Mr Selfish,
No offence intended. I too enjoy the odd 3am approach to minimas and a winch off the rocks at Piha must be great. The 'boring' comment comes from flying maybe 100hrs a year with a fair amount of those hospital transfers. Sure its a quality 100hrs for the most, but its a lot of hurry up, get ready and wait. The money is OK but you jump the gap to the great western island and you are now pushing $110 Aussie for the same job ($130,000 NZD) and a whole lot of benefits for the family. Additionally, it must be annoying to sit and watch jobs you should be dispatched to on TV1's 6pm news. The whole Rescue Helicopter system in NZ is a house of cards supported by communities blinded by the selfishness of a couple of the New Zealands industries greatest 'players'. They are laughing all the way to the bank on the backs of great pilots and crewmen like yourself. Answer this question: why is the Auckland BK not stationed at the airport or close by, where it could access the departure and arrival proceedures instead of sitting in the clag at the Port, declining calls due weather?
But the issue of wages is interesting. Thanks to the cleverness of some Flight Schools and their construction of government approved aviation degrees and diplomas, we now have more pilots than needed, in more debt and low wages. I've observed that due the accessibility of loans, the present route to a commercial job is now similar to the US. Buy a job by getting an instructors rating tacked onto the licence and worry about the $90K dept later. The $30hr will pay that off in 3000hrs of revenue flying. You will get your hours up on the backs of other new pilots who will opt for the high debt load so you can reach your 'B' Cat and then make $50hr. This saturation of low time instructors makes it impractical for experienced pilots to get Instructor Ratings and teach pilots and impart some of their hard earned lessons.
And the issue of Flight and Duty is bull****. You can fly all night on a medevac call for flappy and then have the morning shift call in sick and be required to stay on the pager all day, and fly if required. How can you run a 24hr operation with 3 pilots and give everyone their time off, sick leave and decent rest periods? OH! I know... you consider a day at work that you didn't fly or was sitting on the pager, to be a day OFF. Sure you couldn't have a beer or go to the beach or leave town but you got paid for it right? Wrong, salary = $75K flat. Nothing for OT.
If you are working for a company with nice red helicopters, you can expect to instruct all day and do frost protection all night, instruct all day, frost all night....
As for the PNG guys. They are on about $80K aussie or $100K NZD. It wasn't too ****ty when I was there, even the tent camps were comfy and I never had to cook or clean for myself. When a guys comes home for his 26 days off - he is OFF work. $80K for 6 months of work is not too bad.
Pilots really don't have a choice to accept less because the industry is so unfair to the pilots. A regulatory authority allowing the operators to dictate the standards of their OP's manual is retarded. Every other regulatory authority on the planet specifies stringent F&D requirements for Op's manuals. Take the Australian system as an example of the worlds most complicated F&D system!
Apply fair F&D and all of a sudden you need more pilots for more jobs.
Great to be chatting about this. Regards to all...