Well Done EK Flight Ops. Management! (Morphed to the V/S thread)
 

I shared some drinks with one of the recruitment officers last week, and she inofrmed me that as of January, EK has run out of suitable pilot applicants on file! So a hearty well done to Idle Redhead, TCAS and Mister Ed, you have successfully managed your way into a crisis through ignorance and inaction.

Let's see how you rationalise your way out of this one.

:sad:

The requirement of 4000 hours for an fo will be reduced to 2000 hours or so and guess what, the pond is full of happy candidates again. Problem,....what problem?

The guys with 2000hrs can still apply to most other major Airlines so they may not get the extra crew required. Apparently you can get into CX with 1000hrs .

Well a reduction in experience to maintain a recruitment quota fills me with confidence!! If this fails to gain the expected results what will be the next ploy in the cunning plan (assuming a plan exists). Following some of the comments made in similar threads regarding the massif expansion that some of the ME airlines are committed to and the seemingly lack of a suitable infrastructure to support this expansion and the attitude of local Airworthiness Authorities to not want to rock the boat, I expect the ultimate result will sadly be a predicable one.

Outhouse.

Check your mail Charlie.

There is no problem There is no crisis!

1000 hours pilots in the right seat. DECs in the left! Halas....:{

The wet dream where "they" run out of pilots and come crying with bags of money is not going to happen...sorry...wake up! There is always some glider pilot from Ulan Bator ( no disrespect intented) who would love to come.

Remember the concept is proven, we fly around with cadets in the right seat.

Quite right, only what does a glider from Ulan Bator knows about CRM and Team work, obviously a major issue with EK recruitment !
EK is not interested in getting quality, they are interested in getting quantity and SILENT quantity, people who listen and nod around all day long on the flight deck and in the office, hailing the other guy's "good point" even if inexistent, questioning a decision or action is obviously a big no no with EK as they have proven it many times so far.
Keep up the good recruitment work EK :yuk:

No problem. We'll just have more pilots capable of draggin in a ek plane at 2000ft, at 30 miles with flaps1, 12° nose up and 160kts. But they memorised and perpetuately resing the perfect 10 minute oz-brief 1 hour before landing and therfore pass any dumb ppc without complaint.
"mc donalds - i'm lovin' it".

We fly around with cadets in the right seat.
 

I would like to just get some clarification re the cadet pilot in the right hand seat.
Experience indicates that most emerging airlines have a young blood program; this generally is structured to allow company sponsored cadets who have completed basic training (CPL & IR and Type Rating) to gain experience and hours, flying revenue flights under the guidance and supervision of qualified TRI’s initially, then LTC’s and after satisfactory competence testing and a suitable number of hours experience being released to fly with aircraft commanders. I would expect that a similar procedure exists with EK.

Back in the good old days I remember that they flew as second officers and acted as the third member of the flight deck crew, thus ensuring the correct balanced level of experience available.

The use of these extremely low hour pilots to fill a right hand seat without suitable checks and balances seems to me to be rather inappropriate, clarification please.
outhouse.

Good one....the long anticated briefing. After the first 10 sec all you hear is Blah Blah Blah. By the way I like my ND clean...no green circles around DXB...its VFR and I can see where I am going + it doesn't say we need to put green circles anywhere in the SOP's...must be an old OZ thing that stuck...and hey there is only one way to get to RWY 12 and one way to get to RWY 30...I don't want to hear you brief it...its not a big airport...it's home base...and "standard route" is fine for a briefing....oh and don't TELL me to tell you that I should say "I have finished programming the FMC" ...you can ask me if you want ie. "you done with the box"...CRM is also a visual thing....if I am sitting there picking my arse...I haven't decided to take a break from programing....I am obviously done and you saw me.

Too right Charlie

Its all about economics.The pilot pool is getting smaller but EK's conditions arent competitive enough.Take a look at what they are paying pilots in India now!!!

