PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - First Post.. Are there any jobs in this industry?
Old 5th Feb 2012, 20:15
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Conan the Vulgarian
 
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The short answer is no, there are no jobs. I don't mean that there are badly paid, starter jobs. I don't mean you'll have to work your way up. I mean there are _no_ jobs.

If you wanted to instruct professionally and were prepared for the poor pay, you might see a way in. I'd love to instruct myself and plan to do so, but in the longer term I'd like to fly jets. At the moment, and hopefully this will change, the traditional route of working your way up through instructing seems extremely difficult. Experience gained in this way does not seem of value to people hiring for jet jobs, and even turboprop hours don't seem to be cutting the mustard as far as I can tell when it comes to experienced guys trying to get their first jet job with an airline. If you were going to go into instructing, you'd have to do so because you genuinely believed you'd find it rewarding and fun, and not because you see it as a way to get a jet job. The same applies at present to flying turboprops - if you were to get a job doing that, even though it may pay enough to live just about, you must see it not as a route into a jet job but rather as something you want to be doing and would be happy in.

To qualify the statement that there are _no_ jobs, perhaps, if you want a jet job straight away after training it may be possible to get in with Ryanair, however it costs about £30k to get in (self paid type rating), and it's not a job in the traditional sense - you become a self employed contractor, with no job security whatsoever. It does however pay OK once you're past the first year and it gets you lots of jet hours in a safely run, professional outfit that seems well placed to weather the trying times we find ourselves in economically.

If you really want to fly for a living, it's quite likely you'll ignore everyone who tells you how difficult it is to find employment and push ahead anyway. As another poster said - you have to be in it to win it.

If you have aspirations to earn a living that will actually let you put food on the table in aviation, at present you'd be considerably better off if you did a course with one of the organisations who, although expensive, have contacts that let them place newly qualified pilots with airlines. Even so, the terms, conditions and pay are poor at first, but at least those guys stand a good chance of being on an acceptable contract with at least fair pay within a few years. If you're going to go full time at it, it's well worth considering them, look for example at CTC, FTE and Oxford aviation. There are no guarantees of a job however even with these organisations, and I would take their statistics of pilots placed with a very large pinch of salt, however they do offer a chance for your £90,000 that doesn't seem to be there otherwise. Remember to add another £30,000 on top of that for a type rating.

It was not nearly so bad 4 or 5 years ago, there was a period of time when the airlines were hiring inexperienced guys, sometimes on proper contracts. Aviation recruiting is highly cyclical, and we can only hope the tide will turn again soon.

It's very difficult to give any form of advice save to say that you should read and learn as much as you possibly can before you commit yourself to anything. Please do not disregard the posts of naysayers here, there are some bitter individuals and there are some you should disregard, but please don't construe that to mean that their tales of woe are not commonplace, or that things are better than they seem - they are not, aviation is not and never has been (as far as I can tell) a stable career.
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