cool thanks for that. When did you guys get your apps in?

I put an online application in about a month ago and heard very little. Chased up via email and been told to be patient as they have a lot of applications to work through.

Two guys I know, same airline and base as me at the moment have interviewed and been offered jobs but apparently they had their CVs passed in and didn't do the online application.

Doesn't look hopeful when people are getting job offers and some haven't heard anything. Has anyone who applied online heard anything yet? Yes or no?

Greywind et al,

Don't read too much into people getting offers. It's the way things are done in mon, jobs offered as they go on with the interviews (bit strange, but they are quite set in their ways).

If you meet the minimum requirements I.e. type rated/good T.P. time
then you have a good chance of getting an interview.

Best of luck.

Recent A330 Lease Transaction
 

Mesh and Rhino,

You have said the longhaul fleet is being replaced and that shorthaul will be the focus going forward. And yet Monarch signed an agreement for 2 A330s with Guggenheim Aviation partners yesterday. Will these A330s be used on short-haul sectors or will they continue to be used on longhaul? Very confusing... Are these A330s used to cover existing contracts for a limited time? Any thoughts?

See article about the A330s below:


Guggenheim Aviation Partners Leases Two Aircraft to Monarch Airlines


Press Release: Guggenheim Partners, LLC – 23 hours ago

LONDON, July 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Guggenheim Aviation Partners Limited (GAP), an affiliate of Guggenheim Partners, LLC, today announced the lease of two Airbus A330-200 aircrafts to Monarch Airlines, one of the United Kingdom's largest privately-owned airlines. The leases were concluded last quarter.

"We are extremely delighted to continue our longstanding relationship with Monarch Airlines," said Paul Newrick, GAP's President and Managing Director. "These two Rolls Royce-powered Airbus A330-200 planes are valuable additions to our growing portfolio due to their proven reliability and ever increasing customer base."

Monarch Chairman Iain Rawlinson commented: "The Airbus A330-200 is at the heart of Monarch's long-haul fleet and we are pleased to enter into these long-term leases with Guggenheim Aviation evidencing its confidence in and future commitment to Monarch Airlines."

Monarch Airlines operates a fleet of 32 aircrafts from bases in the UK throughout Europe, North America, Asia and Africa.

How long is a piece of string
 

These are our aircraft, not 2 new. Some will say it's an intention to keep LH and the truth is nobody knows yet. However, the company has stated many times their intention to become sh only. In the short term we need to keep these to maintain mod, hajj etc capability, but I believe over next few years these will disappear...

Tchaikovsky,

Are you saying if you're not type rated they're looking at TP guys and gals next?

The problem is that the company's in-house tour operator Cosmos seems incapable of competing on the longhaul stage. There is a real opportunity to carve out a significant niche in Goa and Florida but a seeming lack of vision/aspiration/balls in the senior management at Cosmos appears to be holding the company back. The tour operator is in danger of shrinking out of existence as it's only growth source is the airlines scheduled division and at some stage the question will be asked why bother with your own tour operator when there are so many better placed consolidators/OTAs out there?

Agreed TartinTon. Mate of mine flew on a Monarch A330 to Sanford a few months back. Aircraft, not surprisingly, was packed to the gills. :D

You would think that Monarch could (if it hasn't already) establish solid, perhaps year-round, business to Sanford, Cancun and Antigua/Barbados using A330s. Probably fill most of those flights - especially the Orlando/Sanford flights. And that excludes popular Goa and Phuket service that could be flown seasonally. So, one would think Monarch probably could support more than 2 A330s on the Atlantic flying once the A300-600Rs are gone - right? Are these routes not profitable for Monarch? Is the intent to eventually drop all longhaul flying? I realise the Florida/Cancun flying is lower margin, but it is pretty stable and consistent in terms of customer year round I would think.

