How do you begin?

[HLXPAX]

Hi
I have a few general questions and was wondering if anyone can help me
I am curious about employment in the airline operations (currently have nothing at all to do in aviation,but have an interest in all aspects of it)
What options are available within an Airlines operations?
Are there any qualifications/previous experience needed to get on the ladder, are then any age restrictions on starting to get into the business
What is the pay like generally speaking.
I am sorry to bombard you all with questions but if i am considering a change of job i need to find out what i maybe letting myself into
Many Thanks
HLXPAX

[desertfltops]

Howdy,

Since no one else has chimed in I'll give you an idea of how i got into it.

I met some dispatchers while on holiday in the usa, never heard of the job and didn't know what they did but it sounded like an interesting career.
I thought about it from time to time but never really did anything until an advert in my local paper said xyz airline needed an ops assistant. I applied but go nowhere..this is common in the beginning.

On the advice of a pilot I met, I decided to try and get an edge on the other applicants for any future vacancy by trying to get some sort of ops qualification. I found a company in UK that did,(perhaps still does) distance learning flight operations courses that covers all of the basics and to be honest it wasn't that expensive, about 500£, at the time. It was interesting and the coursework was clear and easy to understand.At the end of it I got a city and guilds qualification which is recognised by most airlines as having some value. I couldn't find work after I had finished but at the time no one was hiring, I used the experience from the course to undergo the United States FAA flight dispatcher training the following year. It took 6 weeks but at the end you get a qualification that is recognised world wide. I had a job interview lined up before I even got home. I got the job and spent over 2 happy years there until the company went bust. (This is common also)

My advice to you is to ignore all those people that tell you to start your career at the bottom by getting a ground handling job. Because this is where you will most likey stay until you get so hacked off that you leave. If the flight ops dept is where you want to be then this is where you should aim for. Working airside on the ramp is a lousy paid job out in the elements and if you are working as gnd handler for any of the actual carriers then the competetion to get into flight ops will be stiff as many of them will apply for the job, vast majority will not have a clue but only interested in the higher pay and warm office.

Flight ops tends to be salaried, ramp ops is usually per hour, and in the major airlines the sky is the limit and the oppurtunities to learn are vast.

I have been lucky enough to work in several companies and have gotten a decent living from it which brings me to salaries. If you are confined to the UK then you can probably expect 18-20k starting out as ops assist or ops officer, rising to ops controller you could make 24-30k depending on the company and their pay scale and your experience. Depending on the company there can be positions as duty manager or shift supervisor and eventually ops manager.

The salaries for this line of work are not tremendous but it does depend on who you work for and how flexible you are and your age, if you must limit your search for work to the UK or worse still, one region in the uk, then you may find it hard to land something let alone a good one. One thing to remember is that the salaries vary from poor(quite common) to decent enough(not as common) so choose wisely, you may have to use smaller companies as a stepping stone to bigger and better opportunities.

I hope this helps, if you have any further Q's then please feel free to ask me.

DFO

[HLXPAX]

Desertfltops:
Thanks for that, it was very useful, i think i will have to have a re think as i am really not that flexible due to family commitments.
Thanks for taking the time to reply and sorry for the delay(those family commitments again)
Regards
HLXPAX