Just how long exactly have people been waiting for their first job?
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: England
Posts: 149
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Finished IR in Feb. 2008, started applying right away, and finished MCC in May 2008. Was full of optimism, always smiling, thought the tough times were past, and the "fantasy" dream job awaited. 2 years and 7 months on from 1st time pass of the IR with Examiner 001 in Bournemouth, NOT ONE INTERVIEW, even FR won't look at me, despite contacts in the industry en masse.
31 months and counting............
WWW really is the oracle. I should have listened to him.
31 months and counting............
WWW really is the oracle. I should have listened to him.
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: UK, Paris, Peckham, New York
Posts: 23
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I listened to WWW, and working in buisness currently and seeing how dire it was/is I could see he was 100% bang on the money.
I feel for those of you that thought you desire for the job would see you through, but you were warned!
Trouble is I feel it will get worse from here on in again, that this is a bit of a false dawn. As soon as they start culling the public sector, more people out of work, QE finishing...still a storm brewing.
My biggest concern is with base rate at 0.5 and mortgage rates no where near that low what will happen when base rate starts to creep up...less money to spend, holidays get cancelled again..
I feel for those of you that thought you desire for the job would see you through, but you were warned!
Trouble is I feel it will get worse from here on in again, that this is a bit of a false dawn. As soon as they start culling the public sector, more people out of work, QE finishing...still a storm brewing.
My biggest concern is with base rate at 0.5 and mortgage rates no where near that low what will happen when base rate starts to creep up...less money to spend, holidays get cancelled again..
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: LONDON
Age: 44
Posts: 1
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
it's always been a mugs game!
Well I just felt like sharing my experience for anyone out there willing to listen. I spent nearly 50k to get myself a frozen ATPL, MCC/JOC. It is coming up to two years in Nov 2010 and I have had no luck in getting a job as a airline pilot. I did go to ryanair for an interview but did not get it. And this was in my first month of qualifying fresh out of training. I asked myself why I did not get it, the truth is I will never now, but I though it went very well.
All I want to say is if there is anyone out there thinking of pursuing this career, PLEASE DON'T it's a mugs game. Some people get jobs, majority do not, that’s a fact.
I am lucky in a way as I have secured a job as a train driver, but I have to live with the fact I wasted 50 k, I could have bought a nice car or put a deposit down on a house with that.
Well good luck to all you fellow pilots out there, I sincerely do wish you all the best of luck.
All I want to say is if there is anyone out there thinking of pursuing this career, PLEASE DON'T it's a mugs game. Some people get jobs, majority do not, that’s a fact.
I am lucky in a way as I have secured a job as a train driver, but I have to live with the fact I wasted 50 k, I could have bought a nice car or put a deposit down on a house with that.
Well good luck to all you fellow pilots out there, I sincerely do wish you all the best of luck.
Join Date: Mar 1999
Location: Domaine de la Romanee-Conti
Posts: 1,691
Likes: 0
Received 3 Likes
on
1 Post
How many of you lot have actually done something about getting a job ... rather than "applying" for them and whinging about how long you've been unemployed for?
Myself and a good mate of mine, got ourselves from 200 up to around 700 hours, by sitting on a little booth that we rented every saturday, in the biggest saturday flea market / car boot sale thing in Auckland, with some "learn to fly" signwriting we paid for ourselves, a video player and some model airplanes, selling "trial lessons". Typically generated about 5 20-minute trial lessons a week, of which maybe one a month would turn into a genuine PPL student.
Getting paid wasn't even a consideration. However after about 18 months of this, we had created about 500 hours flying and an ongoing little PPL customer database for ourselves, and the school was sufficiently impressed with our tenaciousness to actually give us the occasional student themselves.
After another 3 years of instructing I finally got turned loose on the multi pistons and actually started on my SALARY instead of my hourly rate, what a day to remember that was! 18 months of that and I got my first turboprop and the rest is history. I'm now on the A330 in the sandpit and that mate I used to flog trial lessons with, is on the B744 with Cathay.
Just because the airline market is ****ed doesn't mean there isn't a million and one ways to keep on filling the logbook. And if you keep filling it and don't lose sight of your end goal then someone will surely reward you one day.
At the end of the day, being successful in this business is not about who's the best, and not even about who's the richest, it's about who wants it the most and refuses to give up in the face of all adversity.
