HKF,

Do u mean Airbus command time? If so, that is crazy considering the impending crew shortage Tiger is about to have.
b.

2 years as effo??

more like waltz right into a DEC coz training department dont have the resources to train effos or cant be assed spending the $$ to upgrade them even tho they bond em apparently

Other big issues are you cough up 30K plus in advance for the endo and you don't get told where your going until you have packed your car with your kids and toys.

Edit; Also if you pay the 30K and they go broke or pull out before you get command its a waist of money and effort cause probably by then this round of recruiting will be over and we'll be in recession again. Down to the CES and line up with the masses of A320 pilots.

I'm known for my positive attitude you know!
SN

Yeah thx 4 de HUGE Tiger plug there.....

No Soup 4 U!!!!

b.

Jetstar 320 never used to do overnights :confused: Staff travel in another universe by comparison. Pay, well maybe similar on the surface except Jet* guys not praying for minimum 75 hrs a month every time roster comes out, which may not happen in times of expansion due training. That and you dont get a big paycut for taking holidays in Jet* ( Tiger only get base during holidays, right ? )

Boocs, no, command time on the other brand ;) But this guy still has more airbus experience/command time than some of the skippers I know in Tiger ( some of which were DEC with zero Airbus time ). The biggest thing he has going against him is the lack of mouldy blue shirts in his closet :}

Soup Nazi, the power of negative thinking :ok:

Yeh, I've heard that " rapid " commands have taken between 1-2 years :sad:

HKF
Really though, if you think back 12 months or so VB were looking at unloading crew (60 or so). If the economy wasn't spoon fed massive amounts of stimulus I believe the recession would have been far worse. If you look at the situation as it currently looks, interest rates are on the up, credit is still easy to get, wages have stalled, the stock market is largly recovered and debt levels are still increasing.

So whats changed, we are all a little poorer due to having to pay back our national creditor's for our stimulus package. If the economy dips again I'm not sure the government will be able to raise the funds to bail us out again, and even if they could i'm not sure its a good thing. America will be the big winner as they have had their recession, rates are low, housing prices are low and a lot of debt has been written off. Now they can start fresh and make a new start. History has shown the economy needs that cleansing to stay healthy.

We are currently experiencing massive growth in the airline industry over a very short space of time, if the bubble bursts, and i'm not saying it will, it will be bad. A lot of guys are getting qualified on jets and this is creating a vacuum in GA. Top end GA pay is growing fairly rapidly whilst the bottom end is still pretty bad, its not uncommon to find a King Air pilot earning well over 100K these days although probably less likely in a capital city.

So I do hope that Tiger stay around for the sake of our industry, the last thing I want to re-live is a repeat of the 90's, man that was bad. Way too many pilots unemployed. At the end of the day they have the lowest costs and that will hold them in good stead to weather any storm that may be on its way although of course they will need to make some profit at some point.
SN

Ignore the troll.

Soup, I was joking:}

wannabee, about 3fitty

So how's the new eba shaping up?
SN

I was just reading an article that stated the Hyundai is the only manufacturer of cars that was able to increase sales over the first 7 months of the FY. All other manufacturers went south. People are abandoning traditional brands to go for the cheaper option because times are tough.

This is one thing tiger have in their favour should there be another recession, people will go for the cheaper fare and the airline best situated to offer the cheapest fares is the one with the lowest cost base, TIGER.

I reckeon they would be fools to pull out of OZ. We may be looking at an airline that will add capacity as fast as they can if a recession or downturn hits an stagnates when times are good.
SN

Tiger in profit two quarters straight!. Things are looking up.
SN

And by the sounds of things, Davis seems very keen in gettting another Tiger subsidiary up and running in Asia somewhere, assuming Thailand or Philippines. Getting the marketshare now is key before AirAsia does, just look at their proposed Vietnam venture. If Tiger was wanting to wait until they were significantly profitable (say 2/3 years away), well AK would have doubled its fleet and would be taking over the region. Very important for Tiger to get in early, even if it means no dividends to be paid/ or using TR/TTs profit to subsidise the new airline. I note there is $10m allocated from the IPO for initial startup costs which was the same as Australia.

The battle between AirAsia and Tiger over the next 5 years is going to be very tough, well Tiger seems to be winning the battle against Jetstar Asia and sounds like it will shift focus to AirAsia now.

Is Tiger hard up for candidates :confused:
Heard they just hired a DEC who has not flown for 4 years :rolleyes:
I guess it really does'nt matter how old and mouldy that blue shirt is in the closet :hmm:

Son's flight this morning just delayed an hour. He has just learned an important lesson.

Yeah. Fly Qantas hey Sunny? :}

Yes they must be hard up for candidates. Pprunners will remember our 'good mate' High Altitude and the van that drove itself off the road!:}

Stefan Wood - Learn to fly, Aviation Careers, Get Your Wings at TVSA Flight Training and Aviation School Melbourne Australia

"Son's flight this morning just delayed an hour. He has just learned an important lesson."

