Turkish Airlines Seeking Captains.
Join Date: May 2010
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The assessment, payment and the roster
A friend I know that are a captain there says: Don't worry about the assessment - there are a few questions mostly instruments and aerodynamics, an interview with a panel of five to six people a mix of pilots and HR. The panel will ask a few questions, but as their English is terrible the hard part is understanding the question! The thing people fail is the sim. It is with fire's and failures and memory items non stop. If you can fly within 300 feet or not does not matter as long as you don't crash.
The payments are good, but they are still going by their own rules! This means they still have not paid some of the pilots the full salary mentioned in the contract.
The training (if one can call it that) is terrible. NO plan - NO instruction being done only fire and especially stuck flight controls. After every sim "do you have any questions? That is the debriefing!
At the moment there is not a system in the roster. You can enter a bid and you will most likely get your request for days off. The rostering is terrible and they call you every day to change your program.
After your 50 hours of line trg you fly 100 hours with other captains and during these 100 hours you will see things...
The payments are good, but they are still going by their own rules! This means they still have not paid some of the pilots the full salary mentioned in the contract.
The training (if one can call it that) is terrible. NO plan - NO instruction being done only fire and especially stuck flight controls. After every sim "do you have any questions? That is the debriefing!
At the moment there is not a system in the roster. You can enter a bid and you will most likely get your request for days off. The rostering is terrible and they call you every day to change your program.
After your 50 hours of line trg you fly 100 hours with other captains and during these 100 hours you will see things...
On the subject of cost of living:
Buying daily necessities is cheap, as is going out for a meal if you keep off the booze. Going out for a night in town, especially the posh clubs on the Bosphorus, is very expensive - around 30-50 Euro for a drink.
Cars are very expensive in Turkey, unless you buy something produced locally - Ford, Renault and Toyota all have factories churning out boring little 3-boxes in large numbers. Don't expect being able to afford a Range Rooney; those things will set you back 200K USD easily (yes, really expensive stuff like cars is often priced in Dollars). Fuel is around 3.5 Lira/litre.
As for housing, well, what are you looking for is the key word as is, of course, location. You will probably, for security reasons, wish to live in a gated compound of some sort. There are several on the European side, some 20-40 KM from downtonwn and the airport. If you're looking for a comfortable 3 bedroom house, expect in the vicinity of 2-3000 USD a month, unfurnished but incl. water, gas, electricity etc. Add a pool and you're looking at around 3-4000.
An apartment, with security, of around 100 sqm with 2 bedrooms in a nice area is around 1000-2000 USD, mainly depending on age of residence and location.
Living on the Asia side can be quite a bit cheaper, up to 50%, but then you'll have to negotiate the traffic across the bridges, or que for an hour-ish to catch a ferry. Say you live 5-10 km on the Asia side, you'll easily be looking at a 2-3 hour commute each way to the airport. Traffic is quite horrendous in Istanbul, and not made any better by the locals' disregard for traffic rules and rather poor, if not near non-existent, driving skills. Getting to the airport from the near-outskirts on the European side can also be quite a hassle, especially in rush hour, but it's not as bad as coming from the Asian side. Public transport is, more or less, a joke. Yes, there are plenty of busses around, but you wouldn't want to set foot in one of those. There's a tram system, but it doesn't connect the airport and basically only serves the downtown area.
If you fancy living on the Bosphorus, better have a significant other pulling 3 times the quoted Captains salary.
Buying daily necessities is cheap, as is going out for a meal if you keep off the booze. Going out for a night in town, especially the posh clubs on the Bosphorus, is very expensive - around 30-50 Euro for a drink.
Cars are very expensive in Turkey, unless you buy something produced locally - Ford, Renault and Toyota all have factories churning out boring little 3-boxes in large numbers. Don't expect being able to afford a Range Rooney; those things will set you back 200K USD easily (yes, really expensive stuff like cars is often priced in Dollars). Fuel is around 3.5 Lira/litre.
