Jetairfly

[aerocomp]

Has somebody been working for them on the summer contract that can tell a bit more about it?

• Salary after tax
• Housing
• Scheduling(commutable?)
• Is it just a summer contract or any chance that it can be full time?

[GusHoneybun]

• Salary After Tax.

If you are looking at the ContractAir contract, then the basic take home after tax works out at about £5000. There are per diems that are paid direct from JetAirFly. Tend to be around the £500 a month. You are PAYE in the UK with Contractair. There is a local tax of about 9%, but that is paid by JAF.

• Housing

You will offered a service apartment in the Verac Flats. These are about a 10 minute walk from the crew room. They are 'ok' and in the summer are full of crew or engineers from a number of airlines. Personally, I hated the place as it felt like a prison after a while. I would take the allowance they offer instead and find my own apartment for the summer. JAF will give you €1000 a month in lieu of the Verac flats. This can get you something very nice. Especially if you want to live away from Brussels. Mechelen and Leuven would be my choice.

• Schedule

Commuting. No forget it. You will work a full roster through the summer. Typical shifts of 6/3 or 5/2. Finish on a late and start on an early. You have the option of taking your holiday allowance at the end of a 3 day off to make it 4, but this generally only happens about once a month. It is the biggest downside to this contract is that you can't get home easily. If you have a family, consider taking the housing allowance and finding a nice place to live.
The standby system is very 'unique'. You are basically on standby from 6am till 10pm. Early shifts start at 4am, Late shifts can finish past 2am. Its not unknown that you will have a late shift, followed by and day off, then onto an early. How they expect you to get proper sleep is anyones guess.
It's hard graft for the summer, expect 100 hours every 28 days.

• Is it just a summer contract or any chance that it can be full time?

Depends on one very important question. What fleet are you applying for. They are desperately short of E190 drivers and everyone on this fleet was asked to stay on for the winter and next season. The B737 fleet has a much larger pool of pilots, so don't expect to continue during the winter on this fleet.


Good luck, it's actually a nice contract. The crews are all fantastic and the crew food is awesome (if lacking in variety).

[aerocomp]

Thanks for a great and detailed answer, it will be on the Embraer contract. But I guess it is the same deal as for the B737 then?

[captplaystation]

Ah, the famous "Blanc day" so beloved of Belgian airlines from times immemorial

2dmoon . . . . . . . probably not, but nobody seems to have ever stood up to them, equally, if they called & didn't get you, I don't think they ever made too much of a fuss . . . wonder why

This is the stuff of Belgian legends, along with raw data departures/arrivals in busy TMA's .

Vive le Belge, I do actually miss my time there (Belgium ) in spite of the constant p1ss1ng rain.

[Smokie]

Tell me more about the Blanc Day.....

[EMB-145LR]

Does anyone know if Contractair have been renewing the FO contracts beyond the initial summer period too?

[GusHoneybun]

For the Embraer fleet, yes. There was only one contract FO, and they have been extended until the end of the summer 2015. With the extra aircraft coming in April, they need as many E190 people as they can get.

Not sure If there are any contract FO's on the 73. They tend to get pilots straight out of KLS school in Holland. They already come type rated and, more importantly, they are very cheap.

[captplaystation]

The "Blanc" (white ) day (or Blank as us anglophiles referred to it, as in how it appeared on the roster ) was an "unspoken" Standby. I never (in Virgin Express 1996-2000) found any reference to the exact "obligations" expected, I.E. when it started /finished, or how long you had available to show up for work, it was like an unwritten agreement that on these days if they called you showed.
I imagine it was in excess of the max duty hrs & for that reason was left deliberately "vague". I don't recall anyone ever falling foul of it by not responding, I imagine as a Contractor the consequences "may" have been survivable, for sure as a full time employee they would not have ben appreciated.

[aerocomp]

I got this info from Contractair regarding the salary:
EUR 1,683 per month inclusive and NET of ALL Class One UK National Insurance Contributions. And EUROS 2,200 Fixed allowance

But will it with all the extras it sums up to around £5000?

[Dutchformula]

Everything GusHoneyBun said is true.

Small differences for contract FO's:

I guess at the end of the month what you have on your bank account is around +/- €4400,-.

There's no housing or housing allowance. It's hard to rent something for 7/8 months so start early.

Scheduling is the same.

Summer or full-time.
Just summer, small chance of extension i guess around 5% based on the previous 3-4 years. Only Belgian nationals get full-time contracts.

Blanc is a lovely system.
Basically your schedule is 6-7 days on, 3 days off.
There's no logic so one day youre doing an early flight, the next day youre doing a night flight.

Blanc is a standby day from 0600 to 2200 but you have 2 hours if they call you. Problem is, they can call you at 0601 or they can call you at 2159 and you can still do a tenerife up and down.
Usually theyre used in the middle of your schedule when you go back from night flight to early morning flight. You hardly ever get called so not much worries.

all things considered,
It's a great airline to fly for as an FO. Usually its just up and down, with a few nightstops each month.