Yeah, after all, I've never had a late flight with Jetstar/Qantas/Virgin - must be great to be great Sunfish & Enema :ugh:

Ah High Altitude - those were the days eh slice?

How many boys are having a laugh clicking on the link to see old mate fondling the Tiger.

That pilot shortage was worse than I thought, clearly!

Classic

Nice try Foo bear but I ain't coming out of retirement! :E

Tiger to drop Adelaide - Alice Springs at the end of April

Oh come on Holey, a bit of pocket money would'nt hurt would it :ok:

I earn more "pocket money" driving a bus for the local Council......AND they pay for my uniform, car parking,lunch and I didn't have to pay $35,000 for my "bus" rating!

I don't have to deal with idiot Managers and I endure zero stress in the job.

You hang in there Fooey in that great career of airline pilot and in 10 years time we'll get together and compare our health and wealth.:ok:

Looks like 1 nil over Jetstar BNE-ROK.

With Jetstar pulling out of ROK from MAY and Tiger starting late March.

Yeah but Joh public is smart enough to look at the total product and will probably elect to fly QantasLink in preference to Tiger. :)

3 Holer
I must be missing something. Can you tell which council pay's 75K plus $36 per block hour for driving a bus? Because if you can I'm there!

Sure you have to pay for some things as a pilot with Tiger but at some point you have to weigh up how you wan't to spend your time. Each to his own and I don't blame anyone for going with them, its a straight deal, take it or leave it. That goes for the customers as well.
SN

Look at it from an investment point of view.

$28,000 endorsement (Ansett Sim Centre)

$650 intitial uniform cost

$105,000 - $110,000 salary per year (FROM DAY 1) F/O

$60 parking fee per month

$10,000 tax rebate from endorsment

$150 per year replacement shirts

Bring your own lunch

Be home everynight

After 1-2 years (under a year for some)

Salary increases to $170,000 - $180,000

Pay for the extra bar to be put on your jacket $10

After 1 year in the LHS with bus time, suddenly very different position than you were flying a turboprop 2 years prior on $70,000

Sounds like a no-brainer to me MrSheffield... And considering these growing airlines, such as Tiger and Jetstar are going to be looking for a LOT of pilots over the next year or so the question is.. Why wouldn't you?

Sheff, an additional line on your summation should be:-

Then rue for the rest of your career that you assisted in lowering your future earnings and conditions.

Generally, it's better to take a long term view of career decisions.

Or from another view.

Get an apprenticeship, go to tech and become a tradesman - negligible cost

Go to Lowes - buy some stubbies and a flanny - $40

Buy a ute - paint name on side (tax deductable)

Get job building desal plant - $150,000

Travel allowance - $700/wk = total package $200k

Take an esky with your lunch to work - can even have a steel knife.

Save that old pilot uniform for fancy dress parties

Priceless

the age

Thanks for the advice Going Boeing. But I know one too many pilots who turned their nose up at LCCs for reasons such as 'dont want to lower conditions for everyone else, im too good for an LCC, I want Qantas or Cathay' and have unfortunately never been offered a gig with their airline of choice, and are still to this day slaving away in GA, now begging for a job with the likes of Jetstar or Tiger.

Point being, yes its good advice to the kids to say no to the conditions offered by LCCs, but be warned - an airline job is not offered every day. hell some don't ever get the offer.

If tiger or jetstar offer 100K+ you cant blame the pilot whos currently on 40K and has 2 kids and a wife to feed for not knockingback the opportunity.

Sheff, I appreciate the polite way that you responded to my post.

Every pilot these days is effectively walking a tightrope as to the best way to further their career - what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another (and I do understand what you said about supporting a wife and two kids - I spent the first 6 months of my Qantas career living in a caravan with my wife and 2 daughters).

When I said to take a long term view about your career decisions, I was thinking about approx 70 DJ pilots and about 15 QF pilots who left their Oz jobs for a career in the sandpit in the period 2006-07. Every pilot wants to have a command and that influences their long term decisions - for the majority the over-riding reason is job satisfaction, for the minority, it's for the money. There have been a number of posts on PPRuNe about why you would become an S/O with QF when you can become an F/O with DJ, JQ or TT. These 3 airlines offer you the immediate job satisfaction of a RHS and the lure of a quick command. The RHS job is there for you if you pay for it, the quick command may or may not eventuate. Quick commands basically depend on an airline expanding and growing its fleet size. My take of what happened and may happen at these airlines is:-

DJ will now have to claw away to earn every % of market share as the glory days post the collapse of AN are well and truly over - they are not going to expand nearly as rapidly as in the past and as the majority of captains are relatively young (thanks to quick commands) they are not going to retire in the near future. The only significant growth that I potentially see for DJ is in the regional market or internationally through V Oz (a very high risk growth area). It appears that the majority of DJ pilots who left for the sandpit in the past were tired of flying the same aircraft type to the same destinations with minimum rest and the lure of flying shiny new B777's/A380's etc to exotic destinations around the world was very strong despite the obvious domestic negatives. If the posts on this forum about pilots currently overseas who are prepared to accept substandard T's & C's to work for any airline that allows them to live in Oz are true, then it appears that many have made a bad decision.

