Originally Posted by
A320LGW
At the recent roadshow they used an odd conversion rate, showing an 85 hr month as 7900EU. I used the actual conversion rate and it was <7500EU.
The guys I spoke to all seemed a bit disappointed by it, it's hardly worth leaving Europe for. Contract dependent, Ryanair FOs are making over 6000EU net, some even more. I guess it'll still attract south Americans, Africans and Asians so they won't raise it.
That salary is not always stable as it depends 100% of the agreements in place in the country you're based. The difference in net salary between a Portuguese or an Italian or a Polish base is huge. These salaries don't reflect the cost of living either. So a pilot on an Italian contract based in Marrakech secondment has a completely different economy than someone based in hugely expensive Dublin or in Portugal where they take almost a third of your salary in taxes. In Ryanair when I was a contractor FO I was indeed reaching 7000€ or even 8000€ per month on pre-pandemic summers but there was no basic salary so on low hour months that would quickly go down to less than 3000€. If you swap days and gather annual leave and don't fly for a month you'll barely make 2000€. Then I switched base and got a proper national contract with high basic salary and low flying rate. My average was 4000€ per month as senior FO (<7000€ for Captains) and not so much affected by flying hours. Life in any European city will set you back 3000€ easily between housing, transport, food, etc, including many of the things that Emirates includes in the package and things that I simply don't do because I don't need them but would enjoy them if they were provided. In the end if I'm lucky I'm saving 1500€.
Keep in mind that this salary already includes extras for things like the simulator checks, your uniform (yes you will buy your own uniform and work trolley), hotel expenses during sims (yes, you book your own hotel for the sim), food at work, etc. There's absolutely no assistance by the airline and nothing is included. You're on your own.
The only people who are happy with these conditions are those who value living in a city where it would be impossible to live in permanently working at another airline. Imagine someone with a family based in Alicante. People who simply need to live in Girona or Bratislava where no other companies have a base. Those are the ones who accept making less money and going through 4 killer turnarounds per day.
When you compare that to the salary in most other airlines and certainly the ones in the Middle East you have to consider that apart from it you will receive assistance in those areas that LoCo companies leave everything to you. You should also consider other benefits like End of Service payment, pension fund, medical/dental, platinum card, schools, PROFIT SHARE, etc. That's a lot of money and it adds up over time. You can think of it strictly in terms of money but the way I see it is more about quality of life. About the hours, well, tell me you're not flying close to max duty consistently... In some bases we were always one slot away from going into discretion. In the end the only difference is the time zones and the time you set your alarm to because in terms of "hours in uniform" it's about the same. For some of us this is more manageable than flying 5 days back back on earlies waking up at 4am and finishing knackered at 4pm and completely unable to have family or social life after work except for the rare easy 2 sector days. At a certain point you just want to maximise your long term earnings and reconsider if you really want to spend the next 30 years flying 4 sectors per day in the small noisy cockpit of a 737 with your BOSE A20 squeezing your head for 10 hours, with insanely busy 25 minute ground stops and experiencing basically none of privileges that airline crew usually enjoy.