Originally Posted by
mrkrca
I’m a non-EU passport holder planning professional flight training and currently looking at the EASA route. However, I don’t intend to go directly into an airline job after qualifying. My plan is to spend a few years in GA/charter/bush/instruction to build roughly 1,000–2,000 hours first.
[…]
I’m trying to understand whether:
[…]
- An EASA licence is still worth pursuing if my first flying jobs won’t be in Europe
- Which regions are actually realistic for lower-hour pilots to build time
Just out of curiosity what’s the reason for not wanting to go for airlines straight away? If you plan to base your career on airline flying it would be the best long term to join them straight away.
Flying 1000-2000 hours on ideally a320/b737 will give you way more (in terms of needed skill/experience and further career developments) than even instructing on cessna.
Flying 1000-2000 hours in general aviation can take good 4-5 years, while in most airlines you make that in 2.5 years max.
So if you take one person who gets to airlines, and one who carries on with GA, after say 5 years you will have one candidate that has just shy of 4000h on cs25 aircraft and even possibly just after command upgrade or approaching one, and the second candidate has at most 2000h TT with no experience on jets. So in terms of purely getting your airline career, think about it.
If you are scared you need right to live and work in EU but don’t have one, it’s still not over, there are a few european airlines that go further with that. For example Wizzair has :
Unrestricted right to live and work in the EU or Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, North Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine. afaik They even have a base in serbia. Many more probably after doing research maybe ryanair and more?