twobecrazy

How do foreign carriers feel about prior military guys? To clarify I was never a military pilot.

jrmyl

I get where you are coming from. However, at AJX, we have some of the best mx I have ever been associated with. In the 3 years I have been here I have had less than 5 MEL stickers on airplanes, and 4 of those were on the freighter aircraft. Our aircraft are also some of the cleanest I have ever seen.

But when I look at some of the Chinese aircraft it is hard to tell if they are painted white or brown. Not sure how their MX is. I can only speak for my experience in Japan.

But as far as flightcrew go, I have had some conversations with legacy carriers where they were wondering why I was working overseas. They actually asked if this was just to pass the time until the legacies hired or if I couldn't get hired at a legacy. They couldn't believe that someone would rather work at a foreign carrier than at their legacy.

The Dominican

For what I have seen, typically military only times are not accepted at most airlines that hire US pilots on the international market, but coupled with airline times then they do consider it as part of the pilots overall resume.
This is most certainly another area in which generalization doesn't work, maintenance in airlines in the Middle East, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and many airlines in China (yes, China) have an excellent maintenance program. The maintenance here at the ANA group is far beyond anything that I have experienced in any airline in the US, I come across an MEL here 2 or 3 times a year, in the 6+ years that I have been here, I have never done a cross bleed start, not even once, when AD's come out, they do them right away and none of that asking for extensions nonsense and threats from the FAA to ground the airplanes and fines due to shady maintenance record keeping that you have seen in the past against many airlines in the US.

The Dominican

Simulcast

This is very true, It doesn't bother me, I actually find it rather amusing but you come across some folks that just cannot comprehend that you are satisfied with your job, sure there are many challenges, cultural differences and the likes, but the notion that the only people that seek employment abroad are the guys that can't get a job in the US is very silly. A few months back I had a conversation with a FedEx pilot here in town over some beers, after the usual "how do you like it" chat, he asked if I was keeping my apps updated for the upcoming hiring spree, when I told him that I didn't have an application anywhere, he got rather annoyed, started giving me the "ALPA" lecture yadda, yadda! Why do you want to work in a place with no union protection? Contract work that can be terminated anytime? rather uncomfortable situation even for his friend because this guy was borderline shouting! I just answered, I'm enjoying myself

PCLCREW

So your saying that MX in USA is far better then the rest of the world?... Ive done both, and MX in the USA is the worst... the norm in the USA is not to fix its to MEL, try to fix, break again, then MEL again.. repeat about 7 times.
Personally I think the US right now has the worst MX practice overall.

oicur12

My observation on Airbus MX

Australia - not very good. Many MEL's
Singapore - not too bad.
Hong Kong - not very good, probably the worst. MEL city!!!
China - very good. Very few MEL's.

This observation is without listing the particular airline and as someone said above, airlines vary within these countries.

Never flown airline in the US.