As for housing, well, what are you looking for is the key word as is, of course, location. You will probably, for security reasons, wish to live in a gated compound of some sort. There are several on the European side, some 20-40 KM from downtonwn and the airport. If you're looking for a comfortable 3 bedroom house, expect in the vicinity of 2-3000 USD a month, unfurnished but incl. water, gas, electricity etc. Add a pool and you're looking at around 3-4000.
An apartment, with security, of around 100 sqm with 2 bedrooms in a nice area is around 1000-2000 USD, mainly depending on age of residence and location.
Living on the Asia side can be quite a bit cheaper, up to 50%, but then you'll have to negotiate the traffic across the bridges, or que for an hour-ish to catch a ferry. Say you live 5-10 km on the Asia side, you'll easily be looking at a 2-3 hour commute each way to the airport. Traffic is quite horrendous in Istanbul, and not made any better by the locals' disregard for traffic rules and rather poor, if not near non-existent, driving skills. Getting to the airport from the near-outskirts on the European side can also be quite a hassle, especially in rush hour, but it's not as bad as coming from the Asian side. Public transport is, more or less, a joke. Yes, there are plenty of busses around, but you wouldn't want to set foot in one of those. There's a tram system, but it doesn't connect the airport and basically only serves the downtown area.
If you fancy living on the Bosphorus, better have a significant other pulling 3 times the quoted Captains salary.
Join Date: Apr 2002
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Perhaps 1 and a half years on , the previous two posts give the real reasons why they are STILL desparately advertising, via numerous agencies, for candidates, rather than the scale and speed of their expansion, as they would rather you believe. 
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Forget all that crummy crm/methodic completion of checklists stuff that stood you in good stead in all those sim checks you have done thus far. . instead just operate single crew whilst completing both recall and non-recall items by recall, horse the aircraft around the sky in a cowboy approach and throw it on the ground without involving your colleague in any way. They gave me the impression this was what they liked, they may have used the intervening 18mths to become a bit more MCC/Boeing, but then again maybe not. Great laugh
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Commuting THY
are there any crew on A340 who commute to Australia? Is it possible to do 6 on and 2 off as a 24 hr commute each month will eat into the days off at home. Also are they helpful or accommodating when it comes to the roster and getting you home?
Join Date: Apr 2004
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yes i can confirm:
very unfair, unprofessional and lousy assessment at THY:
- this is not an airline, this is the turkish airforce mafia; a foreign captain gets called for the sim at a specific time but has to wait over 4 hours because they first screen the ex airforce copilots. ( kissing one another upon meeting... )
- turkish FOs ( also with other airlines ) write all PF ( pilot flying time ) as PIC time in their logbooks. And claim this is in accordance with management and the turkish DGCA...
then they upgrade, fly like 200 hours and off they go and pass screenings at THY as direct entry captains.. and out of a sudden they have over 2000 PIC hours...
- one Turkish company with just 20 B737... had over 10 tailstrikes last year...and many more incidents..
and when the ICAO language proficiency test would be done correctly, over 50% of turkish pilots would fly domestic only...
anyway, all the best for anyone out there who likes to join a turkish carrier...
very unfair, unprofessional and lousy assessment at THY:
- this is not an airline, this is the turkish airforce mafia; a foreign captain gets called for the sim at a specific time but has to wait over 4 hours because they first screen the ex airforce copilots. ( kissing one another upon meeting... )
- turkish FOs ( also with other airlines ) write all PF ( pilot flying time ) as PIC time in their logbooks. And claim this is in accordance with management and the turkish DGCA...
then they upgrade, fly like 200 hours and off they go and pass screenings at THY as direct entry captains.. and out of a sudden they have over 2000 PIC hours...
- one Turkish company with just 20 B737... had over 10 tailstrikes last year...and many more incidents..
and when the ICAO language proficiency test would be done correctly, over 50% of turkish pilots would fly domestic only...
anyway, all the best for anyone out there who likes to join a turkish carrier...
