Que, como quinto punto de prueba, se fijó el siguiente: “Efectividad

So, OK, I get a job with TJA, pass all the checks and ride it out a couple of months, and then move on to a better company in China right? BZZZZZZT! Wrong answer!

Yes foreigner, In Soviet Russia, China OWNS YOU.

When you fly in a country like China, the airline owns your license lock stock and barrel. If you want to change airlines, you have to ask permission. Guess what the answer is gonna be white boy? Survey says, DING! You lose! Unless the airline you work for wants to let you go and the airline you are applying for wants to accept you, you’re up that creek I mentioned earlier that runs the distance along a main artery to/from the airport (yeah, the Chinese shit-filled cement creek). Furthermore, Airline A that you are working for now will probably demand tons of money from airline B who may not wanna cough it up; and so that’s the lowdown on how things work in China. If you piss off the airline you are working for (pretty easy to do BTW), they’ll just be uncooperative and sit on your license with their pasty, flabby flat asses for ever and ever, and you’re done, don’t come back to Big Red. The bottom line here is that you have to choose wisely the first time, not take your second choice, and try again later if you don’t get what you really want. Or settle for Hainan Grope (Group) and shut the hell up about it when things suck duck dick.

When Henan (not Hainan; Henan, the other H__nan airline in China) was shut down several of the expat pilots working there sat for about a year (still getting paid though) without flying. Tianjin Airlines got wind of them and set up a meet-and-greet. After a ton of money exchanged hands behind the scenes, they were lent to Tianjin until Henan finally started up again. Who knows when that will happen (Henen will never see its aircraft tires leave the pavement ever again… intentionally or not… ooooh, I did not!). At least one guy from that group quit shortly after finishing his training and went back home because he couldn’t stand China any longer. I don’t blame him.

The next issue here is that nobody really knows the real answer to the question of the way things really work with your license. I’ve heard guys say that, “They only own you for the type you’re on, so if you apply to another job with another type that isn’t part of the company you’re working for now, you’re golden and they can’t keep you!” I think this is pretty much untrue based on the various conversations I’ve had; but again, in China most things are rumor, speculation and myth which makes pretty much everything and anything true if the right person says it’s true or false. Good luck with all of that and let me know how it works out for ya!

Page | 130

Training

As far as I can tell from my own experiences and from talking with others, training is a mixed bag of “do whatever” and when we say you’re done, you’re done. There is no published PTS handbook or completion standards of any kind. Go ahead and take that manual and just throw it out the window ummm-kay? For the most part, you’re going to have a CAAC sim check, then a company sim check (with possible additional training—you may pass but need to do a little more), then possibly 25 hours in the jump-seat, 25 in the right seat, 50 hours of line training (left seat), 50-100 hours of new captain experience, and one last sim check just for good measure. There’s several written tests in there as well.

It won’t take 6 months to go through this process but then again it might. You can be sure that at the end of it all you will be dumber than when you began. Oh, I promise that much. And stop asking me about training pay; you’ll get what you get. That’s what I got at any rate, and most of the other guys here too. It is what it is and will last for as long as it lasts, who cares what is written in the agreement. Sometimes you go to full pay after you’re released to new captain experience, sometimes when you are finished with the final sim check… it’s like I say about most things around here, a mixed bag.

For any kind of ground school, expect a few weeks of someone talking to you in Chinese for 8 hours a day with slideshows translated from Chinese to English using Google Translate. Make sure you have a strong hangover and it’ll go twice as slow. Choice phrases I’ve written down for prosperity include stuff like, “If event of flight delay meal to the ground could be arranged.” You’ll cover the usual gamut of topics culminating in Dangerous Goose (Dangerous Goods, i.e. Hazmat–BTW, thanks Capt L for correcting that opening title slide, now we have nothing to laugh at until the second slide comes up). Most of the regulatory stuff is similar to FAA mumbo jumbo with the occasional WTF?? thrown in.

So let’s talk about the sim. First, let’s deal the dirt on Chinese sim instructors: they do not know how to teach and they wouldn’t know what to teach if they knew what teaching was all about in the first place. They just kindof sit there (probably half-drunk), program a bunch of malfunctions into the control panel and yell at the FO a lot. Sometimes they will get adventuresome and yell at you too, but this is usually fixed with a healthy dose of the ol’ evil eye over your right shoulder. That usually shuts them up. There is no egalitarian concept of never asking the student to do something the instructor couldn’t do. In fact, most instructors couldn’t fly the sim if his life depended on it, believe me I’ve seen it.

Remember how I just wrote something like, “They just kindof program in a bunch of malfunctions…”? I hope you have your A-game on because it’s time for Multiple-Systems-

Page | 131 Failures-Hootenanny-Howdown-Checkride! You’re going to have the kitchen sink thrown at ya (inoperative too by the way), so stay limber. If you happen to need to yell at the FO go for it because they all seem to like this practice. I had to have a strongly phrased man-to-man talk with my right-seater when I interviewed and I’m pretty sure this put me over the top because the guy sitting right seat was an annoying prick nobody liked, Chinese or otherwise. One of the other captains who also passed told me he smacked him on the leg hard and yelled, “What do you want from me?” Then he smiled and said calmly, “No seriously dude, what do you want from me?” I would LOVE to see a scenario like one of these happen at a United Airlines interview… or how about SouthWest? “Mmmm. Eeeeeeah, we’re gonna have to say, ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ on this one, so kindof get out of our building right now and never come back.” Aw hell, maybe they’d dig on you for being so ballsy and hire you on the spot? Maybe not so much.