With intense intra-European competition from Easy, Ryanair, Wizz, Vueling, Flybe (E190s), Transavia, Air Berlin, Norwegian (100 737NGs + 100 Neos) and others, I would expect the shorthaul flying to be equal in terms of low margin flying with hyper-competitive pricing (especially to the leisure destinations). Shorthaul flying in Europe could get very ugly quickly in a depressed economy. All of the flying, longhaul and shorthaul, is impacted by economic cycles. So, why give up the consistent and stable Florida/Caribbean flying? Why not stay diversified in terms of types of flying? Why put all of your eggs in the shorthaul basket with so much intra-European competition? Just curious... :confused: Obviously the answers to these questions are probably found with people at far-higher pay grades than mine.. :}:confused::cool:

Straight from the top, we have been inundated with guys and girls with to quote 'commercial jet' experience. These will form the major part of the initial interviews. Monarch have and will continue to interview some TP and Military guys to add an extra dimension. I would think the first few courses starting September would be made up of mostly of type rated guys. Further courses consisting of 'other' qualified individuals.

As far as the A330 is concerned the MD has in the past stated you need at least 6 hulls to run any efficient LH program and that's where the problem lies. Monarch have so far failed to find the remaining hulls due to a number of factors, too expensive, wrong configuration etc etc. There are a lot of routes out there that could be good for us but the simple answer is we need to decide whether to invest in the extra hulls. So far and I mean a lot longer than I have been at Monarch this decision has not been made. We have used the A330 and the A300 to pick up a lot of ad hoc work. We are currently bidding to use them on the same sort of work. In all announcements from the management they have stated we are going SH schedule. However with a caveat that we will continue to keep LH in our back pocket, who knows. All I have said and will go onto say is for those joining us. Do not join thinking we will be operating a schedule LH service. As stated earlier you will be flying SH, even if we keep the A330's for the next 6-8 years. We are about to take on upwards of 100 FO's and 40 commands. This expansion is due to us increasing our SH schedule as published. Next announcement I predict will be leasing of around 6 A320 family aircraft. These will some on line next year with the new guys and will cover the new bases. Having said that I could be completely wrong and 4 lovely 330's are making their way to us :)

That doesn't sound good for me then, as if they were looking at rated guys first, I've missed the cut! I have 3200 total with over 1200 A320 (current) and 1700 B737.

I had hoped to have heard something as flying shorthall UK is my goal, but I guess its not to be at this stage, I just don't know what I am missing CV wise!

I wouldn't say that, I think we have only booked one course in September at the moment. These courses will be going into the new year. I know for a fact that guys in interviews next week and week after aren't all type rated. As stated earlier Monarch are not as organised as others in terms of recruitment. If they are interviewing none rated guys this week it doesn't mean they have gone through all the rated. All I meant was of the guys interviewed at the moment, those that have a rating will be on the first course, as you would expect.

Good luck and hang in there

Things are moving then, slowly but surely. That is very good in these grim times.

I think I stand (not even a) little chance to be part of this because I am slightly below the 2000TT mark, no-rated and no-airliners experience (even TP) under my belt but dreaming is still free of charge! :)

I have notice that the link in the email I received is not longer working, so I assume it will be kept dormant until they have gone through the 1st batch of application. However I might have to make a change regarding my availability so is there any safe way of doing it? Replying to the workflow email isn't a good idea, me think...

Best luck to those who get the call!

I'll agree with what Mesh said...

There has been a mix of experience levels that have been interviewed and offered jobs, I'm sure that mix will continue as well. However the majority will probably end up being rated guys with a sprinkling of TP/Mil on top. What the ratios end up being is anyone's guess. As far as I know the first intake in Sept is for rated guys only, the first full type rating course for non TR people being mid to late Oct. Courses will be running one a month ish into next year.

Wasn't there a Monarch holding pool in existence previously? Is there any indication that they have plucked people out of this? Presumably they have if the guys are still about...

Thanks for the reply MESH, I hope you're right as the more I hear about working for Monarch, the more I would love a shot at gaining that career!

Hope to post some good news on here soon.

Tartin Tom and Iver,

none of what you have suggested has a cat in hells chance of coming to pass as it is uneconomic. Are you suggesting we take over Thomas Cook's business model for long haul operations......