If they want quality they need to pay the bucks.

Its that simple.

Do you want the "long brief" or the "short brief" - ie "Dubai's over there.." or "Dubai":} :} Works for me..... Keep the LOOOOOOONNNNGGGG Oz briefings DownUnder please chaps....

And then there's the payrise :eek:
You didn't hear it here first because it's in other forums but...

10%+ in January is the current rumour :zzz:
(in addition to any rise in April) :ok:

Might get a few more people to look but I don't think the flood of
applications will be startling :=

Is CRM an issue with EK? Because I believe several authourities will be looking at that very soon. In particular, fatigue management.

Muttley Crew
I would agree but this came from a good source.
Keep any eye out regarding basings as well, except that you'll need more time in the company to qualify ;)

Oh yes, EK management are taking the fatigue issue very seriously. The local regulatory authority have been under pressure from EK to raise the annual flying hours from 900 to 1000 or even 1100 for several months now, but so far the authority have not capitulated.

Although the problem is not simply the number of hours flown but more the combination of short haul/long haul duties with no sensible rest structure in place, this partly due to the shortfall in crews.

CRM an issue in EK? Naah, just stick a few incorrect slides onto Pelesys every 6 months for the PPC refresher and job done. :rolleyes:

Come on guys, that's got to be better than having to sit in a classroom for a whole day and actually discuss it. We might actually learn something that way and knowledge is a dangerous thing! After all, much has already been learnt from several EK 'incidents'.

Mutt-mate: This was meant to be sarcastic, not scientific........:ugh:
if you read one of my earlier statements on speeds, you'd see what i think of flying below GD.

(By the way, how low is VLS F1 on a 330 with 160t? I don't know, i admit, but it shouldn't be too far away from 160.)

china

low hours
 

Well, Asiana sticks 800 hour f/o's in the right seat of their 330's straight from their ab initio schools, haven't heard one of theirs buy the farm yet, maybe that is the trend worldwide??:confused: :confused:

Readytocopy....my sentiments exactly. I can think of a few others too!

Mutt,
the 10 min brief is an Aussie thing, I never met anybody else in EK who briefs that long and forget the most essential things.

A lot of Aussie bashing today, why would that be??? Oh yeah, we just flogged the poms at cricket!

Meow!!!! Sorry i missed the news on that, can you quickly brief me on the cricket score?? I said brief maaaaaate :}

Well done to the OZ mates, but you buggers sure know how to do terminally booooooooooooring briefs. Not all i will happily admit. :ok:

EGGW

Oy there mates, us colonials that arrived on these sandy shores in recent years also sit there and struggle to stay awake during monotone magnormous briefs that have so much verbalisation about the departure and everything down to the colour of the sky that embarassment sets in.

Less talk about crap and more about important things like where the blo*dy hills are would be a great start.

Forget employing 300 hour cadets, the company already has it's own scheme in place, what about all those 2000 - 3000hour Jet f/o's and turboprop Captains out there. They would be ideal to fill the right seat slots, young, keen and happy to do the years service until they swap seats. The problem EK has is finding Captains so they will be looking for dec's for sometime to come. Let's hope the standards are not relaxed so I can rest easily when my family are aboard.

Why is it that everyone assumes the standards are relaxed after they are employed??

V

Now that's funny. Well said. BTW, straight from the horses mouth last week, "only 20 DECs hired next year".
TU

That's 20 too much!!

MR8

20 DEC's, yeah right.

Just like the "DEC's will not delay anybodies upgrade":mad:

Isn't it funny that we've switched totally to the Boeing FCTM - except in regards to briefs, which are anything but. We insist on making sure the other guy knows our mother's maiden name, the colour of the knickers she briefly wore on her wedding night - and whether they were heirlooms handed dowm to her by her mother. And we're supposed to tell the other guy all this again and again and again.

And now we have to have the book out for each b.....r.....i....e....f.... in case we might miss one chapter of the unbrief.

