Slow,

Not familiar with how you man per jet. It would require fewer pilots do to fewer reserves?

Whole new world......sorry

Sounds like a lot of nights in SAL... anyone have any reports on what that place is like?

We had our crews there for about 2 weeks because of some political convention in DKR, the prince took every hotel room in the city...and we got pushed out to SID. Very nice resort...the best part was that it was all inclusive! Including liquor!!! You are going to have some very happy crews flying in and out of SID!

Yes, and some other issues as well. It seems that the DKR overnights have gotten a little rowdy. Guess that there have been some complaints.
What do you expect though?

Rowdy??? Come on. It brings out the best of us! And keeps some of the "mature" f/a's away! Anyone say party????

You nailed it. A larger combined category would be more "efficient" from a manning standpoint. There are other tradeoffs in training that mitigate this somewhat.

Yes the -ER guys fly the ETOPS 757s to Hawaii and Europe right now as well as the 767-300ERs. A lot of the new Africa stuff through SAL will be ETOPS 757s. The majority of the 757 fleet is not ETOPS certified as of yet. We have 19, I believe, that are ETOPS but a couple of those only do Hawaii (not North Atlantic certified).

A domestic 767 guy will fly 757 the majority of the time but will also see the 737-300 domestic ships (21) and occasionally a 767-300ER usually between the hubs.

I'm with Slowplay on the combined categories. Fewer categories equals less reserve pilots required which means fewer jobs for us. The tendency is for guys to say, "It'd be cool to do an occasional international (domestic) trip", but we don't need to do anything that gives the company an excuse to have less of us around, in my opinion. Also, the -ER FOs are required to keep a Class 1 physical (2 trips to the doc/year) plus, as it stands now, attend recurrent twice a year. That's in addition to the initial expense of the international qual and world wide Jepps for every 767 guy ( there's a lot of us). Lastly, with everyone -ER qualed, some of us (me) would see international ops so little we'd be dangerous.

O'tay...........I'm all for more guys around campus

I think I need to post a bunch more to get the pm thing going...I'll kick it in gear. But basically I lived in Angola for 6 months way back in '93...was flying a Learjet for the UN. They had a mission there trying to mediate talks between the Marxist government, (armed to the teeth by the Cubans); and the rebels, (armed to the teeth by the US). The place was an absolute basket case...pretty much felt like James Wood in "Salvador" but with Portugeuse speaking Africans instead of central america.

Don't get me wrong, the local population were the nicest group of folk you'd ever want to meet, but stuck in the middle and in a nasty cycle of poverty.

I think the statistic that staggered me the most was that there was an estimated 14 million people there, but over 16 million land mines...:eek:

Luanda proper includes the only deep water port in SW Africa. It has a big harbor right downtown with a great night life..people tend to dance and drink heavily during armed conflicts! The main beach is very nice, and with a decent beach break. Sharks are common, but less aggressive than Cape Town, for example. I had a long board shipped in while I was there and pretty much got the whole town out with there jaws dropped to watch me catch a few rides!!

Air France, TAP and Air Angola were the only options then. (Air Angola had a 737-200 with rough field kit on it!). but I wasn't kidding about the raw materials; oil, diamonds, platinum...did I mention oil? the place was crawling with Russians, S. Africans, Cubans and very few Americans when I was there. (15 yrs ago).

I know the US backed rebel leader, Savimbi, took 15 bullets a couple of years ago and the movement sort of died with him. I don't know what the current government looks like. (We carried Pres. Dos Santos and Savimbi, just not at the same time, to peace talks in Zambia)

If you plan on going there, I would count on very few amenities...there used to be a Hotel Metropole downtown that most of the expats stayed at.
Fresh meat and veggies were hard to come by.

Like I said, if you can used to the fact that there are no rules...it's kinda liberating!

Ok. One last question. If you are an ER guy and you fly the ETOPS 757, what do you get paid? 757 or 767ER pay. Not that it even slightly matters to me at the moment. :rolleyes: