Not in it for the money.

[Bluebaron]

For all those wannabees out there who are interested in becoming pilots for the money, think again.

An interesting thread over on T&E about F/O take home pay. Basically around 2200 quid net a month.

Now I’m not a mathematician (can't barely spell the word!) but the average UK wage is around 24,000pa that’s around 1500 a month net.

So after spending a minimum of 60,000 grand on an integrated course that means you will be earning 700 quid a month more than average wage.... now stay with me......., that’s 60,000/700 ie: 86 months or 7 years to before you see any profit.

Also don't forget the 14 odd months without earning, or 21000 to our average earner or another 2.5 years.

So if you mange to get a job straight out of training (unlikely, took me 5 years and 1700 hours). Then you take nearly 10 years before you see and realistic return on your investment, (plus interest).

So if you are still with me............... Don't become a pilot for the money, do it because it's what you really want to do and damn the cost. You'll all get there in the end.

Two pence worth spent.

BB

[Artificial Horizon]

Quite true, I have picked up my first airline job, annual salary of £20,000. Take out my loan payment and pay the tax and I bring home £1200 per month. Could take me a few years to get those sports cars, flash women, house in the hills and international travel. But wait that isn't why I got into this lark, the job is great and I wouldn't trade it for all the £30,000 per year I.T. jobs in the world.:)

Still it is an honest peice of advice, don't become a pilot for the rumoured huge pay, it used to be the case when pilots were a novelty, now that we are a dime a dozen the pay isn't great.

[scroggs]

Bluebaron

you're quite right. My net pay for January was £2280, after 26 years professional flying. Had I stayed in the RAF, I would now be earning considerably more than I do at Virgin - in fact, my Virgin salary (£43000) has not yet overtaken my salary on retirement from the RAF (as Specialist Aircrew Flight Lieutenant) in 1998!

And I give away over half of what I get to the ex!!

Scroggs :{

[touch&go]

Scroggs, your not quite in the same boat, the Britrish tax payer paid for your hour building.

[rwm]

Engineers are in the same boat too. I should have got into fixing cars. I would make the same if not more, and be home every night, and wouldn't have to do all the shift work. But I love my job, and enjoy the guys I work with.

[FlyingForFun]

Excellent post, Bluebaron. Even more relevant for people like me, who are already earning considerably more than the average salaries you quote.

But the idea of spending another 35 years or more of my life stuck behind a desk 5 days a week is too much to think about. Sometimes, doing what you really want to do with your life takes precendence over money.

Now, here's an interesting point (trying not to take the subject too much off track). Every poster so far on this thread has agreed with you, Bluebaron. But if you were to start a thread suggesting people should be expected to pay for their own type-ratings, you'd get shot down by a barrage of angry posts. So why is it we all agree that we're in it for the love of flying, and not for the money - yet when someone suggests we spend some money so that we can fly, we get so irrate?

Just curious...

FFF
--------------

[Hufty]

It makes you wonder doesn't it if it is really all going to be worth it! Having spend 10 years building up my career just to bin it and go right back to what I was earning in 1995 when I was 24!!

For me anyway, it is going to be hard watching all my friends buy and renovate bigger houses, buy faster cars etc. while I'm still trying to nurse my 15 year old VW through yet another MOT and eating Tesco economy baked beans in my cr*ppy flat.

Sigh.

[Cricketer]

FFF
So why is it we all agree that we're in it for the love of flying, and not for the money - yet when someone suggests we spend some money so that we can fly, we get so irrate?

Because when you mention the TR - it comes after everyone has already paid 70 grand (near enough) for the pleasure of doing what they love. PLUS - in the past the TR has always (mostly) been considered as something the employer pays for due to cost/risk etc. Why should that change now when there is no longer the benefits of NVQ tax relief etc.

I would have no problem paying for training if it was reasonably compensated afterwards. It is no longer the case and as pointed out previously it is no longer the case.

[scroggs]

touch & go

I'm not in the same boat in that I didn't pay £60,000 for my licence. However, I did spend 22 years working for HMG and had to put my life on the line a number of times in that period, so I think I paid my dues. At the end of it I still had to pay for the licence myself; there were no exemptions from exams, IR or ratings, even after 8000 hours mostly in 4-engined transport aircraft. Things have changed for the better since then

The point is that the salaries on offer, as I can show from my own experience, are perhaps not quite what some people would like to think they are, and they might like to bear that in mind before they commit to spending that £60k.

