Read again as that's not what I said. More hours of work for less pay sums it up. I would be very unhappy to purchase a ticket on a national carrier to subsequently discover an ACMI arrangement had me flying with cheap crew at the pointy end..

Guess you could say twice as efficient which in the airline shareholders ears means twice as well ......

cvg2iln

Are you suggesting the crew of Smartlynx or Avion Express are inferior in their capabilities?

Shady assessment practices, P2F (ab)use, training virtually non existant and shameful T&C do seem to point in that direction, yes.

Only desperate applicants would consider such an employer.

Not the same can be said for Thomas Cook.

I would be hesitant to put my family on a plane, knowing they operate the flight, I have no shame to admit it.

I can't comment on avion express, I can on smartlynx though.

P2F doesn't exist in the airline. T&C? I have definitely seen and know of worse and pilots aren't on the breadline. Assessment? It's a standard assessment from what I saw, not everyone was accepted who attended and they took lower than the number they set out to take.

There is a good atmosphere around the airline and crews are upbeat. Trying to defame the airline wouldn't be appreciated ...

(The nasty 3's) T&Cs are better by a good margin compared to Eurowings / Vueling for captains, more or less the same as Easy / FR for FOs in the first three years. Smartlynx crew are staying at the same hotel where BALPA holds a venue today.

Know your enemy, it may not be the crews, or the even not the other provider at all. Like the P2F chaps: most of them did not take that road due to being incompetent, rather because in 2 year term it is about 50k GBP cheaper than the "honorable and all-legal" ab-initio+TR cadet schemes.

In my home airline case it was our inapt political management, and onslaught of aviod-social-security competition, we lost. Superpilot above comes across as a voice of reason.

SmartLynx recently had the flight deck door wide open in the cruise, great stuff.

I joined a UK airline at the same time as a chap from Smart Lynx, unfortualtly for him he did not get through the Sim transition phase and he was already rated. I was there and I can say although he was not treated particulaly well his performance was well below the level expected at most professional airlines. After being released by said Airline he returned immediately to Smart Lynx, its fair to say they did not have the same standards, take from that what you will.

From the erstwhile and much esteemed Officer Kite on the 17th. I could not possibly imply such a warped and maligned perspective. But strap oneself, cherished wife (or partner of choice) and the tribe of wee kiddies in the back and let an errant engine have its wicked way at VI. Who do you want in the left seat? A Thomas Cook regular or a Euro-type substitute? ACMI is a minefield. It does however cause one to ponder.

Is there a correlation between ACMI crews being less safe than a 'regular' crew? Have there been any studies to suggest so? Are they held to a lower standard in obtaining and further maintaining their AOC obligations?

Or is it that you think someone not from England can possibly be as good?

This is interesting ...

Just ran a quick search on avherald for excursion, nothing for anything on the specified types of operators, granted it is global, it still covers most of what goes on in Europe. I do however see plenty of air canada and delta mentioned ...

By your statement one would expect to see a full list of cowboy excursions and incidences compared to others. The facts suggest otherwise.

Officer Kite is desperately trying to validate his decision to join a cadet scheme feeding an ACMI "airline", having failed selection for at least one proper airline scheme. I'd strongly suggest you wind your neck in and let the grown ups talk until you have a bit of experience in the industry.

This seems like a good enough thread to pose the question... Why is there not much talk of the impending strike action from TCX pilots?

Strike action!
I thought TCX was a great place for pilots.
Why on Earth would they feel the need to strike?

In a nutshell we were offered a 1.5% increase which is substantially below the paycut taken 5 years ago. That was in the region of 10% which the company said it would reinstate when profitable.

All this against a backdrop of management bonuses. Usual story.

Worth noting that there is currently no planned strike action at TCX.

There is an ongoing dispute with the company over t&c's in the hope that TCX will remain a good place to work.

Lol, isn't that about standard after a 11/12 hour duty?

I know a fella who was dropped by TCX in the line training stage after being a CTC cadet, and now is in one of those ACMIs...

Maybe when you start flying Officer Kite you will know what kind of characters end up in such an airline......

It is no ones first choice to go to fly for any ACMI when you have no idea what your doing or where your going month to month, sometimes day to day and usually people do it as a matter of desperation when they have no other options and don't be fooled other wise.

The standards to pass their selection and their training departments, compared to the rest is not even on the same level.

Obviously before pre merger into TCX, but wasn't this person still kept on the company because he was related to the CEO and subsequently moved onto the A330

Report: My Travel A320 at Kos on Jul 5th 2007, very hard landing

That'll be a no.