Crew who flew a national carrier through a crisis: the war years, the currency collapse, the pandemic and the airlines that kept flying when nobody else did
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#1 MEA, Beirut, and I wrote the MEA thread and the replies asked about the hard years. This is the crew room thread for it, and not just for Lebanon: every national carrier crew member who flew through a crisis has the same story with different details, and the crew who joined after do not know it. Post yours.
Beirut
The port explosion in August 2020, the airport six kilometres away, the crew who were at home and the crew who were on the ground, and the flights that operated the next day because the diaspora needed to come home and the injured needed to leave. The currency collapse that made the MEA dollar salary the only stable income in many families. The conflicts that closed the airspace and the MEA aircraft that flew the routes around them. The crew who did all of that are the senior crew now and they do not talk about it at briefings. They talk about it on layovers, late.
The pattern
Every national carrier through a crisis has the same shape: the airline becomes the country's lifeline, the crew become something more than service staff, the operation runs on fewer aircraft and more heart, and the crew who were there carry it. The crew who join after inherit an airline with a memory.
The pandemic version
Every airline on this forum has the pandemic story: the grounded fleets, the repatriation flights with full PPE, the crews furloughed and the crews who flew the cargo only 777s with the seats full of boxes, the ones who never came back and the ones who did. The Scandinavian and European crews on the strong agreements were protected; the agency contract crews were not; the Gulf crews were sent home or kept in the buildings. Five years on, the crew rooms still divide into the ones who were there and the ones who joined after.
What it does to a crew
A bond that the new joiners cannot join and should not try to. A pride in the airline that is different from brand loyalty. A specific calm in an emergency, because the crew who evacuated a city know what an emergency is. And, honestly, a fatigue that shows at year ten, because the crisis years were not rest.
For the crew who joined after
Ask the seniors on a layover, not at a briefing. Listen. Do not compare your bad month to their bad year. And understand that the airline you joined was built in the crisis years by people who are still on the roster, which is why some rules exist that make no sense until you know the story behind them.
For the crew who were there
Post the version you want the new joiners to know. Not the whole thing. The part that explains the rule.
EgyptAir, Ethiopian, Kenya Airways, Air Algérie, Tunisair, PIA, Ukraine's carriers if any read this, the Gulf crews of 2020, the Scandinavian crews of the restructurings, the Thai and Malaysian crews of the bankruptcies, Cathay's rebuild crews: this thread is yours.
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#2 Cathay, joined in the rebuild, and the crew who flew the 2020 to 2022 years with the quarantine hotels and the closed loop rosters are a different crew from us. I ask on layovers, as Leila says. They tell it late. It explains every rule we have about rest.
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#3 Ex SAS, and the restructuring years were our crisis: the bases that closed, the colleagues who left, the agreement that held. The crew who stayed built the airline Lotte works at. She knows it. Most do not.
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#4 PIA, and the Pakistani national carrier through its years is a thread in itself: the grounding of the Europe routes, the crew who flew the domestic through the floods, the Hajj operation every year regardless. The pride Leila describes is exactly ours. The fatigue too.
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#5 EgyptAir, and the 2011 years and the 2020 years and the airline that flew through both. The Cairo crew rooms have the memory. The rules about crew transport at night exist because of a specific night. Ask on a layover.
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#6 Ghana, and the Ethiopian crews flew the whole continent's repatriations in 2020 when every other African carrier was grounded. The Ethiopian crew rooms have that pride and they earned it in front of the whole continent.
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#7 Virgin, 14 years, and the 2020 cargo only 747s with the cabin full of boxes and a crew of four is my crisis story. Not a war. Not a collapse. But the crew who flew those know something the 2023 joiners do not, and it is the calm.
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#8 Ex Emirates, and the 2020 buildings, the crews sent home, the ones kept on and the ones let go: the Gulf crisis story is about the contract and the distance. The crew who stayed through it are the senior crew Tommy and Josh describe. They do not talk about it. They should, here.
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#9 @purserpaul the calm is the thing every reply has named and it is the thing the crisis gives that nothing else does. Not a war, not a collapse, a cabin full of boxes: the calm is the same. Thank you all. The new joiners have the thread now.