Professional Pilot Training (includes ground studies)A forum for those on the steep path to that coveted professional licence. Whether studying for the written exams, training for the flight tests or building experience here's where you can hang out.
As I said, I'm on the other side of the Irish sea, and the Irish economy is pretty spectacularly derailing at the moment, our unemployment number is at the highest level (6.1%) in a long time, construction jobs which account for a disproportionate share of the Irish economy relative to most industrial nations has experienced a 15% loss of employment in a year, and car sales have fallen off the edge of a cliff. Government tax receipts are now €6bn under budget, the welfare bill is heading North and the Government have brought forward the Budget by three months to try and, depending on your point of view, bully the social partners into a pay pause, or inject some realism into national pay discussions.
So maybe the pax numbers i'm seeing are just reflecting circumstances which are particular to the Irish market, where loads ARE down, but I very much doubt it.
Granted, the Irish circumstances may be more acute than those the UK are experiencing but I wouldn't take too much comfort from the Ryanair August number.
I heard a radio headline that Ryanair numbers were up 19% alright but I didn't hear what the yields were and I don't know the Easyjet numbers but the Ryanair load factor was also down and how much of this is new capacity that didn't exist last year?
BA, who wouldn't be adding routes or airframes at the rate that Ryanair are said August traffic was down 1.6% in August and the load factor was also down 2.7% to 77%.
Last time I watched Sky news Alistair Darling was saying that the UK economic situation wasn't exactly rosy, and the markets have been giving the pound sterling a reasonably significant write down vis a vis the Euro and more notably the dollar, based on the fact that they concur with the Chancellors assessment.
I think that the winter will prove me right when I say pax are choosing not to travel. I would guess that a lot of August volume is people on annual or semi annual holidays and would have been booked well in advance. I would say that forward bookings aren't running at 20% year on year volume growth and I would say that they are showing a decline although I don't know this.
It is my opinion that over the course of the winter there will have to be significant capacity taken out of the market because there will be fewer passengers who want to travel.
I'm more interested in what the November 08 and January 09 numbers are going to be like compared to the corresponding period 12 months ago. As I said already, forward bookings may take some time to "wash out."
Easyjet and Ryanairs passenger numbers are rising. At the airport I work at, EZY has 8 flights a day, and on weekends they have 9 flights. Each flight comes in with a 90% load factor at least. However this is due to the fact that EZY, when the fuel crisis kicked in, decided that they would chase load factors in order to keep their shares up. EZY have lots of cash in their pocket so they can afford to be less profitable for a year or two, in the interest of keeping high load factors on their flights. Other airlines decided to add fuel surcharges and their load factors have gone down. Same goes for Ryanair, they decided to cover the losses in other ways (grounding a/c, no bonuses for management.... etc..)
To get back on the topic, I dont understand why people are freaking out about this. Speaking to some older friends, who were doing their CPL's during the early/mid 1990's, they were telling me how difficult it was to find a job then. Then there were literally half the airlines there are today, and options for finding a job were SEVERLY limited in many parts of Europe. Now the only problem is the investment. However, I believe there is an upturn and there has been for years now. Two low cost airlines in Europe need about 400 pilots each in 2009 to cover their expansion plans... I dont think that has happened before... You have more bizzjet and pvtjet jobs available than ever before, and now many airlines in Europe give jet jobs to youngsters with 250hrs! That was a dream come true before 2000. Chin up people. Follow your dream and be flexible...
Very few airlines will be paying double for fuel this Christmas season. Some may have hedged and locked themselves into futures contracts at higher prices. It just may turnout that O'Leary's gamble to not hedge will help Ryanair a bit this winter, though he undoubtedly bled a lot of cash this summer. At least he had it to bleed.
I still took my holiday and everyone I know took theirs too this summer. I even paid a bit more to go on BA, as Ryanair's ridiculous baggage limits (15kg max in the hold) were totally unsuitable for the amount of kit needed for a longish holiday.
Double fuel prices and only a 2.7% drop in yield says it all; the European summer holiday is sacrosanct. I suspect the winter sun or ski breaks will be too.
EZY shares have crashed by more than half so the strategy you believe they have clearly isn't good. RYR the same and both top bosses saying there is a disaster afoot!
