Interesting mix of responses
Well, what an interesting cross section of views. While I'm glad to hear that there are many guys and gals in Easy and Ryan who are earning good salaries I would make the point that those good salaries are no longer available to anyone joining now in the short to medium term. The only way into Easy is Flexycrew and that pays £1000 a month with little prospect of being turned into a full time contract of employment as things stand.
As for Ryan well it's hard to make out what the likely prospects of a new entrant are but from the information on PPJN it would seem you're paid £35 per block hour until completion of line check and then sector pay after completion of line training is due to reduce to £18 per block hour and there is no basic salary for the first 12-23 months so if you assume 600 hours a year that's £11 400 a year or about what a checkout operative earns at Tesco.
I suppose I'm reflecting on how far salaries have fallen. It looks to me as if the basic salary of £17000 at Ryan only kicks in some 2-3 years in and from then on things get a fair bit better but you still don't have any holiday or sick pay, pension and are paying for sims, hotels etc.
So in conclusion the starting salary for an airline pilot in the two leading locos would seem to be either £11k a year at Ryan or £6k in 6 months at Easy (unless the figures are wildly inaccurate on ppjn). If this is the case then I stand by my original assertion that things have got out of hand and no other profession has seen its terms and conditions eroded so rapidly in the past decade.
Interesting to reflect that in 1991 the BA Cadet entrants started on £26 500 after having had all training paid!
Desk-pilot