I work for RYR and I earn 2 to 3 times that of people in the equivalent job flying a TP for Flybe.
.... True, but pilots joining Flybe don't have to find £30k for a type rating, plus money for uniforms, parking, accountants, sim, hotac, command upgrade, plus have little or no previous commercial experience, etc, etc.
Anyway, whilst RYR are no longer exploiting pilots in the same way that EZY et al are, I get the sneaky feeling that they are still making a tidy profit from churning people through the system. Or are the rumours of fewer hours once you get onto higher pay scales not true? Does anyone know how many Brookfield FOs/Captains plus RYR direct employee flight crew there are in ratio to hulls? I suspect it's more than the usual 5:1, but would love to be proved wrong.
Pay to Fly is just the latest tool for airlines to cut costs and managers to earn bonuses, along with SSTR. The difference is that long term pay to fly is probably unsustainable, either due to economics or the inevitable smoking holes in the ground.
Short term the only option we have is to make this as high profile as possible. Write to the journos, your MP and MEP and tell it like it is. While we're at it we should lobby BALPA or the IPA or IALPA to do something useful like amending their careers advice pages/conferences to give an accurate portrayal of how newcomers to the industry can
really expect to be treated. Maybe they could even use some of their contacts to get the CAA or DofT to take an interest. (OK, only joking on that last one....). It can't do any harm, it probably won't do much good, but it's better than doing nothing.
oap(eed off)