Myself and a good mate of mine, got ourselves from 200 up to around 700 hours, by sitting on a little booth that we rented every saturday, in the biggest saturday flea market / car boot sale thing in Auckland, with some "learn to fly" signwriting we paid for ourselves, a video player and some model airplanes, selling "trial lessons". Typically generated about 5 20-minute trial lessons a week, of which maybe one a month would turn into a genuine PPL student.
Getting paid wasn't even a consideration. However after about 18 months of this, we had created about 500 hours flying and an ongoing little PPL customer database for ourselves, and the school was sufficiently impressed with our tenaciousness to actually give us the occasional student themselves.
After another 3 years of instructing I finally got turned loose on the multi pistons and actually started on my SALARY instead of my hourly rate, what a day to remember that was! 18 months of that and I got my first turboprop and the rest is history. I'm now on the A330 in the sandpit and that mate I used to flog trial lessons with, is on the B744 with Cathay.
Just because the airline market is ****ed doesn't mean there isn't a million and one ways to keep on filling the logbook. And if you keep filling it and don't lose sight of your end goal then someone will surely reward you one day.
At the end of the day, being successful in this business is not about who's the best, and not even about who's the richest, it's about who wants it the most and refuses to give up in the face of all adversity.
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: the OFCR......and probably somewhere over China zzzzzzzz
Posts: 219
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Well posted luke! I would imagine all those who are like yourself and want it really badly are not wasting their time on pprune, they are doing something about it! 
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: who cares?
Posts: 201
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
At the end of the day, being successful in this business is not about who's the best, and not even about who's the richest, it's about who wants it the most and refuses to give up in the face of all adversity
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: who cares?
Posts: 201
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Luke: You leave out a very important point and that is the rules of the game have changed since you and Jonny were selling lemonade and mommy's fresh baked treats on the side of the street.
OK. A young person becomes an instructor and aquires thousands of hours teaching others to fly the Piper Seneca or C-172. So frickin' what. Ten years ago that counted as experience. Today that counts as a huge waste of time. Why? Because airlines hiring today don't give a rat's ass about that. They want a person who can fork over thousands to pay for their job AND/OR you have the correct type of hours, i.e. you have a Type Rating and a min. of a few hundred hours in TYPE.
Hey man, I think going out there and teaching Susie VMC demos is great....but that is not going to get you the job in TODAY'S MARKET!
So I'm assuming you fly for Emirates, Ethiad, Qatar, Gulf....etc, or one of those 8 star airlines. Fantastic. Congrats. Seriously, that's great how you climbed the ladder: SEP, MEP, Turboprop, Jet. This is the way it used to be done and I personally wish that is the way it was today. However, wishing and reality are apples and oranges, comrade.
I know you mean well, but blowing sunshine up the asses of some of these guys is unrealistic in TODAYS methodology of aquiring pilot employment.
Regards,
UW
OK. A young person becomes an instructor and aquires thousands of hours teaching others to fly the Piper Seneca or C-172. So frickin' what. Ten years ago that counted as experience. Today that counts as a huge waste of time. Why? Because airlines hiring today don't give a rat's ass about that. They want a person who can fork over thousands to pay for their job AND/OR you have the correct type of hours, i.e. you have a Type Rating and a min. of a few hundred hours in TYPE.
Hey man, I think going out there and teaching Susie VMC demos is great....but that is not going to get you the job in TODAY'S MARKET!
So I'm assuming you fly for Emirates, Ethiad, Qatar, Gulf....etc, or one of those 8 star airlines. Fantastic. Congrats. Seriously, that's great how you climbed the ladder: SEP, MEP, Turboprop, Jet. This is the way it used to be done and I personally wish that is the way it was today. However, wishing and reality are apples and oranges, comrade.
I know you mean well, but blowing sunshine up the asses of some of these guys is unrealistic in TODAYS methodology of aquiring pilot employment.
Regards,
UW
Join Date: Jul 1998
Location: Liverpool
Posts: 61
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Back in 1990 when I completed my course at OATS there were nearly 600 pilots on the ground,it took me 4 years to get a job but we all eventually got in the air. I was in for over 65K and that was 20 years ago, so don't worry as long as your not in your late thirties with low hours you will get hired.
you will get hired.
