It's all about straws you carry and family time + cash to keep you motivated.

I was once presented with a contaminated water delivery at Cabo Verde, discussed with MX if at least for toilet flushing for the 6 hrs flight up north it made any sense.

Departed 30 mins later with an extra package of gloves, sanitary napkins and 15x 6x1.5 l of bottled water.

Smiles all around. Forcing the water in and having the complete poTable system desinfected would trigger a 24 AOG for spares and manpower thus a need to fly in a reserve plane into the base to avoid the penalties. Amount of those for approx 3x extra EU flights would kill the whole season's earnings. Job done, (different operator).

Brothers here suggesting SMLX makes you work inside the haystack. So buyer beware.

I am just surprised that authorities don't take action.
We don't have any kind of legal contract, and the company doesn't pay Taxes/Social Security anywhere even though we have asked them to do it. How come? This is completely illegal.
I honestly didn't know that the A320 didn't have enough FO? A330 is even worst. We are always flying 2 captains because no FO's joined us. On top of that our brilliant management decided to upgrade 4 FO, among the few we have, to send a message out there that YES WE DO UPGRADE PEOPLE, hoping that like this note FO will join us. Again, are you serious? Why don't they upgrade terms and conditions and then people will come?
We are flying with instructors, form a certain nationality that barely speak any English.
We have currently only 1 A330 flying. It's flying from FRA to JFK. It's so embarrassing to fly to the USA and ATC treats you like a baby because they know we can't speak or barely understand any English.
In 2 weeks most of us on the A330 will be grounded as apparently there are no flights for people that are not trainers. I am warning other pilots, please don't join Smartlynx, it's not what it looks.

To be fair nobody that has been in aviation more than 5 minutes has ever thought Smartlynx was a decent company.
Together with the various GetJet, Avion Express and sister companies they have always been considered the absolute worst company that one could work for.
Barely good to keep one’s license current.

That's exactly my point.
In the beginning when we joined, we were even asked to fly as Cargo attendants but with the salary of a pilot. Those were very tuff days. Then we saw the company willing to improve the contracts but it has reached a stage that we see its all lies.
I don't know about the training on the 320, on the A330 it's ridiculous but I imagine it's the same thing because the A330 training Manager is in fact an A320 Captain with 0 hours of experience on the A330. How is this possible?
Let's wait for the next episodes of the new season. New trainers for the October fest!!!

A330 flights? Only for some pilots
 

Yes, it's true, it's happening now.
Just heard that the Chief pilot is flying AGAIN instead of working at the office.
We only have one A330 flying, but around 60 rated and current A330 Captains.
So why are the flights always done by the same pilots?
CP, his buddies or by the Italian mafia?
So why did they hire us?
To be all on stand by?

Truly yours,
Dumblynx

If it’s that bad, who forced you to join that operator? 😉 seems like a very deep Napoleon syndrome isn’t it?

Really?
 

If it’s that bad, who forced you to join that operator? 😉 seems like a very deep Napoleon syndrome isn’t it?[/QUOTE]

I am sorry, but I don't understand what's your problem. You have no idea what's to work like over here. We all know that this is a temporary job while we wait for something better. And everything is better than working for Smartlynx.
I could give you so many details about SMARTLYNX but I would just get some of my fellow pilots in trouble.
And let's not even talk about tax evasion by Smartlynx in Germany and other European countries as well. But God bless those little souls that have already alerted German authorities. Because please, don't forget, SMARTLYNX is flying for Condor a German company, and SMARTLYNX employees don't pay taxes anywhere while Germans do.
Isn't this cool?
Do you want for example a recent operational mess? I can give you an example. The only A330 airplane we have now flying is still AOG in JFK. 2 days later they have decide to send a replacement airplane. And who is flying it? As usual, it's the A330 CP best friend. How difficult was is it to guess?
Yes the one that doesn't stay in Frankfurt and barely speaks English. The one that's always at home and doesn't even bother to come to the hotel for his standby dutys , He is currently flying 4 times a month. And us? if we are lucky, we will get 1 flight every 21 days and some will get 1 flight every 2 months. It all depends on nationalities.
This is what it's like to work over here.
We are all on the way out.
Slowly but we are.

Truly yours,
Dumblynx

This company is forcing unpaid leave for one week on rosters just so they can squeeze 90 hours flying and pay you for only 23 days of the month. The result is fatigue and sickness and then hopeless crew control kids running around looking for guys who will sell their soul to cover a very broken scheduling system. They are calling people during their sleep reat and removing days off once day off has started! I have never seen such a mess in 20 years of flying.

Since the aviation back to normal, there is no excuse for pilots who will join this company in coming months. So read whole topic and make your conclusion.

