The irreconcilable position of Need but don't want foreign Pilots in China

[polax52]

With such a rapidly expanding airline industry in China, China desperately needs experienced foreign Captains, probably for the next 15 years, BUT the Chinese do not want Foreign Pilots.

Anybody considering applying for a job opportunity in China must understand that to achieve that job you must overcome every possible obstacle that can be thrown into your path, from the beginning of your selection to the end of your training and then beyond as the medical requirements only get more and more stringent.

If you can just consider your selection trip to China as a paid holiday with an extensive medical then you are going into it with the correct mentality. Recent figures, as I understand are as follows:

1. 20 American airlines Captains on Furlough went to China for Selection, all were failed on the medical. You now have to face not only stringent blood pressure, but if you have any sediment at all in your carotid artery you will fail, you will also now do an MRI- if they find any single blood vessel broken again you will fail.

2. 14 experienced Korean Airlines Captains went for selection on the 777, of those 14 only 1 passed the simulator check, and believe me little has to do with ability, they can give you what they want and the checker will decide on the criteria for passing, and it will probably be entirely a non standard standard, if that makes sense.

3. Having been selected you can expect a long training process with about a 50% chance of success.

As you can see the end result is that if you are a healthy experienced Captain, with nothing on your record against you, you have about a 1% chance of making it.

Maybe things will change but currently this irreconcilable position which the Chinese have make it a very, very difficult process for Foreign guys.

[kungfu panda]

If you're under 40 the medical is ok, I havn't had any problem, but as soon as you hit 40 it seems to get much tougher, we have just lost 3 fit and healthy over 40 Captains to the medical system.

[volare_737]

So you mean for us 50 year old ones there is no way to pass the medical ???
Anybody in there early 50's flying in China ?

[kungfu panda]

There are (Guys over 50) of course, but the medical is very difficult to pass and it is at risk every 6 months. It's not the straight forward medical you find in the rest of the world.

[volare_737]

Haha - well - I know some guys in there 30's and they are less fit then some of us !!!! Just a bit worried about eye sight and hearing. Those are the only things one can't do anything about .

[kungfu panda]

Sorry volare_737, I am not saying anything about the fitness or non fitness of anybody whatever age they are. All I am saying is that the additional checks that the Chinese now require when you are over 40, make it an even more difficult medical to pass than it has been previously. These additional checks have caused some of the guys who I know, that are over 40, to be denied a medical certificate.

[Klosterman]

Does anybody knows what exactly you can expect on medical?

[Karunch]

To add weight to the original posting- 10% of our foreign pilot group (over 40's) have been terminated due to the additional age related medical testing required over the last few months. All currently hold western class 1 medicals. It appears the additional testing requirements didn't come with instructions on how to interpret the results.

The 777 applicants are not wanted by line management of the fleet but are being forced by senior management. Regardless of skills or medical suitability, they were never going to be successful at screening.

Anyone considering Prc contracts should consider it to be a 6 month posting with the possibility of extensions even having passed initial testing.

[skyrambler]

Medical is just a suitable excuse when they do not want you. They have very unexperienced FOs, but strict medical check does not mean anything - anyone can collaps suddenly due to hundreds possible reasons.:ugh:

Did they paid you for flight tickets and accomodation at last?

[Breakthesilence]

Ridiculous, they are just this...

Just look at their mind, limiting personal freedom and hiding the truth out of the press, internet etc. Just look at the Tibet situation.

I will never apply to them, I believe I'm, at least, one step over them. Hard speaking, I know, but that's my mind (still and never their).

[polax52]

Just to add further to the current state of the medical, a former colleague of mine, was told after completing the additional CAAC tests that he required 10 days of hospitalisation for further testing. After a degrading 10 days in hospital he is still denied a medical and is awaiting instructions from the CAAC, but it does looks like the end of his China experience.

[Kirks gusset]

If you are a bit "chubby" or have hearing problems even accepted as a functional hearing test in Europe, or you had eye surgery, kidney stones, dodgy prostrate levels, smoke too much, high BP, heart rhythm problems, or urine like creosote then forget China. As previously stated, some guys that hold current Class 1s in Europe get binned at screening, the old "letter from my GP" stuff won't wash there, not saying you have to be an athlete but reasonable fitness is a must..

[PREPPY69]

2 days every 6 months you will be rostered with Medical Check.
They do not consider your actual ability to fly for the next 6 months or 1 year.
They calculate the risk you can have a medical problem in the next 20 years.
It means that if you have ANY of the cardiovascular riskes, your are grounded.

