Came across this thread and was truly appalled - £16K for a co-pilot, cut from the low £20 K's and a cut for new P1's too!
Wow - where do Air Southwest go next? If I were they I would keep pushing the boundary. £5K training pay for year 1, rising in annual increments to say£12K at year 3. Meanwhile for P1's a starting salary of £22K rising in increments to say £30K.
I have an eerie feeling they'd still get people too!
Wannabe's take note - you are mad to enter this industry on the current knockings. It is NOT worth it.
I am a longhaul P1 with a major carrier and all I can see for us is an accelerating decline in our salaries, terms and conditions. Of my university peer group I am far and away the worst paid, and those with their own businesses seem a lot more satisfied with their lives overall, whilst flying their Yak etc at the weekends to boot.
Take my advice. Train as an accountant and understand how business works then either practise for a while and you will be ASKED to join in succesful deals or go and start your own business. Fly for fun - take it as far as your inclination and bank balance allow. Get a PPL-IR if you want to reach a defined and high level of skill, but leave this industry alone - it's like joining the textile trade or any other declining industry - things will get worse and worse, despite ever growing passenger numbers yield per ticket declines, and if Ryanair is the benchmark of the future for pilots employment heaven help us all.
Above all is the leering contempt that Ryan and the like show for a position of enormous responsibility. In the end it will get to you I suspect, and you may well feel, as I do, that its been, in the round, a poor choice of career and one where the future is bleaker by the year.