18 year old school leaver:
Hi, I've just finished school and I've always wanted to fly for a living. How do I start?
CFI: Hi, glad to talk to you and thanks for visiting Fireball Flying School. First of all you'll need to get an ASIC, that will cost you $196 dollars. Its funny isn't it, no other country has them, including the USA. Ha ha.
Then you'll need a Student Pilots Licence, er, thats a new fee of $50, then you'll need to get a medical, thats around $200, oh then you'll have to spend money to actually hand it over to CASA and that will cost you $70.
Then CASA will print out your licence, but only if you pay them another $25
Because our 30 year old aircraft are so overregulated we'll have to charge you around $230 an an hour to learn to fly and after you've reached 1500 hours total you can apply and attend, at your own cost of course, an interview flying a SAAB which will earn you $42,271 p.a.
18 yosl: But, my Dad works for the ABS and he says the average yearly ernings in Australia is $66,232 p.a. and Uncle Jim earns more than that driving his tip-truck...
CFI: Yeah well back in my day the CPL exam fees were 50 cents each, ha ha ha, and the SCPL fees, they were the expensive ones, they were 75 cents each, to pay for photocopying or something. But today you have to pay around $110 each and there are at least 11 of them.
18 yosl: But, but we haven't even started talking about the actual lessons yet.
CFI: Oh yeah and you had better hurry with them because, and just keep this to yourself, this airport probably won't be here too long due to urban sprawl, say, you don't know of any qualified flight intructors or engineers do you?
Do you?
Hey, where did he go???