I agree with the comment someone made above - you stop hearing a word that's being droned ... sorry, said after the eleventh word. Why not do it the Boeing way? - Tell the other guy what's different about the departure / arrival. The rest is SOP, and shouldn't be recited, over and and over over again.

And what's this 'Australian' thing regarding the 'War and Peace' unbriefs? Is that an Airbus thing?

I think we should optimise the usage of SOP's to our advantage. When it says "appropriate items", then only brief the appropriate items for approach.

At the CBC mention the taxi route and have a quick look at the chart on the wall and consider the the taxi route discussed. Don't forget to mention that it's "not for operational use" as stated at the bottom.:)

Think about it from a different angle. When doing all those gross error checks, things like flaps, flex, speeds are mentioned. There is no need to mention them again when we "brief" the departure as it's already been mentioned. While we brief from the box, I think we should think outside of the box.

You will find that the "Australian thing" is a direct decendant from pre '89 Ansett and Australian Airlines. It's mainly the 14 year capts that do this. You will not see many other Ozzies in the right and newish in the left that have this tendancy.

I can't think of too many people who fit the "Australia 89 thing" in positions of power on the Boeing. So, to repeat MTOW's question: is this insistence of mega briefings coming from the Australian checkies on the Airbus fleet?

Personally, I can't think of a more inappropriate word than "brief" for what we currently do.

Aiming Point. Well said. When I figure out who you are I'll buy you a beer...
Rgds

Aiming Point: I like what you say about the briefings, wise words, but...
"the woefully deteriorating standard of flight crew applicants over the past 10 years"
Gosh, I never realised us new joiners (only 4 years for me) were so much worse than those who joined 10 years ago.

Careful guys; avoid getting into a scrap about different nationalities and their respective foibles - we need to stick together on such issues.

Please think twice before lashing out at your colleagues.

Thanks. 4HP

As I seem to have kicked off this drift from the original thread, I’d like to clarify:
By saying “oz-brief” I used a common stereotype about dull and long briefs. As a matter of fact it no longer sticks to Australians only, it has become a expression that fits more than one nationality.


As for this:

Giving short briefs has nothing to do with non-compliance to FOM or SOP. These are requirements for personal knowledge but not required briefing contents. Wanting to evade any prosecution by spamming up the voice recorder would lead to singing the whole FOM before each flight.

A good brief is BRIEF, gives the essential differencies or specialities of the operation to come. The shorter it is, the closer to execution we can give the brief and the better it will be retained by both pilots. We should NOT repeat the standards or we lose all the attention of our collegue.

I assume that in the early days of EK some good soul set up ONE possible brief in the FCOM, as a examlpe to fall back for cadets and newbees. It then slowly became almost religion because it was safer to memorise and reproduce what someone else had already published without having his @.. kicked, than using ones own brain,experience and airmenship.
Let's get back to that and hear some precise briefs that address the ACTUAL operation and not some tiring, presung, heard it a thousand time "... no action below 400ft except silencing the warning and raising the gear by this handle ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz "

china

Ahh Muttley you have been in the Middle East too long, nice bit of blame shifting and denial going on there. ;)
There are good and bad sorts in all Nationalities and as a generalisation the Oz Mates take the bikkie for the long brief. Fair or not you (or your Nationality) generally deserve the reputation you have got.

Indeed Muttley, and I'm sure had he have briefed the entire STAR arrival route into his home base, including tracks and distances (despite the fact the FMS Database had already been in use for 3 weeks, and couldn't possibly have changed!) he would have totally prevented the said wingtip misshap!! NOT!!!

Surely you must see the point being made?

In a previous life at home base, my brief used to be "If I tell you that we're taking off from that runway over there (while pointing out the window), I've said too much"......KISS

Agreed Mutt, but the FOM also states:

All briefings should be clear and
concise as lengthy briefings can be
counter-productive.