Employment Statistics

[gomez]

Greets all

Been browsing the forums for a while but not posted much so far.

Im in the situation of having to make a decision about whether to attempt to enter this profession in the very near future. Delaying it any further is no longer fair to my fiancee, or any other people who continuely have to put up with hearing about my dream.

My plan would be to go for integrated training (to get it done as quickly as possible obviously with the aim of securing that prized first job as soon as possible.) Im lucky that I could fund most of this but have a reasonably good job with a relatively bright future ahead that I would have to kiss goodbye to.

Ive nearly got my PPL, scored highly in the GAPAN tests and just need to sort out my Class 1 (which hopefully wont be a fence where I fall).

What im after, (and Ive seen it somewhere on the forums before) is some current statistics about pilot employment. (i.e. how many fATPL's/ATPL's are in/out of jobs, predictions for percetage growth in the industry in the coming years, number of pilots nearing retirement etc). If anyone can provide me with a link or a pointer to a previous post, I would be more than grateful. Perhaps the link (if existing) could be made into a sticky?

I know that curent statistics (if they can be found at all!) are not probably going to help my task of persuasion. At least ill be seeing it as it is though. What I think will be more difficult, is trying to convince people closest to me that in my opinion, getting into the job market in about 18 months will be quite a bit better than it has been recently.

Thanks to all for information Ive had from here over the last 6 months or so of using Pprune :-)

[TRon]

I think there will be a few which will post here with much the same attitude. You can look at the stats all you want, they are irrelevant.

As I am sure you know pilot recruitment follows the economy and world economic situation and is sinusoidal at the best of times.

In short there is no 'good' time to start training and if you think an integrated will increase your chances, well that little topic has been done to death.

I think the general concencus is it used to, but not nowadays since there is no traditional airline sponsorship which is what it was designed for. It is roughly the same as modular, so long as you do modular within about 2 years (only it costs about double).

I digress!, some will say start now when things are slowly picking up, others will say wait till a boom but others will say wait till things are really slow and by the time you are finished things will be picking up again, it is really down to you.

Fact: things are getting better, but who knows what they'll be like in 18/24 months which is realistically when you will be finished if you started tommorow.

According to the Employment Opportunites Conference there are somewhere in the region of 800/1000 'Low Houred' pilots out there looking for work, which doesn't include flying instructors also josteling for the right seats we all want so badly. There are also about 4 New Instrument ratings being spat out of Training every day. All the jobs we are hearing of are about are for 10-20 seats of which no-one really know how many are low-houred. Then there are the many European Pilots flocking here for work. It all seems doom and gloom doesn't it?

At the end of the day you have to be 'in it to win it' and you cant apply for anything without that little blue book, and a bucket load of hard work, money and determination. The CPL/IR is a ticket to start job hunting, not to get a job straight away. I think waiting for an upturn to increase your chances is like trying predict the FTSE 100, no-one really knows, but some people seem to do really well out of it and they're the people you get to hear about dwon the grapevine not the thousands of other traders going broke!

Best of luck with whatever you choose. Getting the licence is just the start of your struggles you have to make it happen!!