Example:

1) Blood pressure higher number 140 means 24 hrs "holter check", if 1 value above 140, you stay there 2 weeks with 2 pressure checks a day.
For the lower number above 88, it's a problem too.
One a day check, at least 3 persons will check your pressure...
You have to know that with jetlag and domestic the day before, you will probably feel like a sh... the day of the check and with the stress that "you have to have the good value", you will explode your value.
To be "in the right numbers" at the check, you will need to have something like 110/70 in your room before the check. of course you will think to take a pill just before but for the stress test, you have to run and they stop the machine when you rate is 145...If beta bloquant is blocking your rate at 143, you will run 30 minutes with a rising slope ...which can make you fall...
2) GPT: I don't know the value any more but only for this number there is permanently 1 guy in 'leave without pay"
3)LDL below 116,HLDL between 40 and 55...good luck
4) Blood in the pee, no discussion
5) MRA: a particularity is seen as an abnormality
6) MRI: Any discovery will lead you to downtown (probably rushing in traffic jam) to do a memory test in chinese of course .
3 guys lost their licence because of that recently and contract was stopped with immediate effect.


Welcome

[Alexander de Meerkat]

That is a mad world indeed - a fascinating thread. It all has a slight air of the Madhatter's Tea Party about it, but there you have it. One of our pilots just left to go there and along with 74 of the 75 pilots they looked at did not get taken on. They found a 'heart problem' after he had been given the job and resigned from us and last heard of was unemployed. A terrible business and a total mess.

[The Flying Cokeman]

ADM, I hope that is not S.L from LGW :\

[odin galvan]

I did the initial medical in shanghai 3 months ago and i pass it., once in my home country waiting for my ticket back to china i heard about the new issues of the medical test., So, I went to the doctor and he made me an echocardiogram and result for this test is:

small left ventricular hypertrophy

Please, i need to know if i can fly in china with this problem.

Regards

[kungfu panda]

O.G. It will depend on the individual doctor, this is really the problem with the Chinese medical,the standard is still yet to be established.

Unfortunately this allows for the abuse of the system against foreign pilots.

[RoyHudd]

What are the long-term inferences, assuming most candidates are rejected? Is there an experience shortfall in the left-seat coming up soon?

[Alexander de Meerkat]

This is the corollary referred to in the title of this thread - the Chinese urgently need hundreds of Airbus Captains, but are doing everything in their power to prevent them working there. Make of it what you will, but it is essentially the unstoppable force against the immovable object - barking mad, in other words. If you have any other option, take it - the whole Chinese adventure is just too risky for anything more than a 6-month contract. Never say you were not warned.

[Suvarnabhumi]

Thats exactly it......China is only a 12 month contract if you are under 40 years old, and only a 6 month contract if you are over 40.

To quit a permanent job is EXTREMELY risky, and to move your family over here is MADNESS.

[caulfield]

China is very tricky.It takes 6 months to get the job.The ATPL exam is written in chinglish and doesnt make any sense so good luck passing that.The medical is crazy including brain MRI which entails 15 mins with head clamped whilst in scanner.Blood tests and BMI very stringent standards.You cant be overweight and must take statins.Then theres the contract.The one they give you in English doesnt actually count.The Chinese one is what counts.Lots of traps.Money deductions if you dont fly x hrs,if youre sick,if uniform untidy.It must be read with a fine tooth comb but again only the one in Chinese actually counts.
If youre in your thirties(medical much better),very fit,and exceptionally patient and affable,then I would try it.The people are okay.But its communist and they eat dogs and ****.

[fdr]

Prior posts are on the money... the whole program is schizophrenic, in need of a dose of lithium.

I held a CAAC medical for 3 checks... was still a major workout each time. They then added an addendum, the Carotid Ultrasound. Was done by a relatively ham fisted nurse at the CAAC base hospital. The crushing of one carotid, vs the light tough on the other was notable, as was the variation.. follow up, "need CTA". CTA= CAT Angiogram. No thanks. Next? OK, we will do a GE Lightspeed (Sestarmibi) instead... will accept that one. Still done at CAAC hospital. "you have a slight buildup... less than the ICAO/JAA/FAA standard... now do CTA. refer prior answer, no thanks. "But you cannot fly without a medical..."