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: coventry
Posts: 10
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
The airline industry has fundamentally changed over the last few years and they are making the most of the people going blindly in to aviation training establishments... The practice of opening up ones wallet to these establishment with no comeback needs to stop!
The only way the industry will sort it's self out is if young guys and girls stop going in to the industry with blind hope and thinking that £60k later they will have a job, that is not the case and has never really been the case. If airlines are forced to restart sponsorship schemes then the industry and young pilots will be all the better for it (Skills/quality and financially).
I was extremely lucky in the start of my career and got a sponsorship but was meeting a lot of self sponsored pilots, of them only a handful have made it.... Sadly that wasn't always the best pilots, most were just lucky with their timing...
The other gamble is keeping a job, the industry is very fickle, companies come and go. This means that the £60k gamble doesn't make sense, people need to look at training to be a pilot with a business head on and not watching 'Catch me if you can'. When you look at the numbers they are stacked in the industries favour hugely!
If you are in the category that has to fly whatever then do things slow time and don't get yourself in to £60k of debt or ask family members for the money, there is a very real probability they will not get the money back from flying....
I am not wishing to sound overly negative, i believe i am being a realist... I had a privileged start in aviation but it has been a very bumpy road since, I've been made redundant once already and starring in to the face of another redundancy now less than a year on....
'At some point you have to call time on the dream and move on...'
The only way the industry will sort it's self out is if young guys and girls stop going in to the industry with blind hope and thinking that £60k later they will have a job, that is not the case and has never really been the case. If airlines are forced to restart sponsorship schemes then the industry and young pilots will be all the better for it (Skills/quality and financially).
I was extremely lucky in the start of my career and got a sponsorship but was meeting a lot of self sponsored pilots, of them only a handful have made it.... Sadly that wasn't always the best pilots, most were just lucky with their timing...
The other gamble is keeping a job, the industry is very fickle, companies come and go. This means that the £60k gamble doesn't make sense, people need to look at training to be a pilot with a business head on and not watching 'Catch me if you can'. When you look at the numbers they are stacked in the industries favour hugely!
If you are in the category that has to fly whatever then do things slow time and don't get yourself in to £60k of debt or ask family members for the money, there is a very real probability they will not get the money back from flying....
I am not wishing to sound overly negative, i believe i am being a realist... I had a privileged start in aviation but it has been a very bumpy road since, I've been made redundant once already and starring in to the face of another redundancy now less than a year on....
'At some point you have to call time on the dream and move on...'
Guest
Posts: n/a
I feel for you guys, but I don't think everyone will make it to an airliner seat to be honest.The quantity out there now is too much and despite passing a CPL/IR some just won't be deemed suitable.
At least when i did it my licence cost 13,000, I wouldn't dream of gambling 80 -100k on a 'dream' now.
At least when i did it my licence cost 13,000, I wouldn't dream of gambling 80 -100k on a 'dream' now.
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: UK
Posts: 1,164
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Well I wouldnt discount the likes of the FI route completely. Of the last 10 or so FO's we've taken on this year, 7 or 8 were all FI's looking for their first airline job. Perhaps not the norm in todays current market but refreshing non the less.
Join Date: Jun 1999
Location: In the SIM
Posts: 976
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
From finishing my CPL/IR took me 4 years to get my first job, and thoroughly enjoying it.
EMU-170
Not sure I agree with that. Everyone on my ATPL course is now working as a professional pilot.
When you start your training you MUST understand what you are getting yourself into in terms of finance, training, job hunting, and have a back up plan! There are so many people I talk to that just dont thoroughly research and understand what they are getting into, and become dazed and disheartened, when they dont find themselves in the right hand seat of a Jet after graduating with 200 hours.
EMU-170
All I want to say is if there is anyone out there thinking of pursuing this career, PLEASE DON'T it's a mugs game. Some people get jobs, majority do not, that’s a fact.
When you start your training you MUST understand what you are getting yourself into in terms of finance, training, job hunting, and have a back up plan! There are so many people I talk to that just dont thoroughly research and understand what they are getting into, and become dazed and disheartened, when they dont find themselves in the right hand seat of a Jet after graduating with 200 hours
.
Join Date: Mar 1999
Location: Domaine de la Romanee-Conti
Posts: 1,691
Likes: 0
Received 3 Likes
on
1 Post
Wiggily ...
