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Old 15th Nov 2015, 19:22
  #25 (permalink)  
fwjc
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
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Starting salaries vary between £18,000 and £25,000. There will be additional pay on top of this, which vary considerably. There are websites which detail all of the pay scales for all of the airlines. Some details are more up to date than others, but you'll get an idea.

Those schools suggesting a 90% employment rate within 3 months etc are skewing these figures. They're referring to integrated graduates, who are then paying another £25-£30k for a type rating.
Integrated cadets have to pass an entry exam which gives an indication of initial aptitude, while modular cadets often don't need to do this. This explains why very often integrated graduates are preferred by the airlines. This isn't always the case and there are exceptions to this rule.

If you are able to get a job and to stay in the job, within around 5 years you'll be up to a sensible salary, say around £45k. However this really does depend very much on which airline you are with.

Re funding. If you are planning on paying for your son's training, be aware that the £90,000 is a minimum fee. If there is additional training required there may well be extra costs. Say he doesn't do as well in the study stage as he might have done, he will most likely drop back a class which adds time. This will often be charged as extra tuition and accommodation costs have been incurred. Same with flight training, repeat ground exams and flight tests. There are also additional resources that he may wish to purchase, such as access to online study aids etc.

If you can afford to pay all of this, don't hand it over all at once. Pay for each phase as it happens, never all up front. If you can't afford £100k+, there are loans available secured on your property. If you still can't afford it, consider the modular route. You get the same piece of paper, for £30-£40k less, depending on how you plan your training. You do handicap your job prospects, but your financial burden is considerably less. If you are good, the handicap is less. There are also a number of "finishing school" courses springing up at a cost of £10-£15k who take modular students and turn them into the standardised product that the airlines want. Still cheaper than integrated, and still money left in the equivalent pot to pay for a type rating.

Regarding hiring cycles, nobody can predict what will happen in the airline industry. Right now is the best anyone has seen it for a very long time. The flagship carriers are hiring and that's trickling downstream to the short haul and regional operators. So there is a lot of movement right now. In one or two years time, who knows where it will be? If I were to guess, next year will be good, the year after will be slower again, and the year after that will be slower again. But that's me guessing, because to be honest anyone's guess is as good as the next.

The fact still remains that this is a crappy industry. It's not the glamourous, well paid, cushy number that it might have once appeared to be. It's long hard hours, limited work-life balance, no ability to make plans for the future (that birthday party next month? Forget it. Home for Christmas? Probably not.) The pay is pretty poor for a while. You're constantly being tested (every 6 months), which is absolutely right, but some people find the stress of these tests to be awful. You get to fly with some fantastic people, and you get to fly with some people who are downright unpleasant. You still have to spend several hours sat next to and working with someone who you really don't like. That takes professionalism and dedication.

As I said before, if your son REALLY want this, it's worth continuing, if not I would recommend encouraging him to find an alternative career.
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