Money, Money, Money...
I've spent the last few years reading the various arguments from both sides of the fence concerning the pay and conditions on offer from our budget carriers.
It seems that if you fly for a LCC, you are apparently either (a) a professional pilot who is trying to do the best they can and make the most of a position that pays sufficient to get by; or (b) a bottom-dwelling sc*b with no professionalism or ethics of any kind and who is significantly contributing to the downward spiralling conditions within the airline industry.
For the select few of you who currently, or have at some point in their career, enjoyed the stratospheric salary packages you talk about, well lucky for you (and I mean that with no hint of sarcasm). However, it makes my skin crawl when some of you get on your high horse and tear strips off your flying brethren for taking a gig with one of the "dreaded" LCC's. This issue has been done to death, but the fact remains that a job is a job, and whilst I'd love to be earning mega-bucks for flying a piece of high-speed aluminium tubing, the reality is that if you can't find a way to make ends meet and enjoy a comfortable standard of living on a LCC salary, you've got some serious shortcomings in your spending habits and finance management. My father spent his whole working life on a salary that never even scratched the surface of what a F/O earns with a budget airline (don't even mention a Captain's take-home pay)! In the meantime, he still managed to raise a family of three kids and pay off the mortgage along the way. And he didn't complain about his lot in life either.
As for me, never has the point been made more clear than in recent months. I pulled the pin on my previous flying gig (after ten years of doing much the same thing) to make a concerted effort to finally break into the airlines. I decided that I just had to get out of what I was doing, or risk being pigeon-holed for the rest of my life. I've just completed the QF selection process, and in the meantime I've been doing unskilled casual work to tide me over until something happens in that department. And let me say it's been quite a wake-up call in terms of putting things into perspective. For all of you high-&-mighty "I-despise-anyone-who-prostitutes-himself-for-a-low-paying-airline-job-that's-way-beneath-me" types, why not spend a fortnight with me packing crates in a warehouse for only $30 an hour. Whilst you're there, maybe you can ponder over how fortunate any one of us is to be able to work in this industry and get paid for doing what we love. Right now, a gig with DJ or JQ would be a life-changing experience for me - and for the better too, at least compared to what I've earned thus far in my working life. There are so many people in the community earning far less than our Mr. Discount-Airline-Pilot-Guy, so when I hear you all bitch and moan about the so-called paltry conditions of airlines in this country, I just wanna puke. You really could do a lot worse, but you'd obviously have to do a stint in the real world for a little while (like I'm currently doing) to be reminded just how good you've got it - even the folks at DJ and JQ...