Does your airline outsource it's pilot jobs to foreigners ?

[Gilles Hudicourt]

Before you buy a ticket to your favorite southern destination, ask your travel agent if the Airline they are proposing outsources it's pilot jobs to foreign pilots.
You can fly for with an airline that employs local pilots only.
Make informed choices.

[JohnnyHotRocks]

I avoided sunwing on my last vacation specifically for this reason!!

[gonnabeapilot]

Unfortunately if you ask this question, you will not be flying south on any Canadian airline....

Sunwing Travel Group: Makes use of foreign pilots through FLVCs as well as wet-leases... so that's a no go.

Groupe Transat: Makes use of foreign pilots through its use of Canjet to provide lift. If the latest information is correct, they will soon be making use of foreign pilots through wet-leases at Air Transat as well... so that's a no go.

WestJet Airlines: Makes use of foreign pilots through its use of wet-leases to provide medium-range lift to Hawaii. Also is now participating in a code-share agreement with American Airlines to provide lift cross-border. If you don't think these code share agreements are reducing the number of jobs for Canadian pilots, you're fooling yourself... so they're out too.

Air Canada: Uses the greatest number of foreign pilots out of any Canadian carrier through its multiple code-share agreements. Every time you see an aircraft from any Star Alliance carrier land in Canada, that is a flight that could have been done by Canadian pilots on Air Canada, Jazz or Sky Regional metal... so they're out too.

So the real question is... how will you ever take another southern vacation ever again??

[mantogasrsrwy]

Take that JohnnyHotRocks!!

[JohnnyHotRocks]

You can't possibly compare codeshare with what Sunwing has been doing

[Gilles Hudicourt]

The audio from a CBC radio show. A furloghed AT pilot called in.



http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36940835/Pilot% ... 202013.mp3

[Major Cong]

Well I gues you guys will not be going skiing eather. The ski resorts seem to be staffed by a lot of foreighners!!

[CellPh2]

All this fight and stress over which pilots/which airline has the absolute pleasure of taking the 20 year-old sleaze (most of which arrive at the airport looking like they just got out of bed) down to Cuba on her 750.00 redtag.ca vacation.

Air travel sure has changed. In 100 years we won't need to go to Cuba for a winter break. Nature will sort this whole clown car issue out...in due time.

[Tomasz]

Everybody is complaining that foreign peoples are taking the jobs of Canadian pilots, but no one mentions that some pilots and Canadian aircraft come to europe for the summer session for 1 to 6 months (Sunwings). It works both ways

[Gravol]

Tomasz,


You're obviously new here.

[JohnnyHotRocks]

Tomasz,


You're obviously new here.

Hahahaha....he has LOTS of reading to catch up on

[Gilles Hudicourt]

Everybody is complaining that foreign peoples are taking the jobs of Canadian pilots, but no one mentions that some pilots and Canadian aircraft come to europe for the summer session for 1 to 6 months (Sunwings). It works both ways

I replied to you here:

http://www.avcanada.ca/forums2/viewtopi ... 41#p814541

[Gravol]

Waiting on your response Tomasz

[Tomasz]

So that shows that you need more aircraft. Do you expect the airline to buy more planes just for the winter session, that does not make good business sense. Also if you need more aircraft why are you not leasing them from a Canadian company are they to expensive, does Canada have enough of them. Also I here about people also seeing that there are thousand of people that are experinced, they may have thousands of hours, but do they have a type rating or hours on type, if not, they are not experinced on that type of aircraft. But you expect a company to train people on a jet just to fly for a half a year and then lay them off, because the winter session has ended

[Stu Pidasso]

Airlines train Pilots, it is THE cost of doing business. These bottom feeder outfits are skirting the rules (with the blessing of our Government) and pocketing this cost.

It is outrageous, we have hundreds of qualified Pilots in Canada. The fact that they are not endorsed (or current) on a 737 is a scam, brought to you by con artists.

If you can't afford to properly train your Pilots, then you are in the wrong business.

