variations country to country...200 hr wonder hired!?!

[fellowpilot]

Hello, Maybe this will inspire some of you; or piss some of you off, not sure. My friend in Germany just got hired as an FO. He only has about 220 hours. He did however have to pay for the type rating. I am a US citizen in New York. My girlfriend lives in Belgium. I will soon have the FAA ATPL. I am planning on marrying her in a year or so and moving to Belgium; and converting my FAA ATPL TO JAA. My question is: how different are the job markets from country to country in Europe? I have no idea how my German friend got an FO job with the hours he has. I thought the days of 200hr FO's in Europe were temporarily on hold?

[Kyriakos]

connections connections connections mate.....

i asked some pilots around and i got the same response "stop looking for a vacancy, start looking for the right connection instead"

[kuryus]

some luck is always handy also.
but connections and knowing how to speak german helps a lot.

[pitot_noob]

It isn't on hold.
A lot of guys going to Ryan and Easy currently, amongst various other small placements.. which is mainly down to connections.

[Denti]

We hired about 120 new pilots this year so far, most of them with around 200 hours. Our own cadets have around 60 hours in real airplanes and around 250 hours in the simulator. The 1500 hour rule is an US invention and does not apply to european oerations.

[zakka]

LUCK LUCK LUCK and then a bit more luck + the addition of a healthy bank account, so you can afford a flying job. Yes it has become an expensive hobby to be a professional pilot these days.

[Luke SkyToddler]

... of course, the entire population of the world, outside the little bubble that is half-a-dozen countries in Europe, will count themselves "lucky" beyond all rational description or understanding if they get so much as allowed a sniff of a narrowbody jet, without several thousand hours' experience on smaller aircraft.

And one day soon when the Yanks make the Europeans get into line on the 1500-hour thing and P2F is killed off overnight, you guys will feel that same luuurve :ok:

[act700]

What a lot of pax here in EU land don't realize, is that with a lot of airlines, seat 0B is available for a charge!
Unlike the regular seats, it has lumbar support, moves fwd/aft, as well as in height, so you can enjoy a nicer view outside, and as an added bonus, for those extra $$ or Euros you pay, you get to move a handle with a little wheel up and down.:eek:

[stefair]

I have just got hired by a European regional. Company pays for the TR in full. Training allowance. Sick pay. Staff travel. Reasonable salary. Permanent position. OK, I have a few more hours than 200 but well below 1000. Many of the guys hired 200 hours ish though, some of which had not had a sniff at any flying job for about 2 years...

But before I "brag" about my CV I think I better say I think I just got plain lucky; happened to knock on the right door at the right time.

Keep looking! Stop complaining bout the bad boys out there. Still some good jobs out there.

[fellowpilot]

Wow. Its really mind boggling how different the US & European industries are. The P2F, pay for your own TR, get paid peanuts, sitting in the RHS with ~200hrs ...makes me shake my head in disbelief. It doesn't make it less worse; but aren't the incomes higher in Europe? After 5-6 years, won't you be making enough money that the TR you spent 20,000 euros would be no big deal ? Thanks for the enlightenment guys. Really sucks that aviation forums couldn't be more of a source of inspiration and excitement! Alas, that is the current reality.

[ATPMBA]

After you take 14 JAA ATPL exams you will know why a 200 hr pilot can be a FO.

[j3pipercub]

That's priceless, because of course 14 theory exams prepares you...:ugh:

[Denti]

P2F is only in some parts of europe an issue, in others it is still normal that typeratings are paid for, however a bond has to be expected, in my company it is 12 months for a typerating on an airbus or boeing.

Abinitio trained pilots however are pretty much the norm in major airlines for the past 60 years or so, the industry is quite different from the US. Training your own cadets has some very distinct advantages, for one you can do very thorough testing of your applicants before anyone has to spend a ton of money on training and assure beforehand that passing through the training as well as fitting into the majority of your flightdeck crew is pretty much assured. And of course throughout the training you can further check on progress vs. expectations and weed out the final few that slipped through the assessment center in the end guaranteeing high quality entry pilots. For the applicant that passes through the entry tests it is pretty much a guaranteed job and some help with the training cost if not even training for free. The military is doing actually pretty much the same for their pilots.