There is a huge difference between crews sitting on the beach for a week thinking what a great and successful company they work for and that same company turning a profit out of a small longhaul operation. Sadly crew are the last people to appreciate the reality.....

Monarch if nothing else is going to be run for a profit otherwise (need a smiley for a coffin!). Those have been somewhat lacking of late and the new head shed have embarked on a course of action to change it.

Personally, I think they are on the right track....

Anyway back to the thread....those that have applied 'good luck' and be patient!

Some advice for applicants, if I may:

1) If you don't get an interview this time, but want to work for Monarch, make sure you always have an up to date CV on file, and that it's not full of typos. If it's older than a year old it is likely to be binned when we next recruit.

2) Dress smartly for the interview, i.e. suit and tie or equivalent

3) Application forms should be legible, and, again, not be full of errors. If a page says "Additional Information", don't leave it blank - this is your chance to distinguish yourself from the competition.

4) Find out about the Company and know why you want to work for us

5) Know the aircraft you fly technically - we'll be asking questions!

All basic stuff, but ignored by many candidates.

We'll be taking on a mix of pilots, some cadets, some type rated and some not type rated/ex-military as we believe this will give us a broad range of aviation and life experiences. We could easily fill all of the places with cadets, or from type rated pilots for that matter with the numbers we have applying, which is now approaching 1000.

To be honest, if you need to be told to do any of the above you perhaps shouldn't be working for Monarch...

Great post Rushed Approach,

Just keeping everything crossed, all the interview prep you've mentioned has been done, just need the interview now:sad:

Any further insight into how people are being fished out, are they postal or online applicants or both?

Are there any timeframes before everyone will found out their fate?

For those asking about time to command, the mean average is a little over 6 years historically. This winter's commands will have about 6 years' RHS and this may increase slightly over the next couple of seasons to about 7 (depending on expansion) before dropping right down again when we encounter a three year hiatus of recruitment (08 to 11) and hence gap in the list. So 5-6 years is probably a good ball park to work on for those joining now with the obvious caveat that any plan that extends more than a couple of years into the future in the airline business is one that will be subject to change! In common with most airlines, commands are awarded on length of service then merit, and the Cadet, F/O and Captain pay scales are now based on length of service rather than time in the rank.

Monarch does not in general lose any pilots to TCX, TUI or easyJet, and never has (there has been the odd one or two in unusual circumstances). The few F/Os we do lose tend to go to BA, Virgin, Emirates for those seeking the long haul "tick" and the odd one or two to a "too good to miss" biz jet outfit. Even then, some of them regret the move it would seem!

In terms of long haul, the market is difficult at present - in a recession where do those who started to get used to long haul holidays a few years back resort to when the pay packet gets squeezed? Answer - short haul back to Spain/Turkey/Egypt and the Canaries where they used to go, with a cheaper ticket with more competition on the route and a lot less APD. We will continue to watch the LH market carefully and take advantage of any opportunities that arise. Time to multi-fleet flying (A320/321 and A330) as a new F/O? Assuming we keep the two A330s we have on their current lease, 3-4 years would be a ball park figure in my opinion. Less obviously if the market picks up and the fleet expands.

To Monarch the short haul "basket" is not high risk - where we compete with the likes of easy and Ryanair, and indeed BA, on the same routes we are generally the market leader on that route. Our passengers come back to us with a very high re-booking rate and our load factors have recently hit new highs that other airlines continue to be envious of. The business has recently undergone a complete overhaul and will continue to develop and flourish as a result.

So get your application in! :ok:

This is getting to be like Odysseus and the Sirens. Put wax in your ears!

I'd say it's nice to have some relevant information for a change.:D It beats wading through the constant nit-picking battles that swamp this forum, and indeed this thread.

After the ash cloud episode Monarch nearly went bust. Couldn't afford the photocopier, turned off half the lights in the offices, the works.

Then a £75m bailout arrives and with it a new management. Obviously they need to show that they have a new plan. So it is that we arrive at today's expansion, new aircraft, withdrawal from long haul, new bases and a TV ad campaign of all things.