Beside offering illegal employment contracts and conditions for few decades until few years ago nobody was complaining because pay was acceptable. Of course many pilots were and will be hiding their income from their tax authorities in order to avoid income tax and social security contributions. Company have no responsibility on that because it consider you as well as also contract states that you are service provider, however for most of the EU countries, pilot job cannot be done as service provider or self employed. Pilots cannot work for more than 1 airlines at a time. Time will come authorities will tackle such companies just not yet because even legacy carries start to enjoy cheap labor force of ACMI companies. However, one should keep in mind that such companies killing competition and create unfair labor market conditions. Also airlines who are hiring Smartlynx responsible for due diligence how company treating their employees, any illegal practices and etc. It is well known that Smartlynx was rejected to be partner with one of the well known airlines due the its employment conditions.

Specific for company, it is hard to say this is an airline but more like farm of someone. I dont have to mention how terrible they are on the office side, specifically operation department and other supporting departments. Of courses management is successful because they are making good profit however bear in mind they have this profit due to each pilot cost them %50 less on market average. Of course everybody fighting for flights, pilots prefer not to go home for months in order to make money. If you know someone in the office, in management, in key positions certainly you will get the best bases most flight hours and most likely you will skip going to Nigeria. Unpaid days in the middle of season is another fact, company has contractual right to assign 15 days unpaid leave during high summer season. Soon company will go to winter sleep, more than %70 of the fleet will not be operating until late April 2023 and first time in history they have that many pilots, real problem will start then.

Strike?
 

I can see that the game that they play on the A320 is similar to the A330 but with lower salaries.
What I don't understand is the reason why.
You guys have already lower terms and conditions then pilots on the A33.
And you work a lot more than we do. The salary on the A320 is at least 2/3 lower than on the A330, if not lower than my calculations.
So what is the solution? Should we join forces and go on a general strike? Call some press? Ask for labor inspections? Civil Aviation inspections? Should we talk about our ilegal ops and our dangerous flying?

Should a strike work?
The bad publicity would hit them in a such a way that they could turn things around for the better?

Maybe even end the illegal Unpaid Leave that we see every month ?
Get us a legal European contract?
Get us some kind of health insurance? Should we join forces in all fleets and proceed this way, or just talk to management and see if they can do better for all of us before it's too late? I'm on my way out, I have my foot iin another job like all of us, but I wouldn't mind to stay if things get better.

On the A330 we are daily losing pilots and the CP has just announced new routes. Who will fly them for now? His friends?

A strike would be my suggestion, let me hear your thoughts in other fleets.

Truly yours,
Dumblynx

The reason is simple. Most pilots do not view this as a career airline (how can you when you do not have a decent contract that pays all year round?). Even the cadets start to plot a way out after 200 hours flying experience. Most pilots are not complaining anymore because they are past it. They don't write letters of complaint to the chief pilot or management. No one is writing any company reports any more because they know they will be ignored.. So management thinks situation is A-OK. No reason to change anything. The worst one is pilots (Especially Bulgarians, Serbs, Greeks and Italians) who don't write anything in the tech log. We have so many broken airplanes with questionable maintenance but the captains refuse to write things for fear of being seeing as trouble makers. What I noticed here is people accept this **** for what it is because they have other jobs lined up for next year. Or they think they do.

Mistake

The catastrophic airline keeps on going, but just for some.
Only 1 A330 is flying and always with the same set of crews. It's either the CP and his friend, or the Belgium that thinks he is the DCP but its not.
The salaries are still low, they will not increase, and unfortunately no sight of the famous German Tax authority which was our last hope to get better and legal conditions.
So if you take the two mentioned above pilots, only 22 flights left available in a 30 days month for 78 captains and First Officers. That means almost no flights for anyone.
I am still warning everyone, please don't join us. On top of that mess, at least 12-16 pilots are leaving in the next 60 days. Winter ops are coming and with our amazing bad flying standard the chances are that the operation becomes messier than already is.
The last pilot leaving shuts the lights.

737 Fleet no better except lots of flying.

Crew Travel making life harder than it needs to be always.

Shambolic.

So you guys should start thinking of joining us. If we join forces and make a strike we have better changes to improve our salaries and change our ilegal contracts to legal.

If it's illegal then just bring it to court...

Isnt Smartlynx owned by Avia Solutions Group , is Bluebird (Nordic) Cargo the same mess?

Below is SmartLynx Contract Conditions for Roster.
Note: You will fly for a company where they can at will modify a PUBLISHED roster the day before so you start to fly 8 hours earlier or finish 8 hours later.
So if you have any appointments, child care duties or a hot date, you will have to cancel. This is a SLAVE contract.
Like other similar carriers, if you are SICK, you should still fly because you won't get paid otherwise - EASA the best!
Company is assigning 7-10 days UPL a month, then forcing you to fly 90 hours in 3 weeks.
Over 150 pilots (mainly FOs) resigned since August.
They are going to be recruiting for WINTER operations for the first time.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....3173a4a357.jpg

I'd like to wish you all the best with those conditions , its up to the people flying the aircraft to do something about it , no use in coming on here whinging about it . The only thing they will understand are aircraft on the grounfd

The perfect time to put the aircraft on the ground would be about now, before the new terms and conditions come out.
We are losing good pilots, left and right seat.
Definitely we don't have enough to operate through the winter.
Good for training though.