Originally Posted by
Braniff DC8
SEP, been here, done that. Flying in and out of podunk towns would be my dream again and hopefully this year it will come true. Go read flying upside down. It's worth it. If you've never been or flown in and out of Chila, you'll be in for a bit of a shock. I honestly never want to leave the U.S. again. You give up a lot being an expat. It gets old after a while. You will not be treated like a person and the punitive culture will burn you out quickly. Again, bases and bonuses are tricks to get you to sign then reality sets in.
In my three years in China I was never cheated out of pay. I always got what was promised. That was not the issue. My issues with China were the difficulty of the operation (delays, having to declare "pan-pan-pan" in order to not fly through thunderstorms, punishment culture), lack of SOPs (they vary widely based on what the FO's instructor told them in training - the manual means nothing to them), the questionable food safety, the choking pollution, the overcrowding, the constant onslaught of noise, the distance from family and the on/off ability to contact them due to censorship.
The money is great, without question. But it does come with a lot of baggage. I used my time in China to pay off all my debts, build a nice little nest egg, and finish getting my EASA ATPL so I can now work in Europe. Glad I did it because the end result was nice, but certainly have no desire to return. That was confirmed a few weeks ago when I was at my home airport and getting ready to fly to the UK for my current job and I walked past the gate for the flight I used to take to Beijing, which was in the process of boarding. Had all of the memories of boarding that flight and stepping into the month long abyss of being in China and realised I was nowhere near ready to even consider doing it again.