Problem is its all buzzcocks.

BMIBaby is withdrawing from exactly this market space despite benefiting from over 8 years of regional TV advertising. Nobody in the real world has ever ever heard of Monarch Airlines. You'd need a lot of answers on Family Fortunes before you got to 'Monarch'. The public would name defunct airlines first. Trying to steal Jet2's lunch at Leeds is just asking for a royal spanking. EasyJet's at Luton is risible.

It's all going to end in tears. A niche airline trying to go mainstream is a fraught adventure even in good times. During a massive recession it's kamikaze. That £75m will be burnt by Easter. I just hope there's several more where that came from or else a lot of people are going to end up in the dole.

Monarch is the Titanic. They said it couldn't sink.

Hit the nail on the head.

Utter rubbish

As usual, unless it's orange in colour, blackandbrown loathes it. Total drivel.

I just love this concept that airlines have shadowy departments monitoring pprune, sussing out who is posting what.

One chap in my airline posted something negative about the chief pilot, who went absolutely spare and tried to work out who it was. He never did!

Besides, B&B is a troll. After posting his thoughts on the merits of joining BA, this should have been pretty obvious.

Never seen such a load of cr?p written for a long time from Ray Webster. Where are you coming from - apart from a far flung colony!. To quote ´´nobody´s ever heard of Monarch´´. Where have you been this last 40 odd years - started before you were born my son. June load factor of 92 per cent - nobody know of Monarch Airlines then - get real.

The ash cloud had a number of airlines allegedly teetering on the brink, so they say... It's certainly been a good excuse for penny pinching at my previous employer and is still to this day! I don't think Monarch were the only airline sucker-punched by that whole debacle, especially when you see how wound up other airline executives were getting at the time...!

Monarch Airlines is also an arm off the Monarch group as a whole, the engineering side of which is a very successful business. To reposition the airline, give it a defined focus to work towards and championing that through advertising is absolutely the right thing to do during tough times, resting on its laurels and haemorrhaging more money through inefficiency is not.

Oh and that bit about no-body knowing who Monarch are... Maybe in New Zealand but in the UK? Well, thats simply not true is it...

We are just a little piece of the entire jigsaw, to really see who we are part of check out "globus family brands", the people who own this " world wide " venture also own us !! Happy reading !

Dear oh Dear.

Just when we thought a degree of decorum had arrived on this thread, then up pops Gay Webster to spoil it for everyone....Schools are breaking up soon, some have already, I expect he's a little bored for the next 6 weeks or so :ugh::ugh:

Its a pity potential colleagues of ours cannot join the private Monarch thread....where at least we dont have to read the c**p that these individuals write :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Monarch “refinanced” themselves in 2009 with 45 million pounds. This according to their management allowed them to be profitable in 2010 but in 2011 they made a loss of 45 million pounds again, which was covered with “refinancing” of 75 million pounds from the shareholders and the Swiss owner Sergio M.......

Well nearly, ‘cos we now find out that they sold their two Airbus 330s to a lessor and contracted to lease them back. Since the two aircraft in question are only 13 years old, the deal must have been worth many millions, so multimillionaire Swiss owner Sergio M didn’t have to dig into his pockets too deeply to “refinance” Monarch. Nevertheless important assets have now been sold and the company is worth that much less and is that much more vulnerable if the extraordinary expansion plans don’t work out in the present and near future adverse financial panorama.

Swiss owner Sergio M installed his son Fabio M at the helm of Monarch some time back and it would appear he has been totally incapable of stemming the haemorrhaging. Of course the real culprits have been the previous management teams and marketing departments but if you are losing 4 million every month, even if you have deep pockets or you didn’t have to earn the money in the first place, you take some actions to mitigate the problem, specially if you stand to lose the money yourself and your close family

Anyway no problem Fabio M has lots of money now and we know that the charter business was not profitable, so we abandon that side of the business. Long haul isn’t profitable either, as most of it is charter and Cosmos cannot sell long haul, so we pull out of that too. The great commercial plan for the future is to go loco/schedule, open new bases, with new and standard routes and do it very quickly before anyone realizes what we are doing, not even the customers! Never have done before but now we have the cash mountain, let’s advertise, as the general public won’t be able to resist us, as soon as they know what we have to offer! We have nothing different to offer from the rest but we ARE Monarch!

