the UN or Red Cross, You are not going to get the big bucks, as those contracts are negotiated like that due to their "humanitarian" causes. However if you are working for a US based company the you should be around the USD$ 15000 PM nett. all included.

[Smells like...]

Cforty7, par at the moment, for a contract P1, is about $6800 -7 USD a month, but this doesn't include any dangerpay. So how far above that are you guys to give us a better idea. Also not trying to provoke you, just trying to get an idea of the going rates.
Like Oompilot, i fly for a living, and getting shot down doesn't pay the bills.

[cforty7]

Ok ok. It works out to about $7500 so its not that much better than any other contract, but its better than pay at home and you can get shot down doin what you like or get robbed on your way to the airport in South Africa:8 Anyway, we get looked well after there. We get vectors around hot spots and if Bagdad airport is a problem, we get escorted down by fighters. The airport is probably the most secure airport in the world at this stage. It gets protected 12 miles around and theres also a minimum of 8 blackhawks up around the airport when we descent in. The poor passengers have to go through about 12 security checks just to get into the plane.;)

[AfricanSkies]

Gee, you must fly into a different Baghdad to the rest of us. Fighter escorts? Blackhawk protection? Most secure airport in the world? Are your initials PB?! :E

Perhaps you are talking about Bagdad, Florida?

[ERASER]

Now, now, come on AS, stop covering your eyes inbound, outbound from Bagdad........pop your head from under the inst. panel and you will see what CF7 is talking about..........be brave son......:p

[Marcus the wise]

A great man once said, the only difference between bravery and stupidity is the outcome, so if the guys flying out of BGW eventually get blowupup/shotdown or destroyed they were stupid?, or if they survive without incident they are brave? ERASER what do you mean duck down and be brave???
These are real people we are talking about,most of them are NOT!! earning top dollars, so they can earn the big bucks for the company they work for, give them some credit, when they die, they die for good!
That place is mayhem, most of those people who deny there is a problem in Iraq have something to gain from it!(ie management!!).
In a couple of years time we will say that those that flew there were hero's or fool's?
I guess time will tell,lets hope not too many people will have to die to prove a point!

[AfricanSkies]

There I was at twenty six thousand feet over central Iraq, 330 kts TAS and we're dropping faster than the US dollar. It's a typical November day in the Persian Gulf -- hotter than a chicken vindaloo in a heatwave and I'm sweating like a paedophile in Toys-R-Us.

But that's neither here nor there. The sky is obscured over Baghdad today and greyer than my shirts after the Cameroon contract. But it's 2007, folks, and I'm sporting the latest in navigation technology. Namely a window.
My 1975 Fokker 28 is equipped with an effective missile warning system, too. When the missile hits the engine, the fire bells come on in the cockpit, its amazingly efficient.

At any rate, the clouds covering Baghdad International Airport are as thick as Mike Tyson’s lips after fight night. But I've digressed.
The preferred method of approach tonight is the Pitch Up One Arrival. Basically you just pitch up and see what happens. This tactical manoeuvre allows the pilot to ingress the landing zone in an unpredictable manner, (much like many African operations) thus exploiting the supposedly secured perimeter of the airfield in an attempt to avoid enemy surface-to-air-missiles and small arms fire. Or large arms fire, for that matter.

Personally, I wouldn't bet my tight white ass on that theory but we’ve forgotten how to do a normal approach and that's the real reason we fly it.
Speedbrake out and gear & flaps down through 15000, I gently ease the aircraft into a 60 degree right hand bank. This maneuver is called ‘looking out of the opposite window for the airport’ but you do have to be careful because it can dislodge peanuts from the throttle quadrant. Even worse, it might wake the engineer who is slumbering on the jump seat.

Lying to ATC, we ditch the minnie-mouse voiced yank chick on Balad and chop to approach. Still in cloud, with the 6-mile TCAS looking like one of those kaleidoscopes you had when you were a kid. Or a mathematical version of alphabet soup.

It's strong coffee effect appreciation time as I descend the agile Fokker to six thousand feet AGL on downwind, turning to smile for a couple more pics by the new flight attendant and emptying my mug in case of spills when I bend it in like Beckham. We get a visual on the runway at 0.7 dme overhead at 2000' still going down like a whore’s drawers just before we suddenly have to pull a 2G turn to avoid that $#&%ing balloon again. Now the fun starts. We chop to the trainee Iraqi in the tower whose job is it to take ninety seconds to tell us that we are cleared to land, having forgotten to call him through 4000 as usual because the numbers on the altimeter were a bit blurred still. The VSI needle has finally unpegged itself and the new hostie is now shaking like a constipated dog ****ting on a sheet of ice.

Ignoring the GPWS whose CB the engineer forgot to pull I grab a fistful of Rolls Royce and stabilize at 300’ still in a 45 deg bank on base, pulling back on the yoke just enough to hear the business-class pax start to grunt. Turning the aircraft onto the runway heading over brick one of 33R, the engineer finally wakes from his slumber. I flare and as soon as we roll out of the turn, I land. Some aeronautical genius coined this manoeuvre “Short Finals."

I look over at the F/O and he's getting his wallet out already – the whiskey is only $10 a litre here. Looking further back at the new hostie I can clearly see her face regaining a bit of colour again. In fact her cheeks are redder than Monica Lewinski’s knees. I wonder why but then notice the wet spot spreading around her feet. Finally, I glance at our steely-eyed Engineer. His eyebrows rise in unison as a grin forms on his face. I can tell he's thinking the same thing I am. Are we going to be able to diddle the fuel man again?

