Sigma now say on their latest plea for candidates :{ (on flightglobal .com) that the positions for F/O on B737/A320 are ·" commuting", but don't claim that those for Capts for these types would be, only the long-haul types, as previously promised, are shown as 3wks on/1 wk off.

Are they assuming that all us LH seat bods are bitter divorced old (youngish? :rolleyes: ) men that don't want to go home ? :hmm:

Nato
 

You need to go out more often ! Get a live man what a lots of .... have you not heard of "two nations divided by a common language"

First officer
 

Anyone got any information on what to study or prepare for the Thy assessment?

This is the schedule..im going next month.

Day One

Travel to Istanbul and stay in hotel overnight

Day Two

You will be required to attend the THY HQ building. In the morning all your documents will be checked and all
necessary paperwork completed. You will then undertake either a verbal or written technical examination.
In the afternoon part of the group of candidates will attend a SIM assessment.

Day Three

The remaining group will undertake the SIM test.

Day Four

A one to one interview will be conducted. The THY panel will consist of both Flight Operations Management
personnel and HR Management personnel.
You will also be required to undertake a Psychometric and Psychomotor test as part of the assessment.

Day Five

Hotel / Flight home- successful candidates may be required to extend their stay in Istanbul to attend the local

police station to complete the residency permit.

Happy to hear from somebody who already went:)

It has possibly changed since beginning of 2009 but at that stage the important point were. . . learn how to politely enjoy a nice tea around the table whilst having a friendly chat with 6 men, only one of whom had a reasonable grasp of English.
If you are going for 737/A320 don't use the C - word (commuting:= :oh: )

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 :rolleyes:

I wonder if THY are interested in recruiting ex-El AL pilots at this time?;)

Age Limit Turkish Airlines ?
 

Will Turkish consider raising the max age if they cannot get the numbers they need , or is it something to do with historic Retirement Age / Pension ?

About 11K USD for a Longhaul captain.
Need 11000 hours and 1500 command on A340/B777

Who has info on pension?

THY
 

From a call to their HR today: NO MORE recruiting for B777 this year. Maybe t 2011.:{
So, don't bother to fill out all that paperwork through the agencies. It's gonna be a waste of time.
And yes: with the current 'commuting' police they assume all long haul bods are either single or hate be at home:ugh: 3 weeks ON one week OFF, travelling on YOUR days OFF means less than 6 days back home a month...

Day one, you arrive at the hotel. 4* hotel.
Day two....they pick you from the hotel around 9am, and there is where the "action" starts...You wait in a room with other candidates, for a couple of hours, till they call you, to check your license, your medical, and other documents. Then you wait for many hours, till you enter the simulator.
There is NO A340 sim. Therefore, they ask you to be tested in the 320.
This is a real thriller!! You start with basic :} steep turns!!!! Left-right, climb, descend.
Then, they "slew" the machine to an airport, basically LTAC or LTBA, and with CAT 1 weather, and some 25 kts xwind, they ask you to fly a raw-data ILS.
In the meanwhile, a nasty co-pilot (nasty is his job, the guy is OK), makes your life extremely difficult. (you know, he brings the aflor easily....he does not obey your orders...he flies like my grandmom...).
And all this, to captains with more than 15k hours....:ugh:
It is a good experience....Next day, if you pass this thrill, you are asked to pass an interview. Nice people, friendly.
Then you must go to a police station to sign paper work, till the afternoon, for your stay there.
The next day, you fly home......and you wait, till they contact you again.

pilot415
 

please explain further about whats happening there?how much u get per monthly and will they pay during our training?

I have heard from colleagues who are passed the thriller that during the training THY will not pay them. No body knows how long will be lasted this training. (Who guaranties that will start?)
I don't think that will be less than 20 - 30 days.

It is really a thriller going over ......
Commanders with 6 or more k of hours on type, are failing their sim....
For 777, they are using 737, and for 340, they are using 320 sims.

Nice place to live Istanbul, nice people, nice food, nice night life.
Excellent staff in the Company, and very helpful.
But the assessment sucks!
It seems, that in the reality, they don't want foreigners, in their cockpits.
Otherwise I cannot explain the 80% of failures.....
:mad:

Turkish FO contract
 

Hi guys and gals,

I got a call from Sigmar today. Non-commuting 3-year contract for FO´s (renewed every 12 months due to local labour laws). 8000 turkish liras basic salary minus local taxes (around 5%) including 70 hours block, 95 liras/hour for overtime, quarterly bonus of 3500 liras, at least 8 off days (2 day blocks), 18 days annual leave, possible upgrade according to company´s need,
ID-90´s + ZED´s, first 15 days at hotel payed by company, local transportation by company, no housing allowances. That´s the contract in a nutshell. I would appreciate if anyone actually flying for them could post details on A320 and B737 rosters, layovers and cost of living in Istambul.

Thanx and safe flights for all!

upspeed
 

thx for the info.did sigma mentioned anything about pay during training?
how much roughly is the pay for F.O A320 basic+allowance.

thank u.

Thanks for the info, I am due for an assessment this month. Is there anything I should focus on?

Well worth brushing up for the tech exam. It's 20 questions straight out of "ACE", easy if you read the book lately.
Good luck they are great people

Way to go!
 

Begin of ops 1933, 22nd hull loss in 2009: That's one loss in 3.5 years.:= Wow, this is one reliable carrier. A good way to make your family rich (if you have got appropriate life cover).:ugh: Even Merpati Nusantara did better than that.:D

What is ACE? ....besides being a hardware store :confused:

"Wow, this is one reliable carrier."

Wow, I wonder how in heaven it's possible that same "unreliable" carrier was invited to Star Alliance group by distinguished companies like Member Airlines - Star Alliance

What have they think? :confused:

Interview
 

Dear theflyinggreek I am thinking to go for the interview next month, would you please be so kind to give me some tips I will really appreciate any comments please. thank you very much! excell1

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...

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.

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. :hmm:

I have been delayed until mid August.. will let you know..

Cheers!

14 or 15 hull loses in it's history I seem to recall. Good to see they are embracing the concept of CRM, challenge and response checklists and the multi crew environment then!

Ace The Technical
Pilot Interview

by Gary Barstow

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?

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...

THY
 

Anyone who's actually flying there already? Would appreciate some feedback!

cheers...

jerry