effect of foreign pilots on the jobmarket?
I'm one of many pilots with a frozen ATPL seeking their first flying job in the UK. To get some great experience and gain a 'foot in the door', I've been working in Ops for for the past six months for an airline based at LGW. This is my very first job in aviation and one of the things that has surprised me is the amount of pilots from other countries there are flying for UK airlines.
I regularly hear transmissions from UK airlines on the LGW Servisair frequency from pilots with foreign accents. More commonly, these come from easyJet, Flybe and less, but still regularly, from airlines such as Thomas Cook, MyTravel, Britannia and Excel. I do not listen to BA as they are not on the same freqency. The airline itself that I work for has a large proportion of Danish and Scandinavian pilots.
As this was something I hadn't appreciated before I was wanting to know if this has always been the case or is it a relatively new situation? Have the airlines that have been expanding with new aircraft on order (easyJet/Flybe) got a higher proportion of foreign pilots than the rest because they found difficult to recruit suitably qualified pilots from the UK? Is this a positive or negative effect on these airlines?
As someone seeking flying work, it is worrying to me to think that I need to compete with not only my fellow countrymen but also with foreign pilots, alhough I am not blowing this out of proportion. I am aware that this industry is certainly not the only one to be affected in this way.
Perhaps others would like to add their comments on this. Do other people in my situation think about this as well?
I hope I won't be jumped on by the PC Brigade.