PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - What job did you/are doing on your journey to be a pilot?
Old 5th Feb 2020, 08:44
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Arnuxs
 
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Originally Posted by Chris the Robot
Nah, that's a reference to the lorry driver shortage that supposedly exists, apparently with the fairly low current unemployment at a national level, the idea of paying a four-figure sum to get a HGV licence hasn't appealed to many. Or so I have heard, I may be wrong.

As I've said a few times on here, the secret to good T&Cs is to a large extent, supply and demand. It's one of the reasons the railway world is well-paid in the UK, the unions (and actually most of the train companies themselves) would never allow a situation to develop where people were allowed to buy their way in. All training is employer-funded and that means there is very rarely a surplus of staff, after all, why, as an employer, pay to train more people than you actually need. No surplus means that the threat of cheaper staff cannot be used to drive down T&Cs, in fact poaching has driven them up. It also helps that the railway market seems to be more stable than aviation, it's not as susceptible to the sort of economic shocks the airline industry has used as a wedge to leverage in things like P2F.

I believe the whole training cost debate is centered around employer and employee expectations. It's now normal for pilots to pay for their own training, so airlines expect not to pay it and trainees expect to pay it. On the railways in the UK, employees paying for their own training has never happened, therefore employers are much less likely to see it as reasonable. Any company that introduced it would probably attract very few good applicants since they'd only apply to places where their training was still paid for.
HI, I never really considered the train option. What railway company did you trained at and worked for? How difficult is the training and how long does it take? What wages can be expected once I start working and do they increse the wages say a year later or something?

Sorry if I ask a lot of questions but I am at a stage where I don't know what to do with my life now. I finished university in my country about half a year ago (mechanical engineering) but did not look for jobs here as the pay is poor. Was considering going to germany as they need engineers there but my german language is very basic as I studied it back in school many years ago... Have been helping my parents with house repairs for half a year and now I want to go and work... At the moment I'm am still registered in UK (I was living and working there for 2 years as a security officer as I had taken a break from my studies at the time) so I still have a chance to return there.

I kind of want to become a pilot but the training costs and difficulity deter me away... I found EFA whitch recently increased the training cost from 60 k to 90 k and introduced extra language requirement so now I am even more unsure. I heard EFA is a good option but maybe now after the changes there are better options I don't know.
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