Originally Posted by
trim it out
I fully concur with you and I am on your side of the fence in the crew room complaining, but allow me to play some devil's advocate if you will (I'm bored in isolation.)
Flying pay is a recruitment and retention payment. Was I "recruited" because of it? No, I didn't even know it was a thing when I filled out the application paper. The retention part is the bit that I disagree with, but understand, from a tax payers point of view. As a pilot am I more likely to stay in if I'm paid better from day 1 of being qualified? Probably, I can feather my nest from a younger age, holidays, cars, Sqn Breitlings and Bremonts, home etc etc but from a tax payers perspective, why is someone being given a retention payment when they don't need to be retained for the first 6 years as they are on a RoS contract? Add don't forget they will begin to receive Tier 1 after 6 years from starting flying training so could be getting RRP(F) before they're even qualified and useful, which upsets those that worked hard to pass the course to get the reward.
Perhaps it will take a generation or so to see if the change in flying pay is working as a retention incentive. I'm sure the closer to the 6 year point people get, the more they may become "I'll see how it goes".
And who knows what state the aviation industry will be in in 6 years time!
All very fair points. The bit i can never get my head around is surely to answer the tax payer you explain 'it costs between £2m and £4m to train a pilot depending on type, but we don't want to seem like we are 'overpaying' them, so we lose them for £20k a year for 15 years and then train another one....'?
Anyway, i think you are correct in 6 years we will see if it worked, they'd better hope it does as a Flt Lt maxes out pay bands after 7 years.