Just to play Devil's Advocate, there are a few generalisations in Cruise's post;
it takes at least 7 years to pay off the training debt.
Not necessarily, especially for the older Wannabe who perhaps has equity in a property or severence pay from a previous employer. In my own case I was debt free just after qualification, but granted I was several years 'behind' where I would have been had I not started in this industry. The flip side being that I will probably earn more in a lifetime in this industry than I would if I had stayed where I was...........
Really make an effort to talk to some pilots. AND not a virgin or BA capatin you know. THIS WILL NOT BE YOUR JOB. At least not in the next 20 years.
I am not sure why you think that someone training now will not be a Virgin or BA pilot within twenty years? Consider the large number of pilots that Virgin and BA are (have recently) recruited. I know of several who have less than 10 years experience in this industry, let's face it, even by your own admission, someone 'lucky' could get a lo-cost jet job or charter job straight after training. Both BA and Virgin would look at you with 2500hrs TT much of which was with the likes of Easy........infact I am lead to believe the Virgin spokesman who 'stole the show' at the Balpa Job Opportunities Conference made a joke about the Virgin 'easyJet' training scheme........
As a capt the best you will earn is £80k. more likely £65k.
This may not be exactly what you meant, but the
best you could earn as a captain is £80k? Top scale in my company is currently £91839, about to increase by approx. 4.1% in January. That would be for a 15 year captain. Add to that Flight Duty Pay, Sector Pay etc etc and I think you can see that it is considerably more than your £80k figure. I heard one captain earned £147k before tax last financial year..........which I agree is totally unrealistic as a guide figure, but my company is not that different in terms of salary to it's competitors, indeed we have fallen behind several over the last 5 years.
Brand new captains in my company will start on £61k basic upon promotion (assuming they hadn't spent more than 6 years as an FO, in which case they would start on at least £63k, increasing by about £1k for every extra year as an FO). Other variable payments need to be added to these figures too, so I would say your £65k is representative of a
starting figure for a charter captain.
Then you have to consider your early start could be changed to to a late finish just hours before. Adios planned evening out.
This is why many pilots push to get Block Window Protection. Many people knock Balpa, but the CC in at least two of the companies I have worked for have negotiated and won such rights. If crewing try to change my duty by more than two hours before my rostered start time or two hours after my originally rostered end time I am in my rights to saya polite 'thanks but no thanks'. I agree this is not the industry norm, but is something worth looking for when perhaps you have a little experience and are looking for your 'employer of choice'.
The lifestyle with it - well I have moved 4 times in 4 years and dont bother to unpack the boxes anymore! And I have been engaged for 3 1/2 years. We cant plan the wedding because we have not known where we will be in 6 months time.
I was once given a bit of advice by a long serving training captain. He said, NEVER, EVER move house for an airline. Choose where you want your roots to be, put them down and then do whatever to make the job work. I may soon be faced with such a decision, I will not uprrot my family, I will buy/ rent a place near to the new base and do whatever to make it work, with a bid in for my base of choice just as soon as I can get it in. The problem with constantly moving, especially with kids in school, is obvious from the disruption point of view, perhaps not so from the employers side of things. I knew guys who moved to Glasgow for an extra aircraft to be used there, only for the following summer the airline decided they could make more money out of it at Manchester so they pulled it. OK the guys got paid relocation, but that's not the point if you have kids in school etc.
In summary. GET THE FACTS - DONT BELIEVE THE HYPE.
Couldn't agree more.
Weekends will consist of tuesday and wednesday - and not many people want to go to the pub on a tuesday night.
Ooh, I dunno..........I could name a few
PP