That place is horrible just recently left after 11 years. The lies and manipulation is at a all time high and morale at a all time low. Money isn’t bad but after awhile you just have had enough, strange people, and a strange culture. When I first got there It was still ran by expats so it was decent it over time as they retired the Saudis took over and that is when the downward spiral started. Thanks to the phenomenal management team of Mohammed Bulkhair and Fahaad Cynndy we are at the bottom of the barrel. They just can’t figure it out Bulkhair has been thrown out twice of his position due to poor performance but crawls back in there every time. His family must have a lot of juice. You can only cut the budget so much before you reach the point you have nothing left to fly. Good call Saudi Aramco SR VP keep those two id--ts in charge. Times are a changing for sure just not for the better.
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As reported in Arabian Aerospace:
http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2018-06-05-04.aspx
Long story short, no airport privatization in the world has lived up to the long term expectations and goals initially set. The IATA is recommending against privatization for short term financial gains, and to stay the course.
But what to do they know? We are Aramco and we have an IPO to consider.
I wish we could go back to the way things were. We used to be on the same team. Now it’s nothing but animosity and I don’t see the reason for it.
Within aviation, the Saudis are great. Someone mentioned their skills and attitude and I have to agree. For the most part they’re really good people that get the job done, and I hope to see more of them in the pipeline.
It’s just a select few in management that can only think of themselves. Several of them should be forced into mandatory retirement for the simple fact they’ve been with the department far to long, and most importantly they’re dishonest people.
Personally, I don’t play the Saudi vs. American games or vice-versa, I call a spade a spade and within management there’s some very corrupted people that work only on their own behalf/advancement, and could give a da#% about Aramco or anyone else.
Sadly, these people have teflon on them as nothing sticks and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
If they would just fix their job security problem then it wouldn’t bother me so much. I can tolerate a lot, even if they wanted to disallow further GC promotion to save money then I’m ok with that as I feel that my current salary and benefits makes it worth it for me and my family to live here.
However, the constant lying from management about whether we will remain Aramcons or not doesn’t sit well with me or many of my peers. To have our management say that the spin off isn’t occurring, and only a few days later to hear it all over the world & domestic news is just wrong. I should hear it first from my management team, it’s called integrity.
We didn’t sell our homes and uproots our kids from their schools, friends, and their family members - and certainly my wife didn’t give up her job so that we could come here to only be told to go back home and that I could work a 6&6 schedule.
No way would I even consider such a proposal. To see my wife and kids just six months out of the year, with no medical benefits, on a reduced salary, and retirement fund benefits like company matching to be withdrawn??
Yea, no thanks. The Indian and South American pilots can have all of that.
As someone already alluded to, the pay and benefits, especially in aviation have caught up stateside and it’s a pilot’s job market.
I'm not sorry. Saudi Aramco was a job not a career and their communities have become family-restrictive, not family-friendly dumps. God help you all when those get privatized and that was definitely on the reported list.
Sorry to hear that, I’m probably right behind you.
They took away the sws schedule from us saying it was being done so across Aramco, which turned out to be a lie. Then management group spends 6+ months coming up with a new schedule. Mind you, Aramco supposedly cares about the family unit and all of that jazz.
An email is sent out to all aviation employees thanking us for our hard work, and that the new schedule will be in place within two weeks. Says it’s a “world class and industry leading schedule”. Only issue was that nobody bothered to get the appropriate permission to implement the schedule until after the fact.
Subsequently, it was emphatically rejected as it violated several HR policies.
Never an apology or explanation as to what happened, and we’ve never heard a word about it again. We’ve been winging it ever since.
That was the final straw for me, and many others. Our time with our families doesn’t have a price tag, period.
We just packed and left. Aramco isn't a good work environment anymore and we got tired of the lies and uncertainty in the workplace and of the deteriorating communities and services outside the workplace.
Salaries (US) are now equivalent (after taxes/deductions/everything) to Aramco salaries anyway. After letting the compensation slip behind competitors, cracking down on the communities, and lifting the job security Aramco doesn't have anything to offer anymore.
Look past the PowerPoints and ask the right questions...I second that.
I’d also implore you to consider that we’ve added a lot of talented young Saudis - I mean that. The overwhelming majority of our new Saudi pilots flying both airplanes and helicopters have been top notch in terms of possessing the right skills and more importantly the right attitude. I’d put them up against anyone else in the world and far above many of the new contractors we are currently bringing in, and I say this as someone that’s trained pilots for most of my adult life.
