jasonjdr,
Now, can someone show me another airline who is going to pay a low houred cadet (200hrs TT) more than £53,060 (with the benefits above) in the first year after training? Because I cant find one.
After dusting off the salary scale from the back of the wardrobe I can say that the airline I work for pays in euros a basic salary to a year one cadet (defined as in the past a sponsored airline cadet, or today a 200 hour non rated recently finished flight training pilot) of €60,818 euros to be exact. On top of this the company contributes a further 21% of this salary towards their pension which in this case as a year one pilot is a further €12,771 euros. Net sector pay amounts to €10,000 and a flying perfomance pay agreement, assuming flying 870 annual hours (which is the average amount these days in the company) amounts to a further €18,000 euros. (This amount calculated at a rate of €60 per block hour over 570 annual hours up to a maximum of 900 hours for a First Officer regardless of years of service and €80 per hour as a captain)
To add it all up then it comes to year 1 cadet entry 'package' of €101,589 euros. Salary is paid from the day you join, type rating is paid for and bond only applies if you leave within the first three years. Nothing taken out of your salary towards it. Uniform, medicals, sim sessions and car parking all paid for by the company. These figures are documented on ppjn and are accurate.
So as Pilot Pete said in an earlier post, it can be the package that's important, not alway the direct salary, hence the reason a huge number of Ryanair pilots joined the company last year, giving up their commands to start at the very bottom again. (Bottom being every new pilot regardless of whether you have 20,000 hours or 200 hours start on the same scale and you all move up accordingly through years of service rather than experience)
I must stress however that many of our new colleagues joining from Ryanair had nothing but good things to say about Ryanair and their time there. They opted out because they felt the 'package' was better at our place. Personally I'm not going to make a negative comment towards Ryanair as others in this thread as I have no connection or have never dealt with them.
So in fairness, there are airlines paying reasonable salaries out there, with packages far superior to in this case Ryanair. Not wanting to get involved in this discussion directly as it has no relevance to me I still feel I have to make the point as a comparison to your post.