I feel your pain dude. "Today's market" is indeed hopelessly screwed in favour of the 200 hour P2F brigade. The only jobs going right now are garbage, O'leary's mob and the Ezy flexi-screw and so on. And if you believe what the schools WANT you to believe, it is the only way in town and it will stay that way forever.
But ... I don't believe that the market has changed forever. Look at what's happening right now in the states, the politicians have pretty much legislated low-hour-RHS jobs out of existence in one fell swoop. And, I'm not talking about "today's market". I'm talking about the market that will return in 2 or 3 years (barring another global calamity or what have you).
I will bet my left nut, that there are still plenty of chief pilots out there who still value old-skool hours and experience gained by traditional methods. The problem is simply, that a lot of them work for airlines that haven't hired for 3 or 4 years. A lot of others, when they have hired, it's been only one or two people, who've been friends of friends who've grooming their target for years while they patiently built those hours.
But as sure as people retire, and global financial crises come and go and the price of oil rises and falls, those kind of airlines will hire again. They won't be widely advertising in Flight and they sure as eggs won't be running to OATS or CTC to start flogging ridiculous P2F schemes.
They won't be hiring 200 hour wonders either, whether they have type ratings and deep pockets or not ... they will be hiring those people who are grinding it out right now in smaller aircraft and really learning their trade.
It takes 2 or 3 or 5 years to get meaningful 4-figure sums of hours in the logbook anyway.
So the question is, if you are not willing to participate in "today's market" as a 200 hour bend-over-and-squeal boy (a decision which I heartily applaud!), then are you going to go out there and get ready to participate in tomorrow's market by staying current and getting some damn hours in that logbook by any means necessary?
One thing is for sure, if I had sat on my fat ass 20 years ago with 200 hours doing nothing except "applying to airlines", I would still have 200 hours now.
I feel your pain dude. "Today's market" is indeed hopelessly screwed in favour of the 200 hour P2F brigade. The only jobs going right now are garbage, O'leary's mob and the Ezy flexi-screw and so on. And if you believe what the schools WANT you to believe, it is the only way in town and it will stay that way forever.
But ... I don't believe that the market has changed forever. Look at what's happening right now in the states, the politicians have pretty much legislated low-hour-RHS jobs out of existence in one fell swoop. And, I'm not talking about "today's market". I'm talking about the market that will return in 2 or 3 years (barring another global calamity or what have you).
I will bet my left nut, that there are still plenty of chief pilots out there who still value old-skool hours and experience gained by traditional methods. The problem is simply, that a lot of them work for airlines that haven't hired for 3 or 4 years. A lot of others, when they have hired, it's been only one or two people, who've been friends of friends who've grooming their target for years while they patiently built those hours.
But as sure as people retire, and global financial crises come and go and the price of oil rises and falls, those kind of airlines will hire again. They won't be widely advertising in Flight and they sure as eggs won't be running to OATS or CTC to start flogging ridiculous P2F schemes.
They won't be hiring 200 hour wonders either, whether they have type ratings and deep pockets or not ... they will be hiring those people who are grinding it out right now in smaller aircraft and really learning their trade.
It takes 2 or 3 or 5 years to get meaningful 4-figure sums of hours in the logbook anyway.
So the question is, if you are not willing to participate in "today's market" as a 200 hour bend-over-and-squeal boy (a decision which I heartily applaud!), then are you going to go out there and get ready to participate in tomorrow's market by staying current and getting some damn hours in that logbook by any means necessary?
One thing is for sure, if I had sat on my fat ass 20 years ago with 200 hours doing nothing except "applying to airlines", I would still have 200 hours now.
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Warks
Posts: 274
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I've been looking for nearly six years. Worked 3 years full-time as an instructor and part-time before that. 1700 hours TT. Currently working outside of aviation (doing an awful job that I hate) since the flying school I was working for closed down. Training debts are crippling. Haven't had a life since I gave up work to train to become a pilot in 2001. Worst mistake I ever made.
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Where ever my Blackberry says i am
Posts: 126
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
From issue of Frozen ATPL to first "real" job just under 7 years to first paid job.....instructing......4 years.
Came close a couple of times with interview but my lack of currency let me down.
Best way to get a job is NETWORKING.
Good luck to you all
Came close a couple of times with interview but my lack of currency let me down.
Best way to get a job is NETWORKING.
Good luck to you all