Scroggs
Virgin/Wannabes Moderator
[email protected]

[touch&go]

Scroggs, I hope you don’t think I was trying to belittle your contribution to our country, just was pointing out that you didn’t have to invest 60k before you gained any return, and also you do not have to offset any of your previous and current salary against training costs, however I do understand there was some costs incurred in gaining your commercial licence, but no way near the full cost from zero to CPL/IR.

[Cricketer]

Scroggs

I gather from that then that you support the notion that people should pay for TR's without the offer of employment or even a chance of an interview?

And without belittling your input to her HMG, surely the risk of and had to put my life on the line a number of times in that period is part and parcel of the job when working for HMG in the armed forces. No offence but I am sure that in any contract there might well have been mention of the possibilites of you being injured/harmed. Now don't get me wrong I respect you for having done it, I myself would jump at the chance to work for HMG if a medical problem prevented me from doing so.

The fact that you paid for your licence would also have to be offset by the amount of hours etc that you had to do as you already had all that time under your belt - it must have been cheaper than a 60000 course.

I agree that ulitmately we will have to pay much like other professions for some of our training. Where does this stop though? Will companies start making us pay for recurrent training as we are therefore not earning money for them in the air?

Somewhere we have to draw the line surely and I would have thought the death of sponsorship was a step in that direction. I personally do not think TR should be paid for by the employee WITHOUT the potential for interview and job. It becomes too specific and too much of a gamble.

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Umm both Scroggs, I and others have advised people against paying their own type ratings on this forum. They are for the employer to pay for and bond you. There are many good reasons for this.

Fairness is only one.

There is no need to bandy about £60,000 as being the only way into aviation. If you choose to attend an Integrated course then that would be a reasonable ball park figure, sure.

But there is nothing stopping you going to Florida for a PPL and 100 odd hours for about £8,000. Come back do the ATPL exams for £1,200 distance learning. Do a CPL module and Instructor Rating for about £12,000. You have spent something like £22,000 and are perfectly employable at a small flying school being paid to fly aeroplanes.

Uni costs about £3,000 a year. So lets say you don't do Uni and you get yourself a £10,000 CDL from HSBC. You need to beg, borrow or steal about £9,000 to become an employable professional pilot.

Not a huge mountain to climb.

I managed to get a 400hrs out of the Air Training Corps/University Air Squadron system myself. There are numerous sponsorships run by the industry mostly under the auspices of GAPAN. They might help you along the way by paying for your IMC or something.

OK, so you've got no IR and no gold bars on your shoulder and you are going to be working in a knackered portacabin on the rough side of and airfield at the wrong end of the country. Sure you will live hand to mouth with barely enough to run a car and doss in a caravan. Sure you'll have to fly tired aircraft on boring repetitve sorties which are not really so safe in the long term.

Sure you'll have the kudos and prestige of an asylum seeker and you'll shop in Aldi not Waitrose. But.

But you are being paid to fly, you are learning all the time, you are logging hours and - and - you are meeting people and making contacts. Before you know it there'll be a sniff of a job on a Kingair that someone is rumoured to be leaving.... and you are away.

As a PPL FI i took home about £850 a month in 1999. In 2000 as a Commercial FI it was about £1,400. Not much but enough to get by. Looking back they were damn fun years work wise.

£60,000 bills and 757 first jobs need not be part of a very satisfying flying career you know.

WWW

[martinbakerfanclub]

WWW; fantastic post and it gave me a chuckle apart from anything else!

What you say is, absolutely, spot on the money. I have a nephew who is going for a CPL/IR, isnt to bothered about the ATPL part at the moment, and is only looking at spending 23k all in.....and thats with all training done in the UK, and so far he's achieving it.

You dont have to spend 60k on an integrated course at all; and I fear that many of those who do go straight to this option lack a little faith in themselves, either with their ability or their own self discipline, to go another route.

And why do so many of those newly qualified CPL/IR ATPL chaps expect to go straight to the right hand seat of a jet as it is their graduation right? Show me another profession where you go straight to the top of the tree when the ink on your "trade papers" is still wet?

I have a lot of respect for anyone who is a wanabee, and who is shelling out for the hours at their own expense; but it seems some of them still have some rather rose tinted glasses on, even in these harsh times.

[Cricketer]

In my time since I have been on this site and in the industry, I can honestly say that I have met no-one apart from the odd screwball who thinks that they are going to to go straight to the right hand seat of a jet as it is their graduation right? .

