Worth being a pilot at any price?

[Clandestino]

Dear Guntop88

I am absolutely awed; you have managed to hold full time job, finance your flight training up to type rating without going into debt and support your family at the same time. You have my sincere admiration, sir.

Now I wouldn't advise to give up the dream of becoming an airline pilot but I would certainly not recommend getting a full-time job with the airline that pays very low wages to its flightcrew and then expects them to sleep out of home for appalling 17 days per month. Subpart Q by itself does not penalize the airlines that have bases on the large airports, rather it seems to me that here's exploit of a loophole in it: minimum rest period out of base is 2 hrs shorter than in it. Therefore by nominating what is de facto stopover as a base you can reduce minimum rest at real base and increase crew and aeroplane utilization. If my guess is correct, then most of your night layovers would be at the same big airport.

If your salary got you safely to TR, then I'm certain that it will keep you current (minus TR, of course, however, should another opportunity arise on the same type within next 5 years, you won't need to go through full TR, thereby you'll be cheaper to train than the competition). Wait till the better opportunity arrives. If it never comes (unlikely yet possible), at least you'll have the pleasure of flying when you want and where you want.

Dear RB311

Conventional wisdom has that when everyone gets paycut, prices go down. Haven't seen any of that lately. Sorry if I misunderstood fundamentals of free-market economy, I was first exposed to it when I was in high school so I must have missed some lessons.

To switch to parochial view: nominal average pay increase at my airline in last ten years was 36.7% while flightcrew pay increase over the same period was 11%. Even average nominal rise was below govt's official estimate on living cost rise.

Dear Paolo

If you are airline pilot, I'd like to thank you for illustrating a couple of things that went wrong with our industry lately.

When I turned up for pilot selection, 15 years ago, there were psychologists and psychiatrists on the prowl, weeding out thrill-seekers. Ideal pilot will accept the responsibility of flying his passengers to 15 meters height at 140 kt into 200m visibility but will not get its kicks out of it. As a pilot you have to be aware of danger, know how to handle it, tolerate it, not seek it out. Oh yes, I did enjoy the 75m RVR autolands... once we got safely down to taxy speed.

Pilot at any cost is good strategy for someone who doesn't have to rely on his salary to make a living. There are a few of us up front who have to. Yep, it's glorious sunshine up above the nimbostratus, but it won't pay my kids' kindergarten.

If you have a stake in a Flight School and use PPRuNe for unconventional marketing or are a simple troll, then congratulations on well written posts.