a week's past and no news yet. did a bunch of preparing and realized that it shouldn't be as hard as i thought. The big question is where to get a loan for 25k if i actually pass everything.

McDonald's is a full legal contract and gets more or less the same. I haven't seen any illegalities on Avion Heston etc contracts, you pay your taxes wherever you want. It seems that you got catch and now you don't want to recognise the !!!!!hole you got in. A220 type rating bonded getting 2k at Latvia and.. A PENSION, insane package also, I want the coke without ice please and a big mac.

I'm working for a legacy in France now.
I worked for Smartlynx and another airline with full time contract somewhere more east before that, and while the number on my payslip were slightly lower monthly, I was paid 14+ months where companies like mentioned above can drop you without notice and feel free to change conditions as they see fit. Take a read at the thread above this one.
AB may not be the best contract or anything but it gives you something somewhat solid with some sort of legal framework. But yeah if it doesn't work for you, don't go, and enjoy crew control/support screwing your flight to go to your base or whatever else they come up with now. Haven't been there for a while

France? If you mean valljet, a lot of pilots left it when changed the commuting roster to relocation.
On May 2020 most of AB pilots were fired, so it's not accurate that there is job security there or something solid.
Nowadays, they could do more to keep the experienced pilots like a roster which could give the opportunity for some time at home or better salaries. Riga is a frosty boring small city, it's hard to have your life there. Salaries for relocation contracts should offer at least higher salaries than the commuting rosters. Beside the emotional cost of being cut off from friends and family you also need to take care housing, bills, transportation etc. But they just don't care if you leave after the three years of the bond, they have the newbies from the academy and the pilots without an EU passport who are unemployable for the most of European operators
I am surprised, but I am sure that you can't blame them that their criteria are ethnicity or background. In airbaltic there are pilots from Russia, Middle East, Africa even Philippines!
EU passport is not even mandatory to join, maybe you missed something during training.

Received email around new years to expect an email for online tests within the next month. Waiting on that.
If anyone whose done the online part can share what it includes would be awesome.
I'm anticipating some sort of maths/physics/english/IQ tests.

I received it on the 4th of January. Good to know that im not alone in this. Want to exchange fb? Would be useful if one of us gets to do it first. Also tomorrow im asking my recruiter for an ETA of that test, and will post it here if i get any updates.

For me was exact the same test as pilotFL410 refers at the previous page. It has been a while, but I know that they use it for years, not sure if something changed recently

When did you do the online test?
Did you receive any feedback?
bye

pilotFL410 only speaks about the tests they do onsite, that would be the stage after the online test I'm waiting to do

I haven't been on fb for years anymore so maybe some other platform or dms here! I was starting to think I should email them too to ask about it :D

That was my online test. I was invited after that. He has it attached as pdf with the name tripod-online test.pdf. and I had exact the same. The onsite test was on his previous post to check your mental status

I asked them about the online tests and here's what they replied. Topics will be maths, physics, english and logic tests as I anticipated.
They recommended to just find similar tests on the internet to get an idea as well as recommended to check out Sky test and Cut-e (nowadays called AON).
Tests have a time limit that is not shown, multiple choice, calculator not allowed.
If you register at airlinepilotclub.com and fill your profile you will get access to a free indicative assessment by AON. I would assume the airBaltic test will be similar to that or just the tripod-online test.pdf then.
Test should be next monday and I suppose everyone invited this round will be doing it at the same time, invite coming tomorrow (wednesday) so check your spam box too. Good luck Fanax!

Found some info about the legacy job in France and I can't help my self
If it is the company I mentioned, you tell us that you left airBaltic for the company which is run by B.L.?
We are talking about the guy who used to run the E.A. and had the pilots unpaid for months before shutting it down without paying anyone
How is it possible to embrace the lawful airBaltic and leave it to join the company of that guy?? What was your reason?

How did you knew this information? Spot on! Tests are on monday 10am-3pm Ryga time. Not sure why they are so long but im very optimistic about them and filled with excitement. Let do this!

I asked them ;)

Be cool man, I guess they will hire everyone now. In the beginning of the recruitment were a lot of candidates so they could fail some of them. A lot from the guys who passed didn't like the contract and didn't sign eventually that's why they keep extending the recruitment, it supposed to finish in September. Now there are too few candidates I think you will all pass. And an inside info, the assessor in the sim is a Lithuanian guy like you

I don't think we have a sim assessment (at least there hasn't been a mention of that anywhere yet), this is for ab-initio cadets after all. According to todays email what will come next are: HR online interview, on-site personality assessment (e.g. psychologists interview) and lastly on-site management interview.

