Originally Posted by
aussieflyboy
A Cobham Captain pilot gave me the run down why he turned down mainline and it made a lot of sene:
Currently on ~210K per year in a lifestyle friendly job.
He estimated it’d take 22 years to make more then that at mainline and he would have to relocate multiple times.
No. That’s SH FO pay in normal times and not long at all to that point, straight away for some bases and a few years at most for all bases. You wouldn’t have to relocate at all with 5 bases for the 5 main cities. Time to LH will be less now, if you take out the gaps in recruiting (09-16 and 20-22) it’s looking like around 4-6 years worth of constant recruitment and you’ll get a LH FO slot. Note that’s with constant recruitment not overall time in company. By all measures wait times will be coming down.
Commuting is possible for most long haul types/bases. Lifestyle friendly? Well that’s up to the individual, plenty more options available in mainline though.
When you consider on average every 10 years QF seems to make people redundant or reduces hours
They haven’t made a
pilot compulsorily redundant since 1971.
Usually a VR program is followed by a mass amount of training, hundreds of slots available in the next year or so to only bring back a few 380s, not to mention the additional 787s to come, and then the 350s and A321 in 2 years time.
due to some sort of global event and the extra interest/extra loans ect over that period, he calculated (roughly) he’d be lucky to break even at retirement and he was only early-mid thirties.
I think his sums are off. Possibly if you were later in your career, but if you’re in your early to mid 30s looking at an an additional 30-35 years in the workforce you’d definitely be better off joining up.
Originally Posted by
Ollie Onion
I have a colleague who had a start date with Qantas and was delayed due to covid, they just had notification of a start date next month but have declined the position as now they have a Command upgrade just starting. Things change in 2 years.
I know a few who’ve already had a command upgrade in another entity in the last two years, but are counting down the days to get out!