Smart Aviation

[petit prince]

Hi eveybody.
I saw Smart Aviation (Egypt) is looking for turbo prop Captains. Any info about them?

[dboard9]

Can't contribute an answer, but I'm talking to an employment broker about the gig now. I'll let you know as I learn about them.

[B200Drvr]

When I left Cairo just over two years ago, they were a Mickey Mouse operation. Owned by the government they operated with no regard to ECAA regs and did not fly much, that was on the Sov jets. Talk then was about them getting Dash 8's but I left before that happened.

[1Wingnut]

I was being recruited for the position by an agency back in October, 2011. I took another job instead, because I was worried about safety and the political situation there in Cairo. Since then, I have seen every agency I have ever heard of try to fill the position, one by one. Several of them have contacted me about it. Meanwhile the political situation has continued to get worse in Egypt. When I was first contacted about it, the pay was $8000/month, with housing included. Have they increased the offer after all this time of being unable to fill the position? I have been to Egypt many times - I don't think you could pay me enough to go work there again until such time as the Egyptian Parliament is reformed, the constitution is rewritten and agreed upon, and there is an elected president who is not either a member of Mubarak's regime or the Muslim Brotherhood. You heard there was basically a military coup there just a couple days ago, right? :ugh:

[SU-GCM]

Smart have got 2 of their 3 on order Dash 8 Q400s around 8 months ago or more .. they didn't operate a single commercial flights ... the company is owned by the ECAA - Egyptian Civil Aviation Authorities and they were planning to operate on domestic sectors and regional ones
all of this was pre-revolution plans after the revolution and losses Egyptair are recording they had to receive the aircraft anyway so they have been only doing training / test flights and attended DXB Airshow
rumors says that they won't fly anytime soon as Egyptair won't let anybody compete on their domestic routes
I would say Egypt is totally safe for foreigners plenty of airlines already have foreign crews and they didn't leave either during the revolution or now !

[ODGUY]

I saw 6 or so of their pilots at FS doing their initial. At that time I had already turned down that gig, however, they seemed like they did not want any foreigners (the pilot groups, not the decision makers). It seemed as though the chaps were threatened that my PIC on type was more than their total time, and that my age was half of theirs.

If my memory serves me right, some were ex-air force?

I don't remember clearly the amount they had offered me, but it wasn't in the 5 digits, and for me, wasn't enough to leave a good job for. All the while, the instability had just commenced.