Then you should post on airbaltic academy thread
I would reject you btw

Oh missed it when I was looking for air baltic threads here, though also not inappropriate here since this is titled very generally "air baltic information" ;)

Chance of you ever being in a position to hire pilots at a company I would work for: ZERO

Yeah i saw one of their online open days, where a Lithuanian guy was giving a speech. Also, there is so much more information about our assessment then just the recent email. We ARE going to have a half hour sim to see if we can follow instructions. I already found a couple simulators near my location so i could practise it a couple of times before the assessment.

hmm they didn't mention it in the december online open day. I'm guessing it's done in the DA40 sim, do you know?

To read airBaltic topic, I guess you are looking to change your current company..I work for airBaltic but I admit is a !!!!ty contract and joined after I lost my previous job
Can imagine how is your company

I think you greatly misunderstood, or I greatly misrepresented for that matter, my career choice. By legacy I meant historical companies. I don't think many places in Europe beat my current employer in QOL and T&c
I was rather having a general saying about how, having had acmi contract and full time position SIMILAR to AB, you feel much better in the latest

I Think you're right. Im guessing DA40 is easier to manoeuvre and less used

I’m on here because I’m an aviation geek. Used to work in the EU, now overseas. Wasn’t sure at the time if I made the right choice but definitely not going back. I work 15 days a month, and make more than I spend.

Terrible experience with the assesment test. Only test i felt confident in was a psichology test. Math and physics were not too hard also. But the test where you have to think (iq determination) are given ~5min. Got wrecked the most by test with question without full information. For example there are 5 people in the group, 2 of them like cats 2 of them like dogs and 2 of them like rabbits... you get the idea. 90% that i didnt pass. I guess its time to merge to wizzair forum thread lol.

Maths was pretty easy apart from few, for physics luckily she said you can open a web page for formulas so just got the first result from google of most common physics formulas and that did save a few questions for me. Didn't anticipate needing them as I thought such would be provided if needed like in AON test they were I think. For the IQ stuff I hope they had purposefully too many questions for the time. I got through most of them and still hopeful I did enough. There was in chat that results are coming tomorrow so we'll know very soon how it went.

Improving your English could've helped. ;)

english part of the test was one of the easiest. did 60 questions in 10 mins.
also on pilot assesment.com i got 97% for english. so unless you are helping me to fix my mistakes, i dont appreciate haters

i saw your message in the email, but it didnt appear in the forum. Anyway, good luck with your test, and lets meet here tomorrow to tell the results.

That was a hint that your post was written carelessly, thus very difficult to understand.

Don't worry man, I bet you passed. There are some Hassan pilots in airBaltic, no way they did better than you in the IQ tests, after all you pay for the school
Have some cepelinai and a beer and go to bed restless

yeah, but if 400 people try, and only 12 get in, these Hassans have to be good somewhere, right?

I don't know the numbers for the pilot school.
Applicant numbers don't say much, some they don't show up for the assessment, some pass and don't sign, that stands for all companies
FYI be positive for the selection, airBaltic will need a lot of pilots soon, KLM is hiring now and probably the Dutch guys will leave
There is a super cool Dutch instructor in the flight school, hope you will catch him

12 get in for every group and there is 4 groups a year so 48 total. February group is already full and May probably mostly, still leaves September and November groups that might be largely unfilled. We could guess that there is still around 24 spots unfilled this year. There was around 20 invited for todays test. Based on this lets guess they test out maybe 20 per month. They'd need to select 20% of applicants from these tests over the year. Even more to have buffer for people failing later or not signing. Thats in theory way better odds than 12 to 400 (=3%). BT is gonna need to fill these slots somehow if they are going to receive 11 more A220s in 2 years or so. Also I got the feeling some left the test incredibly quick so either they very real smart or gave up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Did you got in?

Absolutely stoked, they just called to congratulate and agree on a time for the HR interview! Time to start prepping for that one :D

Congratulations bro! Im happy for you! Now go out there and Finnish the job!
P.S. maybe they mentioned how many ppl passed?
P.S. You have a full inbox.

Thanks! I take it you didn't get the call?
Maybe I'll ask them how many passed if I remember. And I cleared my inbox...

Sounds like that you didn't pass. They lost a motivated local guy who would probably stay for ever. When I was a candidate as direct entry pilot, they rejected a Latvian pilot in the sim assessment. He was an experienced guy, even a mistake in sim doesn't mean much and least for pilots who fly on specific SOP's and then they are asked to fly a completely different profile from what they fly as airline pilots. He would probably stay for ever.
Same in your case, I guess the difference in you and someone who passed is how many hours were spent doing math exercises.
I would suggest you to focus on wizz cadet program, they have a base in Vilnius and pay better than AB and provide quicker upgrade to command.
If you wanna to insist, you will have better chances in the near future, is expected a mass exodus of the Dutch pilots as KLM is asking for NTR First Officers, everyone who speaks dutch and have more than 500 hours will apply.