There may be double the airlines now but there are three times the wannabes and all we care about it getting a job against the competition for that job. You think the only problem is investment (reckless debt accretion) rather than actual jobs? Are you licking the windows mad? The jobs have all dried up, nobody is hiring and 26 airlines have gone bust so far and Autumn isn't even here yet!
Which 2 loco airlines need 400 pilots for next year or is that just the acid kicking in? Biz-jets are rapidly falling on their arse as anyone in NetJets will tell you. v Who are you? Are you a flying instructor or school owner?
As Vin Diesel points out unemployment in Ireland is above 6% and in Spain it is above 10% and in both it is rising quickly, just like in the USA. The same will happen here and once that happens the worst house price crash ever will actually accelerate.
This time last year the media and politicians told you that half of what already has happened wouldn't. They are now crapping themselves about the half that is going to happen that you don't even know about yet.
Easyjets shares would have gone down three times as fast if it wasnt for their load factors. You think the EZY are stupid in wanting to keep their prices down to fill their aircraft? You think they dont want to make money??? People are still flying!!! Some airlines are just lowering capacity on routes. But the actual number of a/c flying is actually more! The demand for flying is still there and will be because traveling is second nature now, as it wasnt 15 years ago.
Personally everyone I know, who has an fATPL, and has been willing to be flexible as to where they live and work, has found a job in no time. The ones who wanted to stay next to their girlfriend and buddies, didnt. And of course, knowing people inside airlines never hurts... Captains will always retire and F/O's will always need to become captains. However I do agree that there are 100 times more wannabees today and that increases competition..
No I am not an instructor of school owner, and last time I checked this forum was for discussion and not irony, so I dont understand where your comments about drugs fit in to this discussion...
Some airlines are just lowering capacity on routes. But the actual number of a/c flying is actually more!
Nah I'm sorry, but conerted lurker wasn't too wide of the mark. Maybe not drugs, but you are certainly consuming too many e-numbers or something. Admittedly it does depend on which part of the world you are referring to with the above comment, if you are talking about Europe it makes no sense. The likes of ezy are not just cutting capacity on routes, it is capacity full stop. BA, FR and EZY are all grounding A/C for the winter. It is simple - in the current climate they will lose less by having them sat doing nothing rather than flying round near-empty.
At easyjet over the past few months a base has been announced for closure, STN has lost 3 a/c for the winter, a management cull has taken place at head office, they are offering unpaid leave for the winter and cabin crew on seasonal contracts are expecting to go. Trust me, we won't have more a/c flying this winter, neither will ryanair, neither will BA......
2009 is when the the effects of decreased consumer spending will really be felt. Food prices are up by 9%, gas and electric bills are up by 35% and 9% respectively (this varies between providers).
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The demand for flying is still there and will be because traveling is second nature now, as it wasnt 15 years ago.
People may be continuing to spend on air travel at the moment but as i've said before, surveys suggest many currently consider it a neccessity and not a luxury, something that the poster seems to agree with in the above quote. However with average fuel bills set to rise anywhere up to £400 (it's claimed) with further increases predicted in January, once the fuel bills come through in 2009 it will bring home to people how much the cost of living is really going up and continuing to rise. Non genuine necessities will soon become lurxuries once more and demand will fall off just as quickly as it appeared along with any predicted need for pilots.
It's the beancounters job to take advantage and plan ahead for anything positive that the market brings but be assured, the good ones will also have a contingency plan for any down turn, but unlike their plans for expansion, they tend not to be so vocal about their contigencies though as it's bad for buisness. You need to start looking to the medium to long term and not to what's directly ahead.
Last edited by ChrisLKKB : 5th September 2008 at 18:03.
Fleet size last August??? Judging by such a big increase assuming they fly around full all day every day now at 100% loadfactor that would mean the load factor back in august 07 was at best 75% which seems low for easyjet.
These figures are skewed somehow, you would expect that a larger airline would fly more people...
Although I welcome any good news, this is damn lies and statistics.....
Alex given such wonderful growth and traffic numbers perhaps as yourself one question.... why is there a recruitment freeze at pretty much all of the UK's largest carriers and fleet reductions/aircraft being ground at pretty much all of them??
As Warren Buffet once said "in business the view through the rear view mirror is always clearer than through the windscreen", I appreciate your position in the industry but to say that the average consumers propensity to travel is uneffected by a recession would seem to stretch the imagination.
