Airlines PNG

[if u can]

Can anyone please help me with any relevant information on Airlines PNG and the interview process. I would really appreciate any help you can give me to help prepare. Are there any previous employees out there? I have seen the website and PM's will be appreciated.

Thanks

[Captain Nomad]

I am sure the ability to share some previous PNG flying experiences would help... There are some good guys working there. Where else can you fly a Dash 8 VFR below 5 000' on a short-sector job!

[if u can]

I take it there are no ex or current employees around? I would appreciate the help.

[Troopy]

Have a mate that works there. Conditions are crap working 90hr fortnights because they don't have crew. Cant train much either due to shortage of T&C and sim slots. if you get in don't bet on being checked to line this year.

Typical QRA/APNG organisation It's a shame Skytrans is attached to them now, was a great company.

As for interview, sim is conducted at Skytrans on there elite trainer they have had it booked out all week.

[if u can]

Thanks for the heads up. Are the conditions bad becasue of the shortage of crew or do they have many other issues? Any idea on pay and bases i want to find out before hand.

Thanks
IUC

[JetABro]

Looking for 18 pilots (captains plus FO's), mainly based Port M, long stagered start, FO's $40 000AUD ($25 000AUD after tax, accom. included).
Hope that helps.

[Chocks Away]

Words of wisdom above that would best be heeded.
Had potential but has gone pear-shaped.
Steer well away from that whole group.
If you want to fly a Dash, try Sunnies/Eastern/Coastal/Nelson/Poly/NatJet or even Skipps...

[long flare]

Only for Geriatrics

Airlines of PNG - I think the G stands for Geriatrics. I would say the average age for Captains on the Dash 8 would have to be 60 and counting...

This lot have either come from airline careers (early retirement) or were never good enough to make it to an airline, they preserve themselves on Scotch and live in the past glory days, not facing the fact that maybe they should go to pasture and let some younger guys get the same opportunity they once had when they were starting their careers.

They are blocking the career progress of many young, more capable First Officers with better hearing and eyesight.

Time for the Zimmerframe type rating ......

[Animalclub]

long flare...
Why should a person finish working whilst he is still able and qualified to do it. Did some older checkie upset your career? No doubt by you telling him how to do the job?!!!

[Chimbu chuckles]

long flare....I thought I would just point out that all those chaps you're so quick to dissparage have survived a VERY long time in PNG to get to be 60...those who have spent virtually their entire careers there will have lost upwards of 50 friends killed in flying accidents in PNG.

They have survived flying in conditions you can not even begin to comprehend...particularly if they spent their formative years in Talair or the Missions.

Just because some youngster can sit there in the cheap seats 'beating them to the punchline' on most of the day to day mundane decisions doesn't make them 'better'.

I probably know and have flown with virtually all those guys you're talking about, in Talair and PX, and I would put my family behind every single one of them in a heartbeat.

You and your young punchy FO mates would be a different story however.

[Drag Chute]

So it seems that an airline which retains some very highly expereinced pilots working in an country with crap weather, crap navaids, crap ATS, crap terrain are going to be brow beaten here in Pprune?

Boys look at the experience, ask yourselves why the airline requires such expereince and if it is not for you - move along. If you can't answer that you should do your homework.

I cannot understand why 'just because it is a dash 8' that the captain experience level should be that of a 30 year old skipper.

If it isn't for you then don't waste time in joining the queue - PNG requires experience and a dedication - not a 'quick hour building exercise my friends'.

The PNG accident rate has dropped, the rules have been strengthened it only needs the PNG CAA to discover the fact that they can't get/retain FOI's due to appropriate kina. But that's another story.

I'm with you chimbu - I have no problems sticking my family behind these CG crews - I have 15 years in PNG and still look up to these guys !

[SHAGGS]

l totally agree with Chuck and Drag Chute. PNG's flying conditions are far from great, and anyone who has survived for as long as most of the long time PNG pilots without killing themselves or anyone else in an aeroplane deserves credit. If you guys don't like it don't apply ! APNG's conditions may not be all that great, but what the hell, if it means progressing your career, give it a go.

[psycho joe]

Unfortunately it's true

I totally agree with long flare,

I'm sure that some of those guys were great once, but the ravages of alchohol and time have taken their toll physically and mentally. They may have been great stick and rudder marginal weather pilots once but these days a lot of these guys wont fly in less than blue skys and some have little regard for CRM or established procedures.

Not only would I not put my family on board with these guys, I have refused to travel as a pax on flights flown by some of these guys.

long flare you can at least take solace in the knowledge that if you've flown with these guys then you can fly with ANYONE. And you'll have some great CRM stories for future airline interviews.

[topdrop]

I know a few of these "long in the tooth" captains from PNG. I'd fly with them any day - can't say the same about some of these cool dudes that know jack ****.

[Captain Nomad]

As usual a very poignant post from Chimbu...

There is a certain kind of 'rat cunning' (as mentioned on another thread) that PNG pilots absolutely have to have. And if any of you think that this business of 'surviving PNG' is an overstretched and overused comment then you haven't lived through working in an environment where you do indeed feel in mortal danger almost every time you go to work and where thinking on your feet and changing plans mid-flight is a DAILY occurrence - not once a week or month...

And Chimbu is not exaggerating with

They have survived flying in conditions you can not even begin to comprehend...particularly if they spent their formative years in Talair or the Missions

- you would not understand unless you have experienced it, lived with it, battled it day in day out, year in year out.

