Voyageur Airways

[xsbank]

They're doing it again (looking for practically everyone)!

What a bunch of yahoos.

[privateer]

Ya do they live in a cave or something?

[lou72]

CL30..you say that you waited 30 minutes between brown doors in 28C before someone received you? My question to you is who the hell shows up an hour before the alloted time for the interview?? What did you expect them to do, tell the person they were interviewing that their time was up and there was another pompus ass waiting. Not to mention that the weather in the area has not yet reached 28C so I don't know who you are trying to kid here. You are just pissed that you didn't get hired like alot of others on this forum and you all need to suck it up and realize that with your attitudes etc., who the hell would hire you??

[Doc]

lou72, are you brain dead? VAL will hire ANYBODY who walks through the door stupid enough to give them a cheque. And YOU bloody know it.

[Wacko]

So.... just spitting out numbers here but... say a PPC was 5 flights of 1.5 hours each that's 7.5 hours total. Lets say that one hour of flight in aircraft x is $1000. So the company asks $7500 bond? or will they up it to say $10000 for "contingency"?...

question 2... so you paid your training bond of $10000 but you're just not able to land the bad boy... it turns out you need 15 hours of total flight... would they up the bond for you or is that covered?

question 3... would a company cut it's losses at a certain point? Say you can't pull it off in 15 hours.... would they ask you to just leave... would they keep the bond money?

[xsbank]

Wacko, are you weakening? Don't do it, big fella!

[Wacko]

No... not at all... I'm just curious how a bond.. in general would work.

... I couldn't afford to buy or qualify for a loan to get a PPC no matter how hard I'd try

[Doc]

Wacko. Let me share this photo I took of a pilot being interviewed by VAL...




Any questions??

[CL30]

lou72,

What is your point?

CL30

[CL30]

Wacko,

A bond in this case work like this.

You give money up front. It sits for the allotted time-frame in their bank account. They pay you some form of interest. If you leave within the first anniversary of your training event or hire the money is theirs. If you stay after a year the money is still theirs. You get it back if you leave after your year is over and you do not retrain. So your first year pay would be $36000 - $10000 = $26000 on the King Air as a Captain. $66000 - $15000 = $51000 for the overseas position on the RJ based on the 8 on 8 off schedule. You would make more on paper the second and third years because the money you gave them in the first year would just revolve back.

They secure a loan for you. They co-sign a loan for you with their bank. They get the $10K or $15K and you pay interest only payments for the allotted time. If you leave in "Good Terms" you get your money upfront. If you give receipts you can claim back your interest expenses. The hidden issue here is that your credit has a $10K - $15K loan on it. If they paid the loan on your behalf so the balance was zero at the end of the contract would be one thing but they do not do this.

It doesn't take a business degree with a bit of homework to see that this is a really great deal for them. Low interest loans for their training department and operations. I wish I could start a business where I charge my employees to finance my costs.

CL30

[Vickers vanguard]

CL30..you say that you waited 30 minutes between brown doors in 28C before someone received you? My question to you is who the hell shows up an hour before the alloted time for the interview?? What did you expect them to do, tell the person they were interviewing that their time was up and there was another pompus ass waiting. Not to mention that the weather in the area has not yet reached 28C so I don't know who you are trying to kid here. You are just pissed that you didn't get hired like alot of others on this forum and you all need to suck it up and realize that with your attitudes etc., who the hell would hire you??

how stupid can you be ? typical voyageur management's retard mentality ! are you by any chance Brc, the guy with the mail-in bride from the ex-communist country .........

[Doc]

Mail in bride???? Like this one???




I see nothing wrong with mail in brides....in this case.

[brokenwing]

If I only had a bullet for everytime someone paid for a job... but i dont. We can fix this, good companies have to quit hiring pilots that have worked for companies that promote pilot prostitution. Thay way.... its a dead end road, working for such a company and being fucked up enough to pay for a job will be a career killer. That way pilots could be closer to being equals.... no more scum bag shithead assholes. Oh... and for all you supporting VAL or any company for that matter that forces pilots to pay for a job.... sincerely, @#$! YOU.

[ontheslide]

Brokenwing: You're an idiot. You wanna kill a guy who paid for his job??! And why do you have to go swearing like you're some kid in highschool trying to fit in with the badass kids in the smokepit? You give a resounding "F**K YOU" to anyone blah blah blah...but your opinion doesn't matter dude.

I'm thinking very hard about going to VAL sometime. I'm currently working for a really great company and won't go anywhere until my commitment's up, but after that, instead of trying to get into heavy iron, I'll be making a sideways move, probably to VAL or something like it.

My reasons? Money isn't everything. I spent 6 years growing up in Africa while my folks did humanitarian aid work, part of which was overseeing the construction of an additional wing built onto a hospital. We were poor, lived in a cockroach infested hut with lawn chairs as our furniture and we didn't get to come home for a holiday every couple months.

When I was older I spent 3 summers building for the homeless in Mexico, taking groups of highschool kids out and showing them how to swing a hammer- probably some of the most fullfilling times in my life...and I PAID to go do it.