Some people really ought to know better. Easyjet and Ryanair's load factors are up. So what?
The real issue is that their share prices have crashed and in all likelyhood it is because their YIELD (remember that?) has fallen dramatically. We've seen their interim financial results. Not good. Load factor means cock all if people are paying six pence for their ticket.
Things are crap. As I said before, shove your head in the sand all you want but it won't change anything.
I think the fundamental issue here is the differentiation between "discretionary travel" i.e.leisure and non discretionary business / commuter travel. Locos for the most part concentrate on leisure discretionary routes (FR, EZY - although EZY less so) and its these that will obviously be hit.
The likes of FR won't and don't capitalise upon business travellers and routes. Take Paris as an example - FR keep costs down by flying into lower usage regional hubs (Beauvais) which have zero use for business travelling pax. As the credit crunch worsens, people aren't going to want to fly to regional European airports as these really only serve the leisure market and of course as consumers tighten the purse strings leisure traffic will hit an all time low.
You can hedge your fuel and costs until the cows come home, but that has b***er all significance if your route structure doesn't create the required yields.
Alex, it was meant as a collective 'you' but I guess you have a vested interest in constantly saying everything is alright. It's not about who's right in time because as history tells us, things will eventually pick up. That's the nature of the beast. Your response to GGB referencing your post #225 is nonsense. Are you seriously suggesting that ALL UK carriers have halted recruitment and cut capacity just to hedge their bets and to try not to get sacked for recruiting too many crew? No, they've done it survive. It is that drastic. You can only say it so many times, if collectively people can't understand it then it's their lookout.
Flight schools will always try and sell the dream. The reality right now is very different.
Yes, the charge of 'vested interest' is easy to level, but my end of the business is historically not affected much by short and medium term fluctuations. The ATPL is the first step on the professional licensing road and most of my customers are looking at a job market 2 years away when they start with me. Although I do supply material to integrated schools as well, in a downturn people tend to switch to modular so that tends to even out our sales. I'm totally in agreement with WWW, and presumably you, that now is not a good time to start integrated training or to splash on an IR. Whether its a good time to start modular or not depends on your view of the job market in two years time.
Yes, I do seriously mean to suggest that airline recruiters have a notoriously short term view and for the reasons I stated. It would take a very courageous and visionary recruiter to continue blithely through the barrage of warnings about recesssion and, if he did, the gain would be small. People are the same the world over.
The latest data shows passenger numbers up, load factors up and share prices up (yes, I know not as high as last summer) and oil prices down. It strikes me that this extraordinarily gloomy thread has lost touch with reality. All the evidence says the airline industry is OK, in fact more than OK. The rest is speculation.
Edited to add: I should qualify that before the state of the US carriers is raised in objection. I mean most of the UK industry is OK, the American and possibly the Spanish carriers have their own problems. Some of the weaker small UK carriers have, of course, already failed - in line with MOL's predictions - but their failure will have had little effect on the jobs market and, I guess, some of their routes will have been take up by the big boys.
Last edited by Alex Whittingham : 6th September 2008 at 19:05.
Like Alex, I've been kicking around aviation for more than a couple of decades. Personally, I always look at the long game - Zero to Hero takes significant time. Some (please let's not get into a discussion about the definition of "some") people are undoubtedly in the wrong place at the wrong time but the reality is that there will be a point where there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The important bit will be seeing that light and being in a position to react.
As an ex-RAF type, I have seen the carnage caused when various training courses/schools have been closed due to lack of immediate demand, only for the RAF to have to spend vast amount of money rebuilding that training regime. Inevitably, the demand has then outstripped supply whilst the training system ramps-up. The secret is to get the right people, in the right place, at the right time.
I think most of us agree that the prudent course of action right now is to walk rather than run; that doesn't necessarily mean sitting down on the park bench and giving up.
Sorry for all the cliches, but I'm in that sort of mood.
To a degree I agree with some of what you're saying. For what it's worth I personally think the integrated way of training is far too expensive and too risky, particularly at the moment.
I do, however, take issue with this:
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All the evidence says the airline industry is OK, in fact more than OK. The rest is speculation.
Get a grip!! 26 airlines bust worldwide before the winter is not speculation. It is, unfortuanely, cold hard fact.
Last edited by Topslide6 : 7th September 2008 at 09:56.
What drugs are you on exactly? 
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