JQ has had a very easy launch into the market in that they were given routes that had been developed by mainline (low yield) and thus grew rapidly (original order 23 A320's). Then they were given A332's from mainline to fly internationally - again most routes were originally developed by mainline. All up it made for spectacular advancement of some careers (ie the ex Impulse pilots) as well as rejuvenating the careers of some ex AN pilots. The problem for any one proposing to join JQ OZ now is that most of the future expansion looks likely to be in the "sibling" airlines - JQ NZ, JQ Asia & JQ Pacific. Thus new hires are in the same position re quick command as if they joined DJ - minimal expansion and minimal retirement.

TT is the only airline that I see still has the potential to expand rapidly - that will only happen if the other airlines allow it to. Domestic flying in Oz can only make a profit if the demand balances the capacity and thus realistic yields are achieved. Most "experts" believe that TT is one airline too many to allow sustainable yields and therefore, the other airlines will keep the pressure on TT to restrict its ability to expand.

Those who believe that becoming a QF S/O is beneath them fail to look at the long term benefits: - Despite taking longer to achieve command, QF pilots have the ability to choose a career path that suits their circumstances. If you enjoy long haul flying which gives great travel opportunities, social life, increased route knowledge, etc, or if you prefer domestic flying to enable you to be home with your wife & kids for more nights, you can choose the aircraft type that gives you the lifestyle that you want by deciding when and what aircraft type you want to do your promotion training on. When you do gain your command, you are then not stuck on that type - you can move to other types or stay on your current type as you choose. By having a choice of aircraft types, you can have variety right through to retirement whereas looking at potential careers in LCC's, many pilots get tempted to move overseas simply to experience a change.

Whichever path you choose I wish you a long and happy career. GB

GB
QF is being wound back and this will allow JQ to expand for years to come and provide good career progression.

TT has excellent growth potential as they have the lowest cost business model and this has allowed them to tap into a sector of the community that otherwise would not fly. I predict steady growth for them at about one to two new aircraft per year for the next five years. I don't think JQ or VB are in a position to do much damage to Tiger. If they bring on a fare war they had better have deep pockets because TT can break even whilst they lose $Millions. I suspect this is why it has not already happened.

VB has a product that provides a viable cost effective alternative to QF mainline. I think the big loser out of all this is QF, if they didn't have JQ they would be selling planes to stay afloat as we speak.

There are a lot more pilots looking for jobs flying jets than there are positions at QF mainline and the industry has undergone a step change in remuneration. The LLC's are finding out just how little they can pay for aircrew and when they can't get them they will know they have reached that point. It is only then that T & C's will improve. Lets face it though ~100K for an FO and ~180K (TT) for a Captain are both comfortable salary's. Additionally, these carriers have also been around long enough for a new generation of pilots to be applying who have only ever expected to earn what they pay and therefore will not be dissapointed.

At the end of the day there are a lot more jet pilots around now than ever before and the industry has never been in better health jobs wise. So if you want to fly jets now's the time or just choose another vocation.
SN

No there AREN'T a lot more jet pilots about. They've all retired or nicked off to Emirates and Ethihad and aren't coming back until they chose to.

CPL issues are at an alltime low and why would anybody want to get into the industry? Before the GFC airlines were having real problems getting qualified pilots but that was just a taste of things to come (and I suspect they know it) - yet they don't seriously invest in training for their own futures.

Barring any future major ecoinomic hiccups, In about 1 year they will start to feel the heat of a pilot shortage and in 2 years will have to throw money and/or vastly iomproved T&C's to attract any pilot with a heartbeat? Who is going to fill the seats of all those aircraft ordered?

And NO - 180k is not aacceptable as being a "comfortable" salary for a Captain, particularly when you have to kill yourself to get that. When council bus drivers are getting 130k these figures need to be put into perspective.

The yardstick should be the $380,000 that a QF 744 captain gets - instead of doing our darendest to undermine those QF Captains we should be cohesively arguing that that salary is the datum.

A
When I say there are more jet pilots I mean there would be more jet pilots in the country today than there were say 10 years ago pre LCC. Of course there are less jet pilots on the street, they are all either retired or in jobs due to the abundance of willing employers.

As for the money well, each for his own.
SN

Unfortunately this is very true. Only the older pilots I fly with can remember the good days when an airline captains annual wage was more than the cost of an average house, when there was a decent pension scheme and no one even thought of paying for their own endorsement or uniform.

After starving through non award paying GA operators and sitting right seat in the regionals on check out chick money, first year $100 000 and quick progression to $180 000 doesn't look too bad.:(

How often does your overweight council bus driver, have a medical, sim ride, go through the hassles of getting an ASIC card, pay for his own training?

To tell the whole story tho, to get that kind of money at TT you have to work the full yearly limit to get there. Ask around what doing 900 to 1000 hrs a year is really like.

So did the pay claim go through?

Station air 8 the difference is the bus driver didn't have the AFAP negotiating his package:}