I've always planned on going back to Africa to do a couple years of humanitarian flying. I got a couple thousand hrs on floats instead of going IFR sooner so that I had a good solid base of bush time. Some organizations require their staff to generate their own support while serving overseas, granted they're the church ones, but people are doing that- so they can go fly a 206 or 208! Why don't you tell them to F**K themselves??

So I'll probably go, pay the money, be stuck in the place I want to be anyway WITH the option to come out every couple months, get paid for being there while flying airplanes which'll still look good on the resume, and get the money BACK after all that when I leave to rejoin the rat race. (Speaking of which, King Rat by Clavell-one of my fav's I'm rereading now)

Those are my plans and maybe VAL or a similar company can help me accomplish them. I don't care what you or anyone else thinks of them, it's my life. But maybe don't be so hasty with the tar brush and feathers.

[Cat Driver]

Ontheslide:

Giving of your time and money for humanitarian reasons is a far different thing than paying for a job.

Doing humanitarian work for religious or moral reasons is something that is acceptable, paying to work is screwing the industry.....

[ontheslide]

I agree completly Cat Driver, however from the perspective of an outsider, I'd be doing the same thing as the guy buying his job, regardless of the reasons.

I was taking exception to brokenwing's statement, "and for all you supporting VAL or any company for that matter that forces pilots to pay for a job.... sincerely, @#$! YOU."

It's ignorant. He doesn't know anyones background or personal motives.

[Cat Driver]

It's ignorant.

Actually I don't really think that Brokenwing is ignorant because he has stated it in terms that everyone understands.

[Bookem Lou]

On the slide,


There is a difference between doing true humanitarian work and working for a company like VAL. If it is a truly not for profit company, any money saved is available for humanitarian projects. With a company like VAL, your generosity and humanitarian heart are taken advantage of and used to fatten the company's bottom line. They may fly contracts for the UN but the bottom line is that they are there to make money. No problems with that. That's how companies generally stay in business.

You went to Mexico, showed kids how to do something for themselves and paid to do it. Seriously, good for you. The people you intended to help, benefitted from your effort. You go to VAL, sit in a plane while VAL charges the UN an exorbitant amount of money and pays you very little while you subsidize your own training. Sounds a little rediculous eh?

If you feel like going to VAL, by all means, go for it. Work your ass off and have someone else back in Canada profit from it. Make sure if you go, you are going for the right reasons and aren't kidding yourself about what you are getting into. I would think that if you are truly interested in helping disadvantaged people, you would look elsewhere for work instead of helping VAL's owners drive around in Jags.

To be honest, the reasons you gave (getting paid, looking good on resume, the ever important "rotation") suggest a "me first" attitude more than a true humanitarian spirit. I know quite a few people working for various humanitarian organizations, flying and otherwise, and not one has listed how it will help them as a reason for going.

Enjoy your time over there. It will be the experience of a lifetime flying in places few outsiders get to see. Good luck and safe flying.

[ontheslide]

Some very good points Bookem Lou.
I have looked into other non profit companies, eg Airserv and realize there are other options-which I'm not discounting. That being said, I don't believe someone wishing to participate in humanitarian efforts necessarily needs the level of self sacrifice of Mother Teresa.

The benefits of being paid/rotation etc aren't reasons to go or not, but they are benefits.
Not being sure I want to do it for the rest of my working life, it'd be nice to have experience on a machine I could use to further my career as opposed to all sorts of time on much smaller and less complex airplanes.

I'll have to figure out for myself whether working for a for-profit company whilst having my own "humanitarian" agenda, if you will, are possible or too much of a contradiction.

This isn't me arguing in favour of VAL's hiring practises. Nor is it me signing on. But I'm not dismissing the idea.

[brokenwing]

On the slide,

Its not the first time i've been called an idiot, and probly not the last. We live in a country where we're allowed to speak freely. I excercised that right, as did you.

Good for you for doing humanitarian work, seriously. But still, Having to work in a field where people think they have to buy a job makes me sick. I feel that if good companies black ball pilots for doing that, it'll only improve the quality of life for us pilots. Aviation shouldn't be a career limited to a bunch of spoiled rich kids that have parents with deep pockets, or complete idiots that would stab their mother in the back to take a step forward.

My views on VAL and their supporters stays unchanged.

[ontheslide]

Brokenwing:

I hear what you're saying, and agree with it too, from your point of view.

Sorry for calling you an idiot, you're actually a unique special person

[brokenwing]

No worries sir. Apology accepted.

[Cat Driver]

So now that we have agreed that pilots who pay companies money to get a job should not be shot can we agree they should be blackballed from working for companies who pay you to work for them ontheslide?

[saucer_driver]

Yeah, a Blacklist.....Someone call McCarthy, he'll be having an orgasm. Should we take out the communists too? Jewish pilots? or just Val employee's? Just encase, I am being sarcastic so please take no offense from me.

[xsbank]

"We were poor, lived in a cockroach infested hut with lawn chairs as our furniture and we didn't get to come home for a holiday every couple months."

That sounds like the old tanker base in Fort Nelson. Or Ft. Simpson. Or... sound familiar, Cat?