Maybe that is why all PNG operators will look sideways at pilots in other PNG companies and would practically give them a job at the drop of a hat - knowing what they have been through as opposed to putting on a new guy with the naivitty we all once had before coming to PNG... (also explains my original post about being able to relate some PNG experiences in an interview).

[bushy]

Airstrips

The old "australian" flight manuals had two sets of takeoff and landing charts, one for Australia, and another for PNG. Apparently the aircraft did not need as much strip length in PNG.

[Chimbu chuckles]

Yup Bushy...they didn't.

If memory serves the PNG charts had slopes up to 6%...not much use at slopes between 6% and 20% which were common.

I think I did maybe 3 takeoff performance calcs using charts in 9000 hrs in PNG...during ground school on a couple of types.

Out in the bush you just eyeballed it...starting off with fairly 'conservative' (they would not have been so called in Australia) loads and then building up over time with experience to whatever load was 'safely' doable...often getting a little fright that showed you where 'safely' ended and '****...won't do that again' started.

50' screen heights were just not a consideration....if you trundled off the end airborne that was about as good as it got...and at many strips not a prerequisite.

At 100s of strips we in Talair, and our peers in the other companies and the Missions, operated into between 10 and 20 times a day, 6 days a week, if you suffered an engine failure even empty you were going to crash hard...very unlikely to be a survivable event...so you might as well get the job done in as few trips as possible. It is PURE LUCK that the engine failures I had were at places where either a forced landing was possible or I could continue on one engine and land. I remember VERY FEW crashes that happened in the mountains where people survived the event...and those few that occurred just left you stunned with how lucky some people can be. One example was a very senior pilot in a C402...to quote him..."One minute I was flying along and the next I was going backwards with no wings". He died in a C185 crash just a few years ago and had been flying in PNG 30 odd years.

Most of the time it was great fun...but virtually every day you flew over wreckage where a friend had died...there were plenty of days flying around Morobe Province I flew over visable (from the air) wrecks where in one day I would be reminded of as many as 4 dead friends. Goroka Airport in the Eastern Highlands is ringed with wreckage and I knew all the pilots involved...another 4 whom, with one exception, I called friend.

And every year that total increased by another 3 on average.

I remember a mate leaving to go back to Australia, and Ansett, after a good innings flying in PNG...maybe 4 years finishing up on the Twotter...he was REALLY pumped up in the crew bus at the end of his last days flying in PNG.

"I did it...I survived!" I will remember that the rest of my life.

When I finished my 8+ years in PNG GA and joined Air Niugini I felt a very real sense of having 'got away' with something. It was just a feeling deep down inside that you could NOT do PNG GA indefinately and hope to retire old.

To the youngsters flying with my old mates...yes, possibly some seem 'past it' to you...and there were one or two like that when I was a new FO in PX...but it was my deeply held conviction that they had earned the right to be allowed to retire when they felt the time was right and treated with respect in the intervening period.

Some of the guys you're talking about taught me to fly in PNG...you could do worse than learn from them too...some I can honestly credit with the fact that I am now 45 years of age and enjoying a great career.

[Torres]

MAF C206 at a Mission strip south west of Goroka.

Many of those boozy old farts you say you would not let your family fly with in a DHC8, started their career on operations similar to the above - often in Cessna 170s, poor HF communication, no nav aids, no GPS. They leaned PNG cunning, survived and earned the priviledge of command in a PNG airline.

When you can do what they have achieved, you too will be qualified to judge their ability.

Many didn't make it. Like Chuck, I've lost count of the number of work mates who are no longer with us. The one Chuck mentioned, a pilot and LAME, died in his own C185 which he'd owned for at least 20 years. My guess he had 20,000 to 25,000 PNG flying hours. Some times luck simply runs out.

[Torres]

Ron. I caught a fleeting glimpse of your post before you deleted it!

It was a fair comment and probably should have remained.

I must say, you are probably correct. Many of those guys have operated in PNG most of their working life. PNG does not have the regulatory regime, standards or "finesse" of Australia. Also operating conditions, terrain, tropical weather patterns, air strips and a multitude of other factors we take for granted in Australia, are vastly different in PNG.

But from a perspective of safety and considering the operating conditions in PNG, I would have no hesitation in sending my family on a flight they command. Indeed, I did just that probably hundreds of times in my years in PNG.

[Sharpie]

I retired from flying after 32 years in PNG and even arriving there with some three years NZ Ag flying under my belt, never assumed that I knew it. Flying in marginal weather was(is) the norm and in the 60's, no nav aids, no gps, no nothing apart from basic animal cunning coupled with a desire to live helped, along with a very high standard of local knowledge. There were very few opportunities to have 'head in cockpit' trying to map read, so the standard of route endorsing was high and thorough.
If the old pilots wish to continue into their later years, let them. I recall one real gentleman in Billy Johns who after some 25,000 hrs in PNG from C170's, Dragon Rapides, DC3's and a multitude of other aircraft, 'retired' from the left seat to continue his chosen career in the 'right seat', both in PNG and Oz.
By the way, the oldie killed in the C185 prang, any info on the cause as one I heard was that it appeared that aileron cables may have been interfered with.
Cheers and keep on flyin a la Bob Hoover! or for that matter dear old Bobby Gibbes.