Originally Posted by
C441
Try telling that to the Pilots who have little or no leave left now and are living off Jobkeeper. At least when Jobkeeper ceases (possibly/probably) at the end of September they'll have another few weeks of base pay income and can rely on having a further week of base pay for every 60 days they're stood-down after that. Some of those Pilots are conceivably looking at another 12 to 18 months of stand-down.
Sure, they can look at other income sources but after September it would be reasonable to assume that some businesses will fail and the job-seeker market will grow.
Those pilots could be made eligible for JobSeeker (not keeper), and that would give them at least a basic income.
That would probably be better than 1/8th of their base income (1 week per 60 days) in the form of leave.
As to what to do beyond that? Well that’ll have to be up to those stood down pilots themselves. Some are looking at temporarily re-skilling, looking at running their own small businesses, accepting positions of even unskilled labour if it’s available, modifying their lifestyle to suit.
Yes it’s a reduction in pay and lifestyle from what they were used to in the past. I don’t really have any words of encouragement beyond that. Nowhere in any society is there a job on a 747 Captain’s wage that you can easily walk into with no prior skills or experience.
If there is a word of encouragement, Aviation will return. The Boeing forecast was for 600,000 new pilots over the next 20 years, no doubt it’ll be decreased somewhat but it will still be a huge number. Developing economies are expanding and modernising, necessitating more aviation. The pandemic will subside, in a year or so (or even earlier if a second wave does not appear). Management will want an airline roughly as big as it was at the start of the year in 2022/23 I presume. It is good that pilots will be able to return back to their original positions on what are still good terms and conditions after that period of stand down, rather than being made redundant and having to find another long term job from scratch