Contacted a friend who is a vascular surgeon, who both conducts and has had a CTA conducted on him by another vascular surgeon. "DO NOT DO IT... unless your life depends on it..." The surgeon has a point, the statistics are people do die from perforation of the heart, at a non insignificant rate, and about 3 times more have mini strokes as a direct consequence of the procedure. The surgeon has a case in point, his own, where his heart was perforated, and he crashed in the operation, took 6 months to recover. Note that the CAAC doctors are GP's not vascular surgeons, and you cannot do this test with anyone else.

When I returned home, I visited the surgeon and redid the carotid as a risk management measure. He used high resolution doppler imaging, and got very low (surprisingly) measures of plaque buildup, about the same as the average 20 year old, and nowhere near what would be expected for one of my age/condition. The CAAC is happy to attempt to force healthy crew undergo invasive and risky testing, and irrational surgery (yes, some guys have gone off and undertaken stents on healthy systems to satisfy the CAAC docs... stents are good for about 10 years, and you get one redo, then you get to have a triple bypass... or die, your choice...).

Given that only 1/3rd of heart attacks are related to the vascular system, not too sure that the CAAC is in the business of risk management, as much as crowd control.

OTOH, the good news is that in my current duties, I now get a chance to inspect B- registered aircraft invading our airspace instead. What goes around, comes around.

The company I was with was fighting hard to make way within the CAAC system, they had their faults, but they are under constant attack by the inmates that have escaped and achieved positions of power in the CAAC system. Their local FOI's observing the ATPL flight test were a testament to the inexorable rise of incompetence in the CAAC, while innocuous in this case, their competency if C4 would hardly blow your nose. Having spent a lot of time in foreign lands, and worked at various levels in regulatory authorities, and worked with the same, I can honestly say I am impressed that CAAC is not held to account by the states that they launch scuds towards, or by the toothless gecko, ICAO. ICAO is of course not an institution interested in implementation, only establishment of the policies, and practices on the dusty bookshelf. There are competent operators in the PRC, but they are so in spite of, not due to the CAAC.

Final item. The company doesn't support the individual undertaking the CAAC medical, if CAAC stops your heart, and ruins your ICAO licenses, it's up to your insurance etc (if any), not the companies. On declining the invitation of undergoing the guinea pig program of CAAC medical, the company invokes the contract clauses the same day. Of course, the company also declines for 6 months to release your documentation/license etc, which they have no contractual rights to.

I like China, the land, the people and the food, but I am not that keen on what they do with bureaucracy and aviation.

Good luck in the middle kingdom.

[kungfu panda]

Thanks fdr, a very accurate and informative post. It reflects exactly what I've seen guys going through at the CAAC.:ouch:

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

If you took a room of 100 pilots how many would consider a job in China?

Obviously the ones without a job and then maybe only 5 of those with a job, and only those with the experience to meet requirements.

Having met the requirements one would assume that each and every one of them have had a successful career to date, no accidents and a healthy medical score card.

Why then would you risk all that to place yourself under the Chinese aviation medical system, run by career occupational medics in their safe government job?

I note with interest the silence on behalf of the recruitment agencies whose market is China. What do they have to say on this cull of foreign pilots out of China?

[NXLHS]

It is becoming obvious that there are orders from Beijing to get rid of foreign pilots already operating in China and prevent more of them from being hired. Anyone has a clue as to what could be the real motives behind this change in policy ? Is the same thing happening in the state owned companies ? Are their own pilots being subjected to this kind of scrutiny ? Could it be that their growth forecast was too optimistic and they are now trying to safeguard well paying jobs for their boys ?

[kungfu panda]

NXLHS- I think that your post is speculative and not actually accurate. What I think is that everything in China is run by dozens of different commitees, which behave as interest groups, it is a very complex system which is not really a dictatorship because no individual has that level of authoritarian power.

Aviation has numerous commitees within the CAAC, which often work against each other. whilst one group may believe that it is in the interest of growth in china to hire foreign pilots another may not. Any incident that involves a foreign Pilot empowers the groups that do not want foreign Pilots. There is also a culture of blame in China, which can work against the hiring of foreign Pilots and it is this that has brought about changes to the CAAC medical, making it very difficult to pass. Apparently last year a Captain had a stroke, the conclusion of the investigation placed some blame on CAAC medical department. Their response was to say well if there is any risk at all that a Pilot may become incapacitated, no matter how miniscule, he will not have a CAAC medical, in conjunction with this they added further tests including an MRI and CT scan.