Quick expansion did you say? Ah well, yes we have 400+ pilots and yes they only fly 40 to 60 hours a month but we only have 32 hulls and cannot meet our commitments at the moment without incurring our passengers in long delays, even though we have the best engineering company in the UK. OK we open two new bases this year at BHX and EMA and try and poach customers from BMIbaby, with whom no one will want to fly, as they are closing down. We lease 4 hulls from other airlines to do the job until October and we get our foot in the door, expensive deal but we’ll pull thru’....hopefully. All this regardless of the fact that BMIbaby would have cleaned up the majority of would be customers for July, August and September, leaving the dregs to Monarch for the period 11 September to the end of October. If BMI baby routes were such a good bet, why didn’t Monarch buy or partially buy the company? BA would have jumped at any deal and save some jobs, probably better than the total shutdown anyway.

The best one is the proposed base at LBA but enough has been said on that one previously. Just one comment, which is that Monarch will be competing with JET2 on their home base with their leased aircraft against JET2’s wholly owned aircraft, which are fully refurbished+new seats. Any bets on the winner?

Well they have the support of two profitable travel companies namely AVRO and COSMOS, you may say. There was some years ago a reason for AVRO as a flight seat selling agent to the travel trade, when charter flights were the norm and we lived in a totally different travel business environment, but nowadays AVRO would appear to be superfluous in these low cost times. If AVRO make a profit it will be on heavily discounted Monarch tickets, which is 99% of their business. And if the AVRO ticket sales are heavily discounted that accounts for part of the Monarch losses. The same principle applies to Cosmos. If their fairly small IT programme is profitable it can only be ‘cos they get heavily discounted flight tickets from Monarch and thus contribute to Monarch’s losses. Ah yes, the Engineering Company, you may point out. OK profitable but on whose back? My bet is that Monarch would have much cheaper servicing if it was allowed to go to the open market instead of paying higher than average costs to their in house engineering company, so again another house company sucking dry the airline. Without doubt other airlines pay less going elsewhere and still manage better time keeping than Monarch.

If Monarch have 400+ pilots in employment at the moment and only 32 aircraft, then they are over crewed and especially so if next year they won’t have any Long Haul. With 400+ pilots Monarch have enough to fly 40 aircraft on short haul, which is eight more aircraft than they now have. Considering that by the end of summer 2014 they will be retiring 3 B757s and 4 A300s, they have time enough to see how next summer works out before taking any new pilots now. If they take on 100 new pilots for next summer, as mentioned here, what are these guys going to be flying and how many hours every month. As admitted earlier in this forum, a MON pilot says that they only fly 40 to 60 hours per month......, which seems to hold up the theory that they are presently over crewed and have enough crews even for next year’s folly.

Never mind chaps if you get a job with Monarch you can rely on strong BALPA union representation, only problem is that those first in are the last out at the first sign of any redundancies and the reverse situation for the new entrants, last in are first out, so don’t burn any boats and put wax in your ears or tie yourselves to the main mast of the ship before setting sail in the open sea.....the sirens’ call is not all it’s made out to be.....

Monarch deserves better management than they have at present and they deserve to be profitable and thrive but the business can never thrive on losses, refinancing and reckless expansion into the unknown.

If there are any responses to my comments above, it would be appreciated if they were offered with facts and figures and not a simple “rubbish” statement. Thanks. Most of the information here can be found in previous posts in various forums.

'''a MON pilot says that they only fly 40 to 60 hours per month......, which seems to hold up the theory that they are presently over crewed and have enough crews even for next year’s folly'''



40-60 hrs............if only............granted thats true for us guys on 50% though

Overcrewed, I'll tell crewing in the morning, I'll let you know what they say.............after they've picked themselves up from rolling around the floor laughing:D:D

40-60 hours a month??? News to me, I've been running at 90+ for the last 3 months and there is overtime galore available.