The upper management needs to understand this, and get these younger pilots/mechanics onto a path where they can lead before the current management wrecks everything - and they will.
We just had an audit a week ago. Of course, there was someone from the management group that accompanied the auditing team everywhere they went. Several of the employees at lunch told us they were spoken to beforehand to keep their mouths shut, or to say things that weren’t necessarily the truth.
I guess management learned their lesson from the previous IS-BAO Level 3 audit...
Yep, you can’t make this stuff up. I work in Aviation and just keep watching all of the superb contractors coming in the door.
Ironically, the spin off is to protect the company from risk but they’re increasing it exponentially by the low quality pilots and mechanics they keep bringing in.
Right now, it isn’t pleasant to be an employee in aviation. You don’t know if you will have a job in the near future or not. Worse yet, nobody is honest enough from the management side to provide any clarity so that we can make plans on whether to return our families back home and look for jobs elsewhere.
I really haven’t seen such dishonesty in almost 30 years of flying all over the world.
CNBC (and several others) reported on a potential aviation spin-off today, lumping it into a portfolio of possible assets that include JHAH (which they mentioned was being considered for opening to the public)
That sounds promising. JHAH was a smashing success.
Nobody has been laid off, just several retirements so far.
Management remains the same, woefully incompetent, and to much politics.
Business as usual.
8 weeks on, 4 weeks off*
More Aramcon pilots leaving, and more new hires that can barely pass flight evaluations elsewhere.
They’re bringing in pilot’s now to fly airplanes on a 8 months on, 4 months off contract for well under 10k/mo and no medical. What’s crazy is that it’s a pilot’s job market world-wide now. Ex: in China, you make 200-300k annually as a 737 pilot.
Makes you wonder about the quality of pilots they’re bringing in if they’re ending up here vs. other locations that can offer better pay and better schedule.
On the helicopter side, the only thing preventing disaster in many cases are highly experienced Aramcon pilots who are becoming the last line of safety in many flight operations.
It’s a matter of time though, you can only go on for so long using abused aircraft, lowering maintenance standards, and hiring cheap labor to fly them.
Something has to give, and historically in aviation that has had some serious consequences.
Also, that certificate they were awarded was from the FAA. That means they’re only authorized to perform maintenance and receive payment for it as long as the aircraft being worked on is “N” registered. This means the aircraft has to be registered in the United States.
How many “N” registered aircraft are in Saudi Arabia?
None. The ones that are belong to Saudi Aramco. All of the others carry GACA registry.
So not sure how they plan to make a profit, let alone why they use this to support their aspirations for commercialization?
Sorry to hear that and hope you’ll land on your feet elsewhere. The reality though is that the impending crisis is self-induced.
According to data presented by the manager himself we already operate under budget for the first time ever, and also operate under half the amount from the nearest submitted bid to take over our operations.
So if we are already better than anyone else out there in terms of cost mitigation, why the need to privatize?
That’s the confusing part for many working in aviation. The assumption is that so certain individuals in management will reap the rewards and be given high level management positions.
That’s just a guess, not sure why else we’d be going down this path though.
Such is life in a department that offers zero transparency, and communicates amongst a limited and privileged few.
As a ELP victim a year ago, still depressed.
I was directly involved in rendering my service from Dhahran to Aviation Dept. In depth crisis
there convenience me finally, why I was an early victim.
God bless Aviation from further pain.
Sounds like the status quo.
So, in a nutshell, the system is working.
It’s all smoke and mirrors. Our OE assessment was recently released and after reading the results I was blown away by the gross inaccuracies that were represented. It’s as if the auditor only spoke to pre-determined people to gather his information from and base AFI’s off of.
For example...he highlighted the Aviation Department’s leadership in reaching a milestone by obtaining a FAA certificate that allows our maintenance department to charge external (non-Aramco) entities for the cost of maintenance repairs. This will be value-added and helps boost the Aviation Division’s business strategy for commercialization, it says.
The irony is that Aramco Aviation outsourced all major maintenance repairs of our own fleet to the UAE (at great expense) because we don’t have the manpower to maintain our own helicopters. Manpower isn’t improving at all either. In fact, it’s becoming a serious issue and we are now hiring mechanics from the Indian subcontinent. The new (contract) pilots being hired are lacking to say the least. Many don’t speak English as a first language, and some simply are not good pilots. It’s such an issue, that our chief pilots now need to interview all new-hires in person and evaluate them in a simulator before making a decision.