As for the simulator failures which are numerous, the face saving part of the culture, has the Chinese believe that their local pilots are the best in the world and in order to demonstrate this local pilots have to pass sim checks whilst foreign pilots fail.

[NXLHS]

KP , speculative ? Maybe , but that's the only thing one can do while working in China because nobody tells you anything. So we are left wondering why things happen the way they do and trying to connect the dots to make some sense of the chaos we are immersed in. In view of recent events occurred in simulator, line and medical checks , one dot might be worth joining, just check the thread Are you serious China!!! where a high ranking official states his intention of promoting a purge in foreign pilot ranks . It could be that the intention of rooting out bad seeds is just a pretext or excuse to get rid of good professionals also , because that is what's happening now. Not only does it affect pilots already working in China, but it also scares away many potential applicants because credibility of the whole system is compromised , and no intelligent pilot is willing to move to a country where the aeronautical authority is working against him, it's suicidal.

[kungfu panda]

NXLHS- Actually I totally agree with that post, so nothing to say.

[Karunch]

NXLHS they are indeed doing a good job of scaring off the sensible foreigners.

The rumour is that they have incapacitated a foreigner on the operating table while attempting an unnecessary angiogram- this being kept quiet of course. Just a routine medical check in China.

Anyone else want to risk their life for a 6 month contract?

[polax52]

There could be some improvement going on with regard to the medical. Somebody who expected a failure got a restriction on his medical.

[JimNich]

Not that I'm ever considering a career in Chinese aviation (I have too many friends in the offshore industry to want to work there) but I have found this quite inrtruiging. To the point, how irriconcilible is this need? Are the Chinese actually damaging their aviation industry by this ethinc cleansing of western pilots? Or is there more than enough homegrown talent to fill the gaps?

I don't know, but I'm guessing the Chinese aviation industry must be huge compared to our own, given the size of their country and population.

Excuse the ignorance, and apologies if this has been asked before.

[kungfu panda]

Jim-The potential for growth in the industry in China is almost beyond comprehension. The number of people flying every year is only around 3 or 4% of the population compared to 40% in the west, with a GDP expected to double in the next 12 years that number could quite easily go up to 10 to 15%. That would mean the requirement for large numbers of pilots. Whilst the Chinese do not seem to have any problem producing sufficient numbers of First officers, they do require a lot of experienced Captains. The problem as has been expressed on this thread is that they have a system which allows interest groups to put road blocks in the way of foreign Pilots successfully entering and working in China. My view is that these road blocks do, and will continue in the future to damage the growth of the industry.

[Iron Duke]

It may be a luxury these days ... but I would struggle to wish employment with any company that did not make me feel welcome and wanted. I do not mean carousing/ massaging of ego ... more an acknowledgement that you have been invited to join them in order to further the success of their company ... and that they expect you to return their investment.
I believe China to be a great place to work potentially, but all the anecdotal evidence of predetermined failures in the sim/ line training, and medical eccentricities detract from this. A shame ...
Just my thoughts ...

[kungfu panda]

Iron duke- I think you're totally right :hmm:

[PREPPY69]

....All what was said.:eek:
Medical competence there is from middle-age.
They buy high technology instruments but cannot read the results.
Decisions are arbitrary and taken by a single man who can erase you without explanations.
Extra checks like Angiogram or Ct scans are requested as routine checks while they are dangerous for your health.
Yes, recently one expat captain was incapacitated by one angiogram...damages have to be "fixed" at home with annual leaves of course.
Another recent one was fired "with immediate effect" after a positive check which was not confirmed in his country afterwhile.
This is not a 6 months contract but a 4 months contract as you have to do a few examinations in the 2 months before the expiry and any examination can stop your carreer "on a phone call" or an email "sorry but you didn't pass ".
:ugh:

[FlyingOfficerKite]

I've always seen the requirements of a pilot as being intelligence, aptitude and medical fitness.

Rather like the triangle of fire, take one element away and the fire goes out.

Assuming the Chinese nationals can pass the medicals, what's stopping the Chinese recruiting droves of locals to fill the vacant seats?!

[flyhardmo]

Assuming the Chinese nationals can pass the medicals, what's stopping the Chinese recruiting droves of locals to fill the vacant seats?!

Lack experience and a serious lack of Common sense. The save face culture is a dangerous one. The only thing preventing more accidents are technologically advanced aircraft.

[flieng]

Thanks for the info. I was looking at a contract there, I won't even bother applying.