I'll say that again - NO-ONE. I obviously not met anyone but I do genuinely beleive you are talking about the people who are loaded and do not bother even going on these sites and posting etc. If you have that much money and that much stupidity (there will always be some) then you will not bother with research and just go on and do the training etc.

People keep going on about this but it is just not a factual account of 99.99% of us wannabees out here. All would slog like anything for any job and that inlcudes all my friends who did the integrated route. Yes they paid a lot of money for the training they thought would suit them best and give them perhaps a leg up in this industry. So they now have done it and got some excellent training. None of them think they are better than modular/any other route, none of them think they deserve a right hand seat, ALL of them would fly anything as a first job, even if that meant continuing to live in squalor but able to get some real experience in any aircraft.

I get a bit fed up when people slate them for having done their training or for that matter any training in a particular way. We make our choices and live with them. Sure a very small percentage moan and whinge, but not the majority so DON'T treat everyone like that.

What everyone is aware of is the trouble in the industry as a whole so hardly anyone is realistically saying I will only fly for the airlines etc.. Everyone just would like to be given a start on the ladder. In the current climate it is unrealistic to even get a chance on a single piston instructors job. I think what a huge number of posts have been indicating is not how to get that first jet/airline job but how to get A job. FULL STOP

We want that kind of advice, not this - well you should work hard and live on peanuts. We know that (well those of us not having more money than god). It is the desperate plea from a increasingly desperate and penniless populace of pilots that we are hearing nowadays.
:(
:(

[martinbakerfanclub]

Feel better after that cricketer? I hope so.

I sympathise with both your situation, and the points you make; however, i stand by my statement.

You would be amazed at the amount of fresh out the box pilots I have met over the years who honestly thought they would walk out of school on the friday, and slide into that dream job on the monday. I WISH it was a different attitude i had found, but it wasn't.....and even these days, i've STILL came across that attitude.

Not long after Sept 11th 01, I visited OATS with my nephew, uninvited and incognito, to do a little sneaky recon away from the hard sell and tea and biscuits, big smiles, sign here please enviroment. It really shook me up the amount of students we talked to who honestly believed they would walk out of there, and straight into a RHS with a major carrier.

Where the hell do these poor sods GET this view of the market from? It's coming from somewhere.

You state:
"I get a bit fed up when people slate them for having done their training or for that matter any training in a particular way. We make our choices and live with them. Sure a very small percentage moan and whinge, but not the majority so DON'T treat everyone like that."

I dont believe i did "treat everyone like that"; i merely raised a point, one which I believe is a very valid one. People need to be realistic about the openings out there, and what percieved benefits certain routes will open up for them....not helped when I believe a certain school is selling some line at the moment about "aircrew placements" or some nonsense. Where's the proof; and can the student see it before he/she hands over their borrowed 50k?

Good luck to you, and those like you, Cricketer, I'd hate to be starting off in this industry these days and in your shoes.....but dont shoot the observer eh?

[Bluebaron]

well i for one thought i would get on a big shiny jet when i finished training, or at least an ATR!

i'm not afraid to admit it.

and here i am, well from monday anyway, flying a big shiny jet, although it did take me 5 years and an FI rating and 1700 hours along the way....

:cool: BB

[martinbakerfanclub]

Bluebaron, your an honest man; here's to you, and bloody well done on landing that job.

Obviously you've never bumped into cricketer in the flesh though:rolleyes:

[Ioan]

Thanks Bluebaron for starting this, it's definitely been useful for me. Now I'm hoping someone will give me a little help and/or guidance on my situation.

Im currently 17 and finishing 'A' levels at college. I got 4 As last year, and hoping to get the same now. This summer I'll be looking around the airlines trying to get sponsorship of some sort; the aim, eventually, of getting a frozen ATPL. I'm not very confident of getting any sponsorship, although I'll still try like hell. I'm not very outgoing or particularly confident, and all the airline websites mention phrases such as 'leadership skills' and 'team-building'. This website, from what I've seen, doesn't give me much optimism about the chances of anyone getting into the industry at the moment either. Yet I've got 20/20 vision and as far as I know no health problems. martinbakerfanclub asks where integrated course students get the idea from that they'll go straight to the RHS of a good airline. I'll tell you; the colleges that run the courses. An example is the Cabair website, "Experience clearly shows that those completing the Integrated course have the best chance of securing a First Officer position quickly." And it's believed, because we want to believe it.

WWW mentions another alternative: PPL flight instructing. How do others feel about that. The work and the pay isn't a problem, but in the end, to be completely honest, I'm looking for a job in an airline, not a flying school.