[Gilles Hudicourt]

So that shows that you need more aircraft. Do you expect the airline to buy more planes just for the winter session, that does not make good business sense. Also if you need more aircraft why are you not leasing them from a Canadian company are they to expensive, does Canada have enough of them. Also I here about people also seeing that there are thousand of people that are experinced, they may have thousands of hours, but do they have a type rating or hours on type, if not, they are not experinced on that type of aircraft. But you expect a company to train people on a jet just to fly for a half a year and then lay them off, because the winter session has ended

I do not expect Sunwing to buy aircraft and have nothing against the practice of short term DRY leases to augment its fleet in winter on a seasonal basis.

What I object to is Sunwing adopting a business model where they claim they have no choice but to crew their extra aircraft with foreign pilots. That is false.

Sam Char recently said in a Press Interview that Sunwing made 71 million in profits last year:

http://affaires.lapresse.ca/economie/tr ... soleil.php

Training 100 pilots, even if they cost as much as $40,000 as Mark Williams said on the air yesterday, (a high figure) will only come out to 4 million. And many of those pilots will come back year after year and will not have to be re-trained again. Training pilots is part of the cost of doing business. Sunwing wants to same itself that expense at the on the backs of Canadian Airline pilots and of the Canadian tax-payers.

Plus Sunwing has not understood what reciprocity is like, because they do not use that program they way to was meant to be.

Reciprocity calls for Sunwing to have more pilot than it needs year round. The surplus are to me sent overseas in the low season to fly European Aircraft.

Sunwing only has just enough crews to staff its full time aircraft and sends some of its surplus aircraft and crew to Europe in the summer on wet-leases and calls that reciprocity. It is not. Going to Europe to fly Sunwing aircraft on wet-leases is not reciprocity.

The reality is that the Sunwing business model is built on abusing the Candian system to it fullest.

They abuse the reciprocal program under CIC
They abuse the TFWP under HRSDC
The foreign pilots do not declare taxes in Canada and have do deductions taken from their pay which is illegal.
Some Tzech, Slovak and Hungarian pilots earn much less than their Canadian counterparts which is illegal. It seems that Travel Service, one of the Sunwing European partners, pockets the difference, which is also illegal.
They abuse the Wet-Lease program under the CTA (although the CTA stated they do nothing illegal)

[mld@yyz]

Gilles H.

Air Transat will be operating with an accordian fleet when the contract with Canjet has ended as stated in the Air Transat news release. On the CBC broadcast you mentioned that it was Sunwing and Canjet are operating with accordian fleets right now. What will Transat do when they have to operate the six or so seasonal aircraft? Will they be seasonal Transat pilots or will Transat start the whole foreign thing as well?

[Gilles Hudicourt]

Gilles H.

Air Transat will be operating with an accordian fleet when the contract with Canjet has ended as stated in the Air Transat news release. On the CBC broadcast you mentioned that it was Sunwing and Canjet are operating with accordian fleets right now. What will Transat do when they have to operate the six or so seasonal aircraft? Will they be seasonal Transat pilots or will Transat start the whole foreign thing as well?

I am not and never have been against accordion fleets.
I am not against a real reciprocal program is done legally and according to all regulations: 1 to 1.

I am against the use of the TFWP (using a type rating as an excuse to claim there are no qualified pilots in Canada)
I am against the abuse of the reciprocity program (cheating on actual pilot numbers) and swapping Canadian Wet-Leased aircraft against Foreign pilots which is not what that program was meant to do.

If Air Transat intends to start using accordion fleets, they better do it under the laws and regulations of this country. That is, unless all the others do not respect the laws and regulations either, in which case we will have a very hard time expecting them to have higher moral values.

If we as pilots do not win this fight, we will be the principal victims.
That is why Sunwing pilots, Canjet pilots and all other Canadian pilots should unite in this cause and protect our jobs. It not redressed, this problem will only get worse and effect more of us every year.
It's a race to the bottom.