Another example...we were commended on our safety culture by obtaining another certificate. Specifically, we received credit for the implementation of a fatigue risk assessment for pilots to ensure they’re well rested and ok to perform their flight duties.
The reality? Two pilots were fired not even six months ago for turning down a flight due to severe fatigue. This decision was direct from management. The Director of Safety stood up for those pilots, and he was sent home two months ago.
In an effort to reach the highest safety certification an auditor from America was sent to interview us. The result wasn’t good, and he revoked the authorization for this certification based on those pilots being fired, and due to speaking with the pilots and mechanics. He spoke in front of me, and stated that he got the distinct impression management was shielding him away from certain areas. True to form, management did indeed ask why the auditor was allowed to audit Tanajib operations.
I could go on with many other examples. Again though, it’s all smoke and mirrors. What the manager presents to upper management is a farce to say the least.
Sad times.
I am aware that there's talk of a spin-off in lieu of the forthcoming IPO. That in doing so, corruption will be eliminated and costs reduced.
However, the reality is that corruption has only gotten worse. As more, and more departments begin to privatize or spin-off into an Aramco (owned) subsidy, the path in which individuals can take even more from the system has gotten much easier.
The Aviation Department is a great example of this. In a world market in which general aviation is booming, this department has historically ran (until recently) massive budget deficits annually. The changes needed to fix this aren't very complex either. It has been the same (Saudi) management for for the last decade responsible for this, and instead of seeking out the right leaders, these individuals will become Operations Directors, and high level Managers in the newly created company, effectively doubling their salaries. Again, these are the same people that ran the department into the ground that will now be in charge of a legitimate airline.
The employees are the ones that suffer. The leadership refuses to be transparent or even communicate the new path that every Saudi employee is already aware of. It's almost, as if they're instructed not to share this life/career changing information with them. As one might expect, rumors are rampant which has caused very low morale for those that are flying. Most pilots are actively looking for employment elsewhere.
What is apparent though, is a need to reduce operating costs. To that end, the Aviation Manager has convinced those above him that the only way to accomplish this is through the creation of a new company - one in which he will retain a leadership role in of course. The reality, that any one of his pilots, many of whom have decades of aviation experience in the world's leading companies can tell him is that the problem reflects poor leadership, and has much to do with scheduling inefficiencies.
The optics that senior leaders don't see, is the fact that the new Boeings purchased often fly with only 10-15 passengers (I've seen less). The helicopters fly daily to/from destinations with 0-2 passengers. Most other operators wouldn't stand for this wastefulness (because they'd go bankrupt), and instead would begin consolidating flights to optimize every seat thus reducing costs. This info isn't being shared because the manager needs to show to those above him the "overwhelming" need of aviation support, and the need to expand as a result. He proves it to them by the amount of flights he conducts, but again fails to share the fact that on a daily basis the new airplanes routinely fly with the tray tables down all the way until seat 12 so that the weight is distributed over the wings, to remain within center of gravity limitations since the plane is flying virtually empty. This is because they don't have the "need" as they lead others on to believe. They can only project an increase in air travel but that to is subjective, especially when NAS Air and Saudia are no longer the only domestic players.
Instead of taking on the real problems to reduce costs, such as ineffective leadership and seat optimization the department has elected to push out every Aramcon pilot and replace them with low quality contractors that will work for half as much. They've already let several of these contractors go due to lack of flying skill, and many have poor attitudes. There is zero loyalty to the company and they're here only for the paycheck until something else comes along, in which they will depart without advanced notification. Also, being overlooked is that the market in rotary-wing is picking up world-wide meaning that people no longer need to commit to working here. The recent Trump announcement deregulating the offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico will further exacerbate the issues with manpower. This doesn't take into account the fixed-wing side in which any one the pilots can leave elsewhere due to the world-wide pilot shortage.
Ultimately, it's really unfortunate what has been allowed to occur. Aramco Aviation has a long and storied history, and until now was the longest serving, privately held Aviation company in the world - they've been flying since the 1940's. Honestly, there's so much to be proud of and it has accomplished so much. It is just sad that it's all being erased so that a handful of locals can continue to leach off of the system.
This will become JHAH all over again. Mark my words.