Are the airlines to blame for the pressures they put on Pilots?
This is my take on everything and why I keep putting off trying to live my dream.
We may never know what went on in the mind of the Co-pilot of the Eurowings A320 disaster. It was a despicable act and he must have been out of his mind.
But what is even more alarming is that fact that there is probably hundreds of other Pilots who are in the same situation as him.
It’s time that something was done about this industry because people belief that Pilots are highly paid, under worked, and lead a life that you could only dream about.
They couldn’t be further from the truth. The majority of these Pilots have had to put themselves through extreme financial difficulty just to get an interview. Now, providing that you manage to get in with an airline, you will probably have to work as flight attendant like Lubitz done.
That’s about a £100k investment for license and to for consideration for employment with no certainty of a job at the end. Then even if you manage to get a position you probably be on minimal pay and put on the least desired routes for as long as they can get away with it.
The struggle to get in the air, and the way the airlines go about everything is something that put me off from applying for an ATPL.
All this paying £100K for training, running thorough burning hoops, psychometric testing, low pay, and poor conditions is counterproductive. It must be affecting the mind set of thousands of Pilots that just want to fly.
I had a recent conversation with an ex BA employee, and he said that he knew of lots of cases were Pilots suffered breakdowns. I joked about it and said that “I hope that is didn’t happen to them in the air”, but this is what happened to Lubitz!!!
This disaster that brought a lot of problems to the forefront of the media and the airlines should open up about how they treat their staff.
WE NEED WHISTLEBLOWERS in this industry to protect the public from serious incidents.
It’s obvious that something is not right; didn’t most of Eurowings go on strike the other year?
The 150 lives is a small price to the Airlines, but a huge loss to each and every one of the families that got caught up in all of this.