Originally Posted by
PomWog
I’m going to be moving to Australia (WA) from the UK soon. I’ll have a visa allowing me to live and work, and then I’ll progress onto permanent residency.
I want to get my PPL, and Night Rating out of the way as soon as possible in order to progress onto ME, IR, CPL, and ATPL.
Define "soon"... you might find you'd be better off in the long run waiting until you move to Australia before doing anything more than a PPL. Licence conversion from EASA to CASA is not exactly a straight forward, box ticking exercise... start here:
https://www.casa.gov.au/standard-pag...rseas-licences
Even from NZCAA to CASA can be problematic, and we have the "Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Agreement" (aka TTMRA) in place which is meant to make it one!
My main goal is to aim for a first officer position at an airline but it seems that it may be much harder than it is in the UK. It appears that nobody really wants you in Australia unless you have at least 1000 hours under your belt.
Australia has a relatively large GA sector (compared with UK/EU)... as such there has historically been numerous opportunities (especially "up norf") to get your hours before progressing through to the airlines. The "zero2hero" cadetships were not really a thing until relatively recently. Certainly, there is nowhere near the number of 250hr cadets sitting in the RHS of A320's and 737's as there are across the UK/EU.
Having said that, there are cadetship opportunities available from the likes of Jetstar (refer:
https://www.jetstar.com/au/en/careers/cadetship-program) although it is "closed" for applications at the moment and I believe there are also cadetships on offer for Qantaslink (Turboprop) and REX (another turboprop operator) ... For the Jetstar cadetship, both course costs (circa AUD$150K for 2019) and barrier to entry are high, as they have very limited placements and obviously a lot of applicants. Not overly familiar with either the QLink or REX ones, so can't comment as to costs involved (I would guess "high"
)
So, thinking logically, the next best thing while I’d build hours is becoming a flight instructor after completion of my CPL. Are there many positions for this kind of work? I’d assume it is a booming market at the moment.
You can get a feel for the (GA) market conditions by looking at the AFAP job listings...
Pilot Jobs
There are generally always listings looking for instructors. Also, in WA, there was a large flight school (China Southern)... but last I heard they had had some issues and had (temporarily) ceased flight training operations. Although looking at the AFAP listings, it would appear that "they've recently started up again".
It all comes down to the fact that I don’t want to be stuck with £50,000 worth of licensing without a job in sight.
I’m really stuck with the whole situation and any help to clear it up would be much appreciated!
There are currently a lot of job opportunities in AU, as evidenced by the listings on AFAP, (then are even a few popping up here in NZ!
)... although not necessarily low hour RHS Airline jobs. And the music could stop tomorrow and you'd be back looking at 2000 hr minimum for a turboprop FO interview... I guess a lot of it will come down to how old you are, how much funding you have, and when exactly you're relocating to AU.
You might also want to have a browse through these forums:
GA forum for AU/NZ/Pacific:
https://www.pprune.org/pacific-gener...-questions-91/ Airline/RPT forum for AU/NZ/Pacific:
https://www.pprune.org/australia-new...nd-pacific-90/
They contain a lot of good information... but be warned it could take some reading/digging to find!
