Originally Posted by
hobbit1983
With the greatest respect (you may well not be guilty of this, but there are plenty who are) herein lies the nub of the problem; there are lots of aspiring commercial pilots who have dreamed of flying for a living. Somewhere along the way, in the process of chasing this dream, they forget that it is still a job, and should be treated as such. What happens is they end up accepting ever worse Ts & Cs to achieve their dream.
And a lot of airlines know this, and exploit accordingly, until we end up with people accepting peanuts to fly, paying for type ratings, working for free, or in some cases, paying to fly....
The biggest issue I'm seeing is the pay. Sitting here as a Software Developer in London at 26, I'd need to be in the left hand seat doing long haul for BA to get the same salary. Did it take £100k of training to get here? Absolutely not. I can also get a new job within a week if I wanted.
But it's not for me and I have no plans on settling down any time soon and have nothing really tieing me down anyway and that's why I'm looking at being a pilot rather than it being a dream. Living out of a suitcase jumping from hotel to hotel in a less than desirable part of Europe? No problem. Conditions and pay for entry level seem shameful for the work that has to be put in to get there.