00seven,
The only thing difficult about Long haul is the extreme boredom. Although 11 hrs flying with you must be rivetting. :hmm:

White none please


5 years widebody airbus & 3 years 747........you almost made it as a 'real' airline Pilot but for the huge step down to FR. You should have considered easyjet instead and saved all dignity......you like going backwards it seems. Another FR puppet bites the dust, i'm sorry to say.

00seven
 

Never been happier thanks, living in Spain and better quality of life than I've had with the other outfits. Couldnt give a toss what it is I am flying or to where. Are you in all honesty trying to tell me you believe that LH Pilots are in general ,(cringe) better , superior or any other term you care to use, than their SH, MH, colleagues?
you are sounding to me like one of those sad individuals who's position as an "airline pilot" means everything to them, and within the first 5 mins of meeting people you make sure they know what you do. Its just a job mate, there are far more inportant things in life like family etc. Come on down from your pedestal, its not so bad down here, down with the normal pilots.

ps: your wife must love it when you get one of those really long trips.:ok:

White none please.....so does the milkman!:O

right way up
 

Ha Ha!........:D

PILOT SHORTAGE! I Know at least 30 people with frozen ATPL first time pass on IR and CPL. No response from airlines and no JOBS. Airlines do not want to pay for type rating and flying schools are making a fortune. My class at OAT had over 30 students! :ugh:

Mate...out of my class in the mid 90's in Canada only 3 of us got jobs (out of 30+). Nothing has really changed. Go out and find a 206 job, then get a Navajo gig.ect...it will take a few years but its the only sure way of getting it done.

As someone who does LH, MH and SH I find this idiotic comparison of skills idiotic. I came up through the mill, and find the skills I gained there help me to perform in all environments. I would not want to be 20 years into my career with no tangible back up, which I believe can only be gained by doing your time.

There are certain skills required by each discipline, but a thorough experience base can only help when you have spent too much time drinking coffee and staring at a black windscreen on a LH flight.

I'm another who has left LH for SH. SH is a far better lifestyle IMHO. LH was getting harder to cope with as I got older, it was literally killing me. On SH, I feel five years younger.

to me, long haul was boston to orlando...and it felt like an eternity.

takeoffs are fun, landings are more fun. climb is ok, a well planned descent is nice.

trim up for straight and level and engage autopilot...the agony begins.

to me, the ideal routes were:

Boston to New York, to Washington DC.

San Francisco to Los Angeles.

and the biggest treat is: staying in the same time zone and home every night.

Bomarc:
Being aware of how many days it takes for my wife and I to recover from a vacation which is only six/seven time zones away (only narrowbody flying with my job), and what guys need who return from days in the Pacific (or India via Europe) you will probably live much longer and better than many pilots who stay many years on widebodies.

I would rather fly many years (and already have) on a two-pilot jet with no automation than fly a 7-12 hour leg for more money. Quite often our enroute times are only 45-60 minutes, whether near unpredictably bad weather or not. Many flights are much shorter. By the way, our 747 FEs have always earned much more than our hardest-working/lowest-paid narrowbody FOs who often fly 5-7 intense legs per duty period in old jets. A number have left the company by choice, or not returned, also by choice.

How can the extra money (sometimes not much more-if at all-flying a typical old DC-8 or DC-10/747...) make up for what peoples' bodies must deal with :zzz:?

It's interesting that 00seven goes on with lots of talk about 'prestige', 'dignity', 'image' and 'status' and has said nothing about pure exhilaration or enjoyment. He talks a lot about being a 'manager' and nothing about being a pilot. This from a man who only a few months ago was making enquiries about being a cargo pilot and asking about SIAL and KAL. I'd love to be on the same CRM renewal course as him one day - it would make things interesting!

However, to get back to the thread...... I do believe that the pilot shortage is affecting flight safety. It's quite noticeable that the quality of FOs and SFOs has declined in the last few years as companies are forced to employ pilots to make up the numbers, rather than employing the pilots they really want. There are undoubtedly as many young, inexperienced but excellent pilots out there as there always were. Sadly, with the increase in the number of pilots, there are also a lot more young, inexperienced but poor quality pilots out there who have entered the industry with the wrong motivation (things like prestige and money) rather than love of flying. In first world countries people are now richer than 30 years ago and more people can afford to train as pilots than used to be the case. Naturally, this means that along with more good pilots, there will be more bad pilots. Safety is going to be affected when two of the latter are flying together somewhere further down the road.

...There are the ones who choose this job because they want to fly and then the ones who choose this job because they want to be a pilot.....

If there was a pilot shortage, then no one would have to wait to get a job, I came out of an integrated course with BFSAA with 85% score on ATPL exams and 253 hours, came back to UK and waited about 7 months before I got my first job as a 2/O.

If there really is a shortage, then jobs would come looking for you in your FTOs, not the other way round.

My Two Cents Worth!!
 

Hi Gents: I flew short Haul (A320's)for 5 years and loved it...I now Fly Long Haul (B744) and love it as well..as a matter of fact if I had a choice I would stay on the -400 even though the actual flying is much more fun on short haul A/C ...However having spoken to lots of other colleagues I think that one thing is clear...Long Haul is definitely not for everyone...If you have a hard time sleeping on bunks, adjusting to different Time zones or If your think your family will not adjust to you being both away and at home for long chunks of time etc...Then don't even consider flying anything bigger than 737 etc...Also consider that this ability to adjust to Long Haul also depends on other factors such as your age or that of your children, fitness, frame of mind and off course the rostering system of your company (mine is very good :E)to name a few... I find it funny to fly with people who are in Long haul just for the money and yet hate the job and struggle at it..Just to have more money..Then again why would you want to have more money if after all you will probably have a shorter life span to enjoy that hard earned money flying longer hours:ugh:!!!!!

Let us not confuse pilot licence from an FTO with civil engineer degree from MIT or Mba degree from Harvard business school!

The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) Business section from this morning has an article about how Beijing is worried about the rapid growth in airlines in China and that they plan to limit expansion of the market until the infrastructure improves. One of the drivers of this new policy is the shortage of pilots.

Ex-Pat India
 

Read "the World is Flat" by Thomas Freidman. The jobs will be in India and China for some years to come for airline pilots.

Let me guess though....You're too busy sitting atop your high horse to read all the jobs offers in your mailbox?

I wish my mailbox was full of job offers, but i'm just a fake pilot wannabe cessna driver, oh well :{

But i was spending my time on the internet using an online question bank!!
Does that not constitute gaining experience?

Back to the drawing board for me!