I agree with both sides to the recruitment of low timers issue. Yes they need to be hungry for the job and willing to start at the bottom, accept lesser income due to lack of experience. But this is a highly skilled and demanding industry requiring the very best, and more recently much investment to become successfully recruited into (IR/ME types on licence etc.)
However, there seems to be a massive gap between offshore and onshore pay. As previously mentioned both have their own specific skills and potential pitfalls in very different ways at times. Surely this would then indicate that a HEMS/police/corporate IR pilot operating at night or landing in confined sometimes unlit areas would have and/or require a similar high skill level to an offshore/SAR captain operating over water in potential icing and horrendous winds with moving decks or a man dangling 150' on the winch wire.
Starting salaries for the former are about 40k (correct me if inaccurate please), perhaps 60k on the corporate front versus offshore earnings 65k through 85k. Surely there are as many risks of similar value on both sides so why the discrepancy.
Bond onshore recently lowered their hours minima for HEMS, this may help highly skilled pilots with lower but high quality hours be recruited....... or will it open flood gates to mere potential bums on seats with less to offer in demanding situations. Either way this was the option taken before raising salaries!!
Police operators seem to request and pay similar but the number of military retirees is ever decreasing. I have been requested by one PAOC operator to submit my CV upon reaching the minimum 1500TT, but for 40k to live in the expensive areas of the UK????? I'm an offshore FO earning at least 10k more than the offering on the table and living in an area of less expense, yet I have a mere 1000TT. Am I really going to jump at that chance?
This is not to rub it in to those less fortunate, merely to highlight the pending shortage of relative experience required for the roles mentioned above.
Interestingly a former training colleague of mine was recruited by one offshore operator and is embarking on a successful offshore career but a rival company didn't so much as acknowledge his application to them, not the first instance of this either. And they wonder why we are struggling with WTD, fatigue etc......
Things will get ugly before they get better...........!!!! Standby for carnage.
