Crazy for going away, to make some decent money, have a relaxed life style, fly with captains who have the competency to actually fly the aircraft rather than sit there !!!!ting themselves any time the autopilots not engaged!

Idiots...

@turbowhat

You might want to start showing a little more respect to your colleagues and grow up a bit. The world looks very different from the left seat and one of the things that makes for a hard day is flying with someone like you who wants all the fun but takes no responsibility.

Exploiting? Yes if you volunteer to go to Greece than that's true about exploiting. Why do you not apply to OA? You like it there? I heard about there non excisting scheduling agreement and all, thats exploiting!

I am not agreeing life is good at Flybe. I am Sick and tired of another 1.5 day weekend which wasn't a Saturday and Sunday for me (keep getting rdo's denied). Also had enough of A/p disconnects with no consideration/brief either.

Are things different on the jet? I doubt it!
Let me fill out another application form....

It's getting a little bit "feline" in here at the moment.

At the end of the day - re - hand flying and autopilot - we live in a culture where FDM and fear of our jobs dictates how we do our jobs. I can understand why some people aren't overly happy doing visual approaches - especially if it's the first time that they have flown together. Equally, I think that the hand flying is a good thing to practice on a regular basis. It is good to knock out the autopilo tand actually fly... but at the end of the day, turbowhats comment goes the other way too - if he was the Captain, then it's licence on the wire, and if there was an incident on the approach that they got snagged for, then it would be both of them who come into trouble.

Granted, if I'm honest, I know of one or two people who really do not like it if the autopilot is out though. However, the work around is quite simple - you don't do it until minima and accept that you're not going to hand fly for the day. It's no problem - we've got many days of flying this junk heap around, and there will be another time.

As for FOs being exploited in Greece... every tiny bloody thing this company does borders on exploitation anyway. See:

1/ Smart pensions (Opt out, but if we don't hear from you, you're in) - and also the "We'll make the great saving, but initially, you will get none of it at all and it will line our bloody pockets instead". Now, I believe the company have agreed on 50% coming back to us. But I still believe this to be illegal, or questionable at the least.

2/ BSB - need I say more? It erases the need for a disruption payment to be paid to crew, by getting others from other bases to cover.

3/ Our pay. Well below industry rates for the aircraft we operate

4/ Their pay. Yes, it is a "us and them" situation at the moment. They get richer, we get poorer.

5/ The length of our days/crew utilisation. 11:30 duty day anyone?

6/ Our duty pay. Pathetic.

7/ Our crew food. Cheap to produce, about as healthy as what a dog eats.

8/ Greece. The FOs have gone out there for all the right reasons - experience, money etc... and fair play to them. It is hard work, and it is demanding, but equally the rewards are worth it. I would love more money though to come back to the FOs and Capts who were out there.

9/ They pray on our fear. Redundancies. Fleet reductions. FDM monitoring and disciplinary action due to small errors.

10/ Pooling the wool over our eyes. Jim French's pay review, wasn't a pay review. It was giving him a new contract. That 2% pay rise... well that included your annual increments so that makes 0.3%, we've got no plans to float... oh dear, look what happened now, there are no plans to replace the Dash...

... I could go on.

My point is that quite simply, rather than point your fingers at your colleagues and end up shouting at each other over issues that are fundamental to CRM (each others comfort zone), then really, we should be getting more pissed off with the company for the fact that they treat us like we still have dummies in our mouth.

They were...until I left anyway;)

Just curious; when was the last time that BALPA actually had the balls to call a strike and follow through with the threat?

BAplane, BA people?

that's the wrong question. BALPA wouldn't - and couldn't "call for a strike". What they can do is ballot the membership and see if THEY do. The CC are the mouthpiece of the collective members wishes.

When did it happen last? Dunno, but I think Virgin are being balloted on it at the moment. Strikes are enormously expensive for both sides, and management normally either have "right" on their side, or they don't. If they don't, and expensive IA occurs which could have been avoided, then there will be v.angry shareholders to justify it to. If a lot of reasonable people think the workers are being outrageous (eg BA cabin crew?) then the managers will generally have more support for not backing down.

I agree with Assy Drift that we all need to calm down a little and look at who the real villains are. Dash vs Jet, LHS vs RHS , Greek loanees etc does nothing but play into the hands of the real villains of the piece. We're all flybe pilots and we all want an improvement in our lot in life

We can argue we're all being exploited to various degrees. I agree some guys were hugely exploited on the Olympic contract, they got stung for wedding costs! :eek:

You've nobody to blame ;)

SmilingKnifed, well said.

Management love it when we fight among ourselves, I have no doubt they have been stirring up the Jet V Prop thing for quite a few years now and the surprising thing is that many pilots take the bait and have a dig. All these idiots are doing is helping management keep wages down.

Stop fighting among yourselves and go after the real prize......because at the moment management are helping themselves to a big slice of the cake while the rest are complaining about how comfortable their chairs are. :rolleyes:

"wedding costs"?
What are you talking about?!

Does anyone think the news about Virgin and Aer Lingus both balloting for, or threatening strike action will have any effect on the negotiations. My guess would be that it all depends on the press coverage, and the public reaction.

How much further down the negotiation line are VS and EI?

Are we far behind them? I suspect its a short process from ACAS to ballot for IA.

ACAS tomorrow and the day after isn't it?

Maybe we will see something early into next week to give an idea as to what, if anything, has been sorted out.

I think the tables have actually turned for us as the longer this is now stretched out the better. People are leaving more will follow, things are picking up around Flybe, Jets are arriving, summer is here, middle east is hovering up pilots from Easyjet, Jet2, Aer Lingus etc etc

Whose betting we will all still be flat out come winter....

Interesting that EZY management just offered a very public olive branch to their pilot workforce too (basically saying they'd taken their guys for granted). Will Mr Strong still be so quick to compare our deal to EZY's now?

Salsa, sorry mate, bit of an in joke! 3 F/Os are marrying Greek girls as a result of the Olympic contract.

Well, it will. When they're only left with a bunch of hundred hour MPL's.

Cheers SK...
I knew about one of them, but THREE?! LMAO

Boom...!
 

Thats ACAS unable to help then...