As short follow up to "button push ignored" - working full time in the "Short haul" Lo Co - full time over 5 - 10 years, if you approaching 45 -50 and have family commitments, a life outside aviation, extremely hard.
This is the reason that we today see this becoming more and more a part time job, as the pressure and long working hours, makes it extremely hard to do this job full time with the way the companies are running their operations at the moment.
This is another aspect that many of you who want to start in training in your 40's need to consider. Considering that you can only survive this long term if you are part time, than that means you need wave goodbye to the + £100K salary when you reach the LHS, as it is extremely fatiguing to work Short Haul like Ryanair etc. full time and do close to 900 hours every year.
As an example, let's just use the figure of a Captain, pay is approx. £120.000 before tax. Example flight time is 900 hours, you will do approx. 1800 duty hours. The 900 hours is just your block hours, duty hours is approx. close to double. Just out of interest for the maths, we say you do 1650 duty hours.
After taxes, pension, and National insurance, you will have around £5500 left net a month. For 12 months this is approx. £66.000 net. Not bad is it?
Now you work 1650 duty hours, this means your average hourly pay is approx. £40 an hour after tax. This is the hourly rate for a Captain, and FO, you can divide the figure by approx. 3 or 4 depending on what company you work for, and experience level.
Your peak season is in ALL the school holidays of your children, so for you to get leave the same time as your family / children is like winning the lottery, it might happen once every 5 to 10 years if all works out.