[Launchpad McQuack]

And one day soon when the Yanks make the Europeans get into line on the 1500-hour thing and P2F is killed off overnight, you guys will feel that same luuurve

You seriously think that will happen? The 1500-hour thing I mean, not the luuurve! That would solve a lot of problems in this industry, especially in Europe :D

[Uncle Wiggily]

fellowpilot:

You need to consider some things:

1. You will be too experienced to get a job in the EU as a First Officer. Why would an airline want to hire you, when they can get cadets eager to shell out thousands and thousands? Apples and oranges my friend. Nobody will take you on as a cadet because you are not a cadet. There is no First Officer position. Simply Direct Entry Captains and cadets on ****ty contracts. Welcome to the EU!

2. OK, great...so you marry your Belgian girlfriend. Now what? You must be kidding yourself if you think you can wade through the EU perm. resident permit in less than a year. No can do. OK...so after a year you get your EU Green card...yippeee...errr...wait, most pilot jobs in the EU require a EU passport. How do you get this....well after 20 years perm. residency in the EU or by going down to the embassy in Brussels and formally renouncing your US citizenship.

(oh yeah...I'm US citizen...4000 hours, Typed in 4 jets and hold perm. EU resident status)

look before you leap my friend

[Luke SkyToddler]

Agree with your sentiments re the job market Wiggily - but not re the EU passport, it's not really a big issue for EU airlines as long as you are legally allowed to work. I flew for 3 different UK airlines and got interviews with several more during my time there, including a couple of mainland Europe ones, and I have only ever had UK / EU permanent residence stamped in my NZ passport. Plenty of my fellow country men have done the same and quite a few of them didn't even have permanent residence, just 4-year ancestry visas.

I looked at applying for the passport, I even got as far as walking into the Immigration office in Glasgow one sunny morning, and there was literally a several hours long queue stretching out the door and round the car park. What a bleak horrible place that office was too, in some council estate out the back of Ibrox, bullet proof glass in the interview booths, battered plastic chairs bolted to the floor, huge burly security guards everywhere, more like a prison cell than an office. I never got to the front of that queue before the office closed, and I never got around to going back there either. (As a side note, it was interesting to observe that persons of my ethnic background standing in that absolutely massive queue, appeared to be in a distinct minority of ... 1 :oh: )

( ... and before anyone has a go at me ... my British wife holds a NZ ATPL, and she is just as guilty of stealing jobs from downunder wannabes as I was of stealing yours :) )

[Groundloop]

And one day soon when the Yanks make the Europeans get into line on the 1500-hour thing and P2F is killed off overnight, you guys will feel that same luuurve

But the "1500-hour thing" is a typical US political knee jerk reaction to seem to be doing something. It was brought in after the Colgan crash but the Colgan FO had well over 1500 hours!

[helldog]

Mate get your girl to move to the US. Problem solved.

[Prophead]

You also need to remember that in the US there are far more opportunities for building hours in the GA market before moving on to a jet job. Im not sure what it is like in other parts of Europe but if they brought in the 1500 hour rule in the UK it would cost a fortune and be even more of a rich mans game.

You hear the ex instructors on here saying that everyone should instruct before getting a jet job but in reality there is not enough instructor positions in the UK to provide all the pilots the airlines need. How else would someone be able to get the 1500 hours needed?

There are many people in Europe who would love to do the kind of flying available to people in North America and Australia.

[Superpilot]

Prophead is spot on. This simple fact is always ignored by those who seem to think a 1,500 hour pilot is always better than a 200 hour pilot.

[Luke SkyToddler]

... actually ... it would probably mean that all the skydiving operators in America and bush pilot outfits down under would all become millionaires overnight, as the teeming hordes of :mad: ing idiots from integrated courses in Europe descended in their masses, in their mad rush to climb all over each other's heads and stab each other in the back and undermine the profession worldwide instead of just in their own backyards, by paying hundreds of quid per hour to sit in a thrashed old single-piston doing what used to be a paid GA job :hmm:

I can just imagine some Brit private equity outfit buying some Crocodile Dundee C185 operator in the African swamps and mysteriously turning it into a hugely promoted glossy-brochure thing in association with CTC and OATS where you can get your 1000 hours bush flying for the small price of 200,000 euros :ugh:

[ScamArtist]

So are there any operators out there who respect the people that have worked their way up to a few thousand hours through hard work and determination, rather than forking out a shed load of cash to jump the queue? And more importantly, will they take them on?