Cheers,

Ioan :)

[BIGMACH]

Honest opinion.

If you want to a job because you enjoy flying aeroplanes - get a job as an instructor. Flying for an airline isn't all its cracked up to be - I haven't had a weekend off since November and got home from work at 5 am this morning. When I was an instructor I worked "normal" hours and had a life outside work - now I'm not entitled to one. Believe me, after a while it doesn't matter how big or fast the aeroplane is.


If you haven't even decided for sure that you want a career in commercial aviation, think very carefully. Most of the people who I taught to fly are employed outside the aviation industry and can fly when THEY want to and enjoy it hugely.

Eventually it stops becoming a hobby and starts becoming a job.

Good luck.

[scroggs]

Cricketer

I'm not quite sure how you read from my post that I believe that wannabes should pay for type ratings! As WWW said, I have tried often to persuade people against doing exacty that, especially when they'd no clear idea of why they were doing it, or what they would get for their money.

I have, in the last few months, given slightly more equivocal opinions on the subject because many wannabes are determined to do it whatever I say and, that being so in this difficult market, I'd rather they did it with an operator and on a course that would be of some use to them. But I mentioned nothing of the sort in my posts above, which were purely aimed at the subject at hand: the generally limited financial rewards in this business. I believe our wannabes need a realistic view of this as well as everything else.

As for those who think they will be in a jet with an fATPL and 250 hours, believe me - there are plenty of them! This stems from the unusually active recruiting market from '99 to '01 when many people did exactly that. Even now, a select few wannabes on the CTC and other similar schemes may well achieve this. It is far from the norm, however, as BIGMACH and Bluebaron can witness.

I'll also echo the point that there is much to be said for flying privately and earning your money elsewhere if fun is your main aim.

Scroggs
Virgin/Wannabes Moderator
[email protected]

[MAX]

BB,

I though as from Monday you were hitting the books. ;)

Good luck with the company.

MAX:cool:

[Cricketer]

Firstly - I hate this use of e-mails and bulletin points to convey opinion/emotion as it often leads to very different views of what people actually meant. Apologies to MBFC and scroggs, I just got scroggs impression from the first line of his post but that is by the by. I have looked at you other posts and I do concur with you. MBFC - I think it might be best for me not to be able to meet these people in the flesh as it would be highly disappointing. Do people not do research???? When I mentioned putting everybody in the same boat I was referring to the site as a whole not you personally. Apologies

As for meeting these people then they must exist and you are right I do feel very sorry for them as they have such a rose tinted view of the market. I did feel better after posting as it does sometimes feel like people posting replies here think everybody is in the same boat and therefore expect RHS in shiny jet. Sometimes it is diffcult to get the advice you are seeking without the topic being hijacked.
I beleive quite strongly that it is to some extent the responsibility of the schools, CAA and the airlines to ensure there is an accurate view of recruitment and conditions out in the marketplace. Most other sectors do this by making pay etc transparent, why can we not do that. The schools should be approached by the CAA to ensure they comply with all regulation regarding Trading Standards and False advertising. Perhaps it is up to BALPA to assume this mantle. It needs a fine balance for schools to sell their products and not mislead their customers.

Ioan - can I suggest if you are of sound medical stature then you look into a career with the RAF? I would have jumped at the chance years ago if I could. You get some great training and flying and it is a great start to your flying career. As mentioned by those in the know - the airline route is not all it is cracked up to be and you might well have more fun and be better paid (refer to Scroggs comments in this post) by joining the military.

Good luck to everyone in training but I reiterate my desire to see these schools better regulated.

[Bluebaron]

ok MAX, big shiny books then. and the real thing on April 23rd!

BB :D

[carbonfibre]

I would like to say , this is a fascinating insight that has not got out of hand like it usually does.

I have just completed my CPL and want to do my FI get some valuable experience in all aspects of handling aircraft, i would love to do air taxi on senecas or navajos and the like, then maybe if i was lucky get into the big boys.

I am realistic and would like every opportunity to get on, but a jet straight away, i think not, but i can dream.

It was said earlier in this threads why do they complain about buying there own type rating, the complaint is that they usually have mortgaged up everything to get where they are and cannot afford the extra £17500 then the accomadation and food, travel etc and still no job at the end, i would imagine thats the reason, I would think that if you pass an apptitude test then complete the type rating and your job is there when you pass, then i suspect people would opt for that route.

Good thread though , and keep going, Congrats to all those that have got the shiney jet, give it a polish for me, i want your seat too:O