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Old 01-30-2012 | 07:26 AM
  #37  
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The Dominican
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From: 747 captain
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How many pilots does AJX have? (With so few a/c how much attrition is alot?)

We are shy of 200 pilots now, I don't know what you mean with "so few a/c" we don't have any airplanes, we are assigned a/c's from the mainline fleet.
Our pilot group is composed by guys from Australia and New Zealand, (our largest group) the US (now the second largest) the EU (many different countries from the EU and lumped together they are the third largest group) Latin America, a handful of guys from the former eastern block and a couple of Japanese contract pilots. The largest attrition by far is from guys from the US, they are taking recalls and going to the few places that are hiring, all at the expense of a big paycut but not surprising really. The rest of the pilots demographics have very litte attrition due to the fact that the jobs market in their home countries is worst than it is in the US. The attrition is crippling because ANA will like to expand AJX's route structure but because they don't have the numbers they will like to see (the projection before the economical downturn was that by now we should have been more than double the number we are today) so they can't assign the flying they would want us to perform.

Any word on a few more days off? (Other than the new commuting day rules)

Right now we have the ability to take 14 days in a row and commute the last day of your duty (10+2+2vacation days) that makes this the best commuting condition available anywhere (not withstanding our rostering, dollar devaluation, and politics riddled upgrade program) I don't expect to see more days off at the moment

I'm weighing my future options (family life, current job which I'm home every night etc) vs. being able to live where we want and an increase in pay and huge upgrade in equipment with AJX.. (if it were to happen)

AJX (or any job abroad for that matter) doesn't work for everyone, some people never really adapt to the life style of having all your duty and time off in a row, thus returning to any job that becomes available, even at the expense of a severe paycut. You need to really make this decision together with your better half and see if the life style is something that you would get used to, training is long, boring and repetitive and like I said before, the upgrade program is no different than what you hear about CX, EK, KAL and any operator in China, there are no guarantees and some guys do get shut down on the pre upgrade assessment and during training, having said that, there aren't many places that will upgrade their F/O's so you have to evaluate if it is worth it for you.

Last edited by The Dominican; 01-30-2012 at 07:36 AM.
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