Dear BA038
An old fart writes...
I have been in this business, on the management side, for all my working life, which is comfortably the majority of my life. The whole industry is VERY cyclical, and I have bad news for you. You want to join on the down swing. Not your fault, not mine, not anyone else's, just a fact. Sh1t happens. My advice - as a non-ATPL, but someone who employs (f)ATPLs - is the same as my learned friends on here - go and do something else for a bit.
would i find a job in 2012 thats the million pound question for me
As someone involved in start ups this is NOT a figurative question - for me, I would write "that's the tens of millions of pounds question".
and i need some answers
Don't we all? I would love to set a start date for my start up. Nothing would give me more pleasure. I would love to get pilots and cabin crew up and training, and being paid, but guess what? I have no idea. I would guess most of us on here from the most pessimistic to the most optimistic would say that the industry is going downhill, certainly in the UK, probably in Europe, and is likely to carry on that way for 2009. 2010? Dunno. Optimists and pessimists may argue there. 2011? Ditto. 2012? Well, I would like to think the optimists are right at about this time, but I am not putting my pension on it. The TwinAisle guess, based on years of experience and cynicism is:
2009 - go back to bed. If you are in the industry, I really hope you stay in it. If you are a new starter, best of British...
2010 - further failures in Jan/Feb, as lower revenues kill off the weaklings. Good people, people who would have found jobs by coughing in the good years, start to get culled. Airline consolidation gains pace.
2011 - Signs of life in the wider economy. Unemployment starts to fall in the general economy, capacity shortfalls start to appear, yields start to rise.
2012 - Growth at last. Start ups starting to appear. New fleet orders. Pilot unemployment starts to ease.
Hope I am wrong, but....
TA, miserable git. On the same wavelength as WWW, hoping we are both wrong, but...