I’ll give you some facts:
When the pandemic started, numerous people were saying “This is as fantastic time to start training! In 18 months it’ll be back to normal.” That didn’t age well. I know someone who got made redundant only last week from an LCC job in Europe where he thought he was safe. The removal of the JRS may cause more casualties even now.
Business travel will undoubtedly suffer, people are travelling less and given the pressures the environmentalists are mounting it may well become ever increasingly expensive to fly. ‘Stay-cations’ are really catching on. Yes of course people want to get away, but remember we are comparing this to the bumper 2019 year, things may not return to that level of flying for several years.
The cost of flight training has steadily gone up and up. I spoke to a Cpt recently, and his training (back in’t day) set him back ~£50k integrated, his first airline job paid him about the same. Now you could be facing a bill of ~£130k with a starting salary of ~£30k. Add that to the insane cost of housing and you've got a pretty crap life-style. Seasonal positions are more common, it suits the airlines much more than it’ll suit you.
Ignore everything you hear about ‘pilot shortage’. This is a myth pedalled by the big flight schools to keep a steady stream of naive 19 yr olds with £100k spare walking through the door. Why does going modular cost £50k but integrated cost £100k? I’ll give you a clue, it’s their bottom line.
Airbus are going to seriously start looking at single pilot operations soon. Shortage or not, they can make the system safer and half the flight crew costs for any airline. Who wouldn’t want to buy into that? I’m surprised we still even have pilots tbh, Tesla will nail self-driving cars shortly and I doubt it’ll be too long before airlines turn into something resembling the DLR in London. We’re expensive and make mistakes.
If you wanted to be a pilot for your ‘passion of flying’ then you should look elsewhere, you don’t ‘fly’ an airliner, you manage it’s systems. You observe while the autopilot flies it for you. You don’t even get to make any decisions, ATC tell you where to go, The company tell you what to do you just comply blindly and recite SOPs to the point your brain isn’t paying attention but your mouth is moving. It is the ultimate zombie job. It’s really boring.
I asked a few flight crew what their favourite thing about the job was before I took the plunge, and they all said the same thing; “I’m well paid and I get lots of time off”.
That should have been a warning sign for me, best thing about the job, money. Second best thing about the job, the fact that you don’t have to do the job very often. One of the best things about being a pilot, is you don’t have to go to work very often. Just think about that for a moment. I wish I had.
I’ve worked in small companies and big companies prior to this ‘career’, and I can tell you all those people that say “you’re just a number in an airline” are absolutely correct. More often than not crewing couldn’t give a rats arse if something incredibly important has come up, or that they are going to make you wait 6 hours for a taxi rather than rebook it. You are a commodity, and an annoying one that answers back and goes sick.
The current job market is flooded with experienced crew, for those of you graduating now you are in for a very painful few years while when airlines do eventually start re-hiring, you’ll be last to be picked. If you are in ground school then you are very lucky. See this as a gift, an opportunity from god to jump ship before it goes down. Yes it will have cost you £5k but that’s not too bad.
Also don’t forget some crew flying today have been made redundant several times already. Airlines rely on public disposable income to operate. And in a recession it is the first thing to go. Financial crisis and 9/11 are proof of this. In 10 years we’ll be hit with another recession and this all starts again. It is a VERY cyclical industry. Want to risk your job, house, lifestyle, kids school fees etc on a job that yo-yos every 10 years? Think you’re safe when you get a command? Well no because you’ll have lost all your seniority all over again.
SARS was recent history, what’s stopping this happening again in another 10/20 years? Countries will be FAR quicker to act in future, international travel will be the first thing to be stopped in fear of another Covid pandemic.
One final note, flying gives you zero transferable skills, people will say otherwise that we are amazing leaders, team-players etc etc, but ask yourself why all the redundant pilots either work as delivery drivers or shelf stackers? Once you leave aviation, either through choice or redundancy you are essentially zero qualified to do anything other than fly. A lot of people go into flying after A-levels, and 10 years down the line
a brick because they soon realise how poor their prospects in the big wide world are. The future is computers, AI, big-data, tech, sustainability, renewables. Go and start a career in something that will give you a fulfilling job for the next 40 years. Because this aint it.