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In aviation, progression is mostly handled via seniority, which is just based on join date. You have checkups every 6 months to make sure you can fly safe, but otherwise there isn't really any performance metric for progression, with the exception of a command course that moves you from the right hand side (first officer) to the left (captain), which also usually resets your seniority. Flying, particularly international, is still relatively well compensated but certainly does not have the prestige it once did, the very expensive training is no longer sponsored and has to be paid for by the applicant, and the very generous perks (known in the industry as the Ts&Cs) have been whittled down significantly. The interesting part of this decline from a political perspective is why it's happened. Sure, some of it can be laid at the blame of corporate greed, but a lot is simply to do with the transition from a high margin low volume business to a low margin high volume business. Low cost carriers have put a huge pressure on costs and most flights will not break even unless they regularly fill 80-90% of the seats. On long haul, economy seats are there to essentially fill the plane, with the profit coming from the premium seats (where there is no pressure to cut costs to compete). It's good for passengers (and probably society) though, because when things were the best for pilots, only an extremely tiny minority could afford to travel.
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Aug 28, 2018 13:00
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glowing-fish posted:What is the management structure like as a pilot? I imagine that it is confined to basically monthly meetings, or something, maybe obligatory trainings about safety/technical issues, etcetera. But, like pilots don't have offices where there bosses stop by and remind them to use the proper fonts on their TPS reports. I imagine it might almost be like being an independent contractor. General contact with the company comes every 6 months when you go through your checkups. Otherwise you tend to just show up at the airport, fill out a bunch of paperwork and meet your crew for a briefing. When you become a training captain or chief pilot (the main representative of the pilots to the company), then you become much more heavily involved with management.
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Aug 29, 2018 00:01
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PT6A posted:Yeah, I started out as a software developer and now I'm a pilot (which is sort of a trade, I guess?) and there is way less toxic poo poo in the latter profession. I mean, it still exists, but given that all but one of the pilot examiners in our area, and most of the instructors, are badass women who take no poo poo, you will not get very loving far if you have a bunch of bullshit machismo nonsense. Super curious about this, what made you transition and at what age? My experience with pilots is that they trend conservative (whenever politics is brought up) and there is a lot of politics around carriers and training programs (and, here in Europe, so-called 'magenta line' types). I'm wondering if those who come later to the profession are somehow different; icantfindaname posted:There’s a notorious Malcom Gladwell article where he talks about a plane crash on the South Korean national carrier being caused by their seniority based command structure, which he naturally explains is a result of the Confucian hive-mind collectivism of the Korean mind It is now extremely common practice to train FOs to know when and how to challenge the captain in the cockpit. The pilot monitoring is meant to function as a check on the pilot flying, regardless of rank, and that means calling things out and making sure SOPs are adhered to.
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Sep 3, 2018 17:35
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