Maybe on the 757, but that figure is the exception.

I cannot argue with any of the facts and figures above, in fact Im sure it must have taken Djerba hours to collect them, however the nature of how Monarch works would suggest you cannot hang your hat on them either. To fully appreciate Monarchs performance, you would have to look at the group as a whole. I don't know the figures, but I'd bet they wouldn't paint as negative a picture as Djerba suggests.

DD I have said it once and I will say it again, utter rubbish. I don't have to spend hours scouring the web to try and build a picture of what's happening in Monarch, I see it every day. Your posting is wrong in many areas which tells me you obviously don't work for us thank god. I will not go into all points as I have a life, a girl, :mad: and too little time for self abuse. A few points to think about, we are not opening a base at BHX this year I think you will find we have been there for a while. But if you pull it up on one of your searches on a cold lonely night then please let us know. The best one though is your monkey maths regarding crewing levels. What was it again, 400+ pilots / 32 aircraft(WRONG 34) = how many hours per pilot. Our cc spends hundreds of hours of their time trying to work out and negotiate with ops our crewing levels on a daily basis as the goalposts are constantly changing. I will give you a hint, what about pilots who train on the ground, what about pilots who spend time out of the cockpit in Luton on cc business, safety officers, medical advisors......how about female pilots on maternity, long term sick........and so on. But oh no, you spend a few minutes on google and hey presto a bloody expert is born. Our reasons for moving into Leeds and East Mids are what again? What, we are going to try and get extra pax to fly with us, how dare us. I'm not going to slag Jet 2 off but some of their pax will try us and if we get it right they will fly with us again and the same goes for Jet 2. Neither of us can tell what will happen......hold on, sorry I forgot my place...I can't tell what will happen but it sure feels good to be part of a company that's taking a shot at the title...

A few more lonely hours needed on the Internet for these guys me thinks....

I believe it has very good management now.

All this sounds very FR like in it's bashing. Smells of an O'Leary stitch up to me!

I've worked for a couple of none aviation employers in the past that underwent expansion on a similar scale to Monarch. They just didn't have the resources to manage the expansion in enough detail and expanded into markets that were not profitable. When economic circumstances caused those markets to reduce in size they downsized, reducing staff on a grand scale.

If, I was offered the job, I'd probably take it. However I'd do it on the basis that I'd have a 50/50 chance of being fired within 2 years and wouldn't pin a mortage or anything like that around a job at Monarch. If it worked out though, it could be nice, but to start thinking about time to command and that kind of stuff is premature.

My gut feeling about Monarch is that they need to downsize and concentrate on improving margins, not expanding to increase revenue. So, good luck to those that get the jobs, but for goodness sake, go in with your eyes open, understand how risky the expansion is and have a plan B if it goes pear shaped.

sorry folks, some dodgy crew establishment figures aside, DD has it nailed. Disregard his words at your peril. Management need to wake up.

Guys, if you look at the posting history of the ones that have gone on a bit of a tirade above you'll see that they have some kind of vendetta towards the company, lord knows why...

Yes Monarch isn't perfect, find me an airline that is, but to trot out all this guff about have heads buried in the sand is unfounded.

Having retired from the airline scene in 1997 I no longer have any contacts in Monarch and no axe to grind, but I can see a worrying similarity with the failure of Air Europe in 1991. AE focussed on extending their short haul scheduled network during a recession and expanded when everyone else was cutting back. To the very end new pilots were being recruited to crew the shiny new aircraft on order. Then along came the long run up to Gulf War One, passengers stopped flying, the money ran out and the rest is history.
Anyone with a full time contract working for a successful LCC, however dissatisfied, should think very carefully about the consequences of being unemployed in these troubled times.

I hope I'm wrong and Monarch's shift to scheduled services is successful.

whereas you've just joined, and offered nothing by way of counterbalance to DD and Ray Webster's posts. Stick your fingers in your ears if you like lads, you wont change the outcome like that.