”Where do we find such stalwart comrades?” Naturally, and not at all surprisingly, I take the first turnoff at 90 knots, destroying all the crockery in the trolleys and deeply unimpressing the new hostie. That’s my chances out the window then. Bloody bumpy taxiways….. The comparatively small, 33 ton, bouncing cacophony of groans comes to a lurching stop with the radome less than one foot from the marshal’s nose. Let's see a Jumbo do that! We notice that he’s the one we suspect of pinching the cellphone last week so we turn the radar back on. Keeping one engine on because the APU is u/s, it's time to let the quivering pax unload themselves. As they finish staggering down the stairs I shoot down the back to see if they’ve left any English newspapers lying around, and of course, have a slash in the smelly chemical loo.

Walking down the crew entry steps savouring the fume-laden 46 degree celcius Baghdad air, dull thuds in the background, with my lowest-bidder Browning 9 mm stowed safely back in Johannesburg under my pillow, I look around and thank God, not Allah, I'm not on a Nigeria contract. Then I curse God that I'm not living in Sydney, flying for Virgin, lying on a beach 10 000 miles away with two chicks on each arm.

Knowing that once again I've cheated death-by-boredom, I ask myself, "What in the hell am I doing in this mess? Is it Duty, Honor, and Country?” No, it’s the double S&T allowance. Or the fact that the alternative is somewhere in West Africa. But now is not the time to derive the complexities of the superior cerebral properties of the human portion of the aviator-man-contractor model. It is however, soon time to get out of this ****-hole.

"Hey, is the fuel truck here yet?” “No, its still on the other side of the field filling those *^%*ing Hercs.” Meantime I curse the APU for the fortieth time today and try and signal the Iraqi ground-handlers through the thick black smoke emanating from their forklift to push the unserviceable pickup truck with the barely serviceable Copco starter on its back into position next to us, and then to get the pushback tug out to jumpstart the Copco so we can get the airstart we need...

God, I love this contract! :p

[cforty7]

AfrSks. Monty Python said:" It's people like you what cause unrest." The second world war is over. Stying within 3.5DME is very easy at 25deg bank. The balloon has a transponder - tcas only requires much less than 2g's and there's fair paying pax in the back. Stabelizing over the perimeter at 500' more than makeble, and the oldest F28 there is 1978. It's a lovely contract, just make sure you keep it. Oh, and I'm not the much loved PB.:hmm:

[KESHO]

Did some flying around the country for a while, the extra earning capacity came in handy but it would not be worth it in the long run. Good months could earn 9000 USD as FO. In my opinion the money will never be good enough for the job. You cannot place a price on the risk as the offer will never be good enough to out weigh the risk.

I wouldnt be too concerned with medical aids and loss of license cover, but rather worry about life insurance. If someone knows of a company that will cover you while you are flying in and out of SDA, pls let me know.

Afrikanskies- interesting! ...:confused:

[cforty7]

Sorry, got up grumpy this morning to do a long medical. I'll spot you up there very soon. Have fun:\

[Smells like...]

Safest airport in the world???
Didn't a few morters land on the apron about 4 weeks ago??:confused:

[cforty7]

The morters are a rumour. PB:sad: conquerred. There are no evidence of any war ongoing in Iraq. Angola is a much worse place. Hillbrow even worse.:} I just LOVE flying into Bagdad day in and day out. Boy its easy to rattle cages!!!!!!!!!!!:E The Middle East is not for sissies, it Rocks!! ITs for REAL MEN:ok:

[putt for dough]

Depending on your pay, it could be for real men without brains. :E
Considering the amount of choppers being shot down
with those SAM 7's.
cforty7 hope you are making it worthwhile and milking em!

[Fat Reggie]

You can't live forever. I'll take the job and some suicide pills just in case.

[Bubesi]

The thread isn't about being brave enough to fly into Iraq. It's a money issue.
Real men??!!!:mad:
I'd rather be a sissie than stupid.
You're flying into a war zone for an "average" wage. Therefore you deserve more!!!!!!!!!

[covertwar]

It gets protected 12 miles around and theres also a minimum of 8 blackhawks up around the airport when we descent in.


Hey, you know Blackhawks are just utility helicopters, right? All they have is a little mini-gun. If somebody had a manpad they'd probably be in more trouble than you in the big shiny jet with outboard mounted engines hanging off the wing. What does Iraq have to do with Africa forum anyways?

[SpootNICK]

Covertwar.......

Your ignorance in this matter is extraordinary.

There are numerous south AFRICAN companies who fly into iraq for various NGO's. And in the case of the F28, it's a south AFRICAN company subchartering to Royal Jordanian (the airline). Onboard these south AFRICAN regestered aircraft are south AFRICAN crews, who are employed under south AFRICAN labour law. SO, the origional question was about how much south AFRICAN crews being payed to fly into iraq.

Granted, there are a few other nationalities flying for the south AFRICAN companies.....but generally speaking the majority are Saffers.

So..........there you go, 7 reasons why this thread appears here......and not in the Middle East forum.

:ugh:

[covertwar]

Covertwar.......

Your ignorance in this matter is extraordinary.

There are numerous south AFRICAN companies who fly into iraq for various NGO's. And in the case of the F28, it's a south AFRICAN company subchartering to Royal Jordanian (the airline). Onboard these south AFRICAN regestered aircraft are south AFRICAN crews, who are employed under south AFRICAN labour law. SO, the origional question was about how much south AFRICAN crews being payed to fly into iraq.

Granted, there are a few other nationalities flying for the south AFRICAN companies.....but generally speaking the majority are Saffers.

So..........there you go, 7 reasons why this thread appears here......and not in the Middle East forum.



Thanks for the explanation, but what do you take me for, a mindreader? I only saw one reference to South Africa in the first post, and that was just an acronym.

You really could have just explained it to me without all the antagonism.

[SpootNICK]

Perhaps.....but it wouldn't of been as much fun :E