I have met so many unemployed pilots here in India and i have heard "why did i join this field" umpteen number of times. I am providing links to articles in some prominent Indian newspapers. Also provided are excerpts from these articles.
Trained pilots fail to land a career - Times Of India
Trained pilots fail to land a career
Disappointed, many of these pilots are working in call centres to repay their loans.
Asked about the UPWA, the director-general of civil aviation, E K Bharat Bhushan, said the problem of unemployment among trained Indian pilots was colossal.
Many UPWA members had taken huge education loans to go abroad for their training. "We have pilots who have trained from academies in India, Philippines, USA, etc. Their training has cost them Rs 18-20 lakh. All of them are jobless," said a member, who got his CPL in 2009
The Hindu : Cities / Bangalore : Wannabe pilots now working in call centres
Wannabe pilots now working in call centres
Abhishek has now joined a call centre in Bangalore. With a salary nowhere near that of a pilot, he has no idea how he will repay his loan.
With their dreams in tatters, they have become objects of pity among friends and relatives. Many have left home and gone to other cities, mainly to avoid ridicule.
Abhishek said his salary of Rs. 15,000 at the call centre is not enough to repay the loan. “The EMI works out to around Rs. 40,000 for a loan of Rs. 25 lakh.”
If many pilots are working overtime at call centres, the families of some are selling property to repay debts.
I regularly meet people who are depressed because they are unable to pay back the loans they took for their flight training. A majority of them do not deserve any sympathies because they must not have done adequate market research before spending loads of their parents' money.
It is funny that newbies often choose to believe aircraft manufacturers and flight schools when they predict a good job market in future. Off course they will make those predictions. Their business depends on it. Are you going to join a flight school if their representative tells you that
a majority of CPL holders never get to work as professional pilots!?
Also the greater the number of qualified pilots there will be in the market, the lesser the airlines will have to pay the few ones they employ. That lowers the cost structures of the airlines and so their tickets are cheaper. Cheaper tickets lead to a greater number of people to be able to afford an air ticket creating a greater demand for aircraft and thus benefiting their manufacturers(Boeing in this case)
From the view point of freshly minted pilots in developing countries, why should airlines in their country employ expats(usually from developed countries) for jobs that are at the top of the job pyramid(read TRE/TRIs) when they themselves cannot get work permit to work even as a lowly paid flight instructor in developed countries? As a result there is immense pressure from unemployed pilots in developing countries to dispense with the expats and get the FOs employed with airlines to move up the chain thus creating opportunities for them. So like someone said earlier, if you are a newbie from a developed country, its going be especially tough.
