Hello Guys

I don't believe in paying for flying that'd absurd. I notice most of the people here are with or without jet rating and hours of type looking to work right away in a reputed company with high salary,of course that's every pilots dream. But the truth is its not possible, and now civil ink is charging 50K for a job. What's a joke.

Why do people look for jet right away why not a TP build your hours earn money and look for opportunity. I know there are plenty of companies looking for TP pilots like dash, ATR etc with very good pay. With the latest Q400 and ATR 600 out in the market it's almost in fact pays higher in certain company than jets. I know lot of short haul companies have ordered these turbo props and canceling their A320/737 for shot hops, fuel pricing high European crisis, end of the day it's all about money.

My point is there are lot of opportunity around the world but expand your search don't only focus on A320 A320 737 737 or A320 with Zero hours. Take anything Thats offered and climb the ladder.

Stop paying for line training. At the rate tourism and business is heading save what you have and more..

Good luck

I would fly a :mad: motor glider or drop prachute jumpers if someone would pay me for it. The local sight seeing companies don´t even take me for free so that i can at least sit in a cockpit scratching my balls. :ugh:

Oh yeah? Where?

Skydive I'm afraid you know very little about the industry. There are and will always be 10 x more jet (A320, 737, E-Jet) jobs than Turboprop jobs. Stop telling people what we would all like to be true and tell them the reality of it. The market has changed, the new norm is for people to pay for ratings and in extreme cases hours on type. Unless you're an airline selected cadet, that is the best way to get a job these days and it applies for the few turboprop jobs out there too. Trust me, I know as I was a wannabe for 12 years (since PPL) and 4 years (since CPL). I found that out the hard way like hundreds of others.

SSTRs
 

That was the "new norm", now any airline wanting to survive will want the revenue stream. Speculative SSTRs always were a risk, now they're toxic.

Yes the market has changed, because there are too many fools with more money than brain (mostly not even their own money, but mummies and daddies money)

Now the airlines have seen this, and thought let's just screw them all! If all refused to follow the airlines mantra, they airlines would need re-consider their recruitment and TC's!

It all ends up becoming "The Prisoners Dilemma!" which is an example of a game analysed in game theory that shows why two individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so.

The truth today, is that most of you will not do what is best for you / us as a group, but go for achieving the best possible result for yourself! However this attitude means everybody looses, well everybody except the airlines!

Market forces? yeah sure...:rolleyes:

That´s why the Qatar minimum requirements went down. And I´m not saying that such thing as "market forces" doesn´t exist... offer and demand...that´s true.
If I wanna sell a bag of apples for, let´s say, 1000 $, and there are people willing and eager to buy...I will maintain the price or even try to increase it...
But if no one buys my stock....I´m pretty sure you know what I´m going to do, right? It happens all the time...but in the pilot´s market. Plenty of people willing to pay in order to find a shortcut...

If nobody pays, the airlines will hire anyway. No options but letting aircrafts grounded, period.

To be honest, the only way to stop the rot is to convince people never to embark on the ATPL training in the first place. Once you've spent the £100,000 you're unlikely to stop spending.

I still can't quite get over the fact that with terms and conditions on the slide so rapidly, herds and herds of people are still committing to pilot training. I'll readily admit I was very very lucky and got a jet job pretty much straight away on decent terms, type rating paid for etc and am now in a stable job on a good contract. However 7 years later I am still saddled with a huge debt and hopelessly unable to get a mortgage because of it, as I will be for several years yet. Did I really appreciate just how much debt I was taking on and the consequences? Probably not.

There needs to be greater education about the state of the industry and how it will eventually affect your chances of a mortgage/decent retirement income/decent lifestyle. These are the big issues which linger long after the thrill of setting TOGA for the first time has faded.

There's a temptation to think that you can just "do your time" in some crappy outfit before moving on to the bigger airlines. There are two problems with this. First, not everyone can possibly get a job with a 'proper' outfit - there are too many people trying. Some will continue to be shafted long term. Second, by "doing your time" you are effectively contributing to the downfall of your preferred future employer. P2F is just an extension of this and will eventually result in unpaid internships or worse.

There are plenty of people screaming about how great it is to be an airline pilot - namely the flying schools and the airlines themselves. Both keen to sell the profession to enthusiastic young boys and girls who they know will pay a fortune and work for very little. There are not nearly enough dissenting voices telling the true story - outside of these hallowed walls that is.

veetwo -

Very true what you say, now I have avoided getting into debts for the flying, but it really does not add up anymore.

However if you do try to tell people another story than the one they have been told in those glossy flight brochures, the dream they are still holding on to, is being shot to pieces, by the money they are themselves willing to spend, to try to get an advantage and a job!

Let's get it straight, many pilot's who already have the golden-lifestyle have themselves jumped on the gravy train, so for them it is in their self-interest to continue feeding the dream!

When I look at guys at my company, with the level of experience they have on type, I ask myself, how come they still here?
The reason my friends is blowing in the wind, it's cash from mummies/daddies making sure some wannabes rather get the slave contract instead of the people with the experience!

Here is the nature of business, when they know you are willing to accept bad TC's from the start, this does not stop, of course a few will manage to escape to some of the better companies, but most who do manage to get in, will be working their A's off for peanuts, because that's what you get, monkey's, when you pay peanuts!

Superpilot - "if an individual doesn't follow this herd mentality then he gets left behind as is the case for so many today"

This is the problem today, most will be left behind, that market can nowhere sustain the number of pilots trained versus pilot employed!

If you P2F, how are you able to feed any of your own families mouths?
During my training with my company, there was 2 guys who had over 300 hours on type, both of them had done P2F - personally I would have felt extremely embarrassed to have to admit this fact in front of seasoned and new crew, yes they had the jobs, but no doubt, there will follow a stigma over these hours!

I recall one of the training captains asking them if they where doing PF and PM, and both of them said they had flown all 300 hours with safety pilot! Did this give them any competitive edge to get the job, maybe a little, all in all I think not, because even if they had this amount of hours on type, they still had to go trough the same training program as me with the company! Who had 0 hours on type!

I know of many guys last year, who had been instructing for many years, had several thousand hours SEP and hundreds of MEP hours, they got jobs, a least 4 guys I know 3 on TP and one on the A320 - so it does work, but it is much harder work, and it means you have be able to accept the hard work to get there, but you might not get there, who knows!

I know of P2F guy, who got kicked out because he was not good enough, there are so many factors, which could leave you in a much worse situation than you are in today! Btw he did not get his money refunded!

So it is a high gamble! Believe me, it has not been easy for anybody of us, and the irony is, that it does not easier, even though you want to believe once you have this and that it will!

It won't! But what can you say, stuck in more debts, even harder to get out of, you need to work / fly to just pay this, and most likely it will not even cover your debts to give you a good lifestyle, which you thought the flying career would!

Catch 22- - impatience is the killer for all TC's!

Ok guys,

I will try to be as objective as possible without defending any point of views here:

I am currently living in Africa.

Some people here on the forum will tell you: go to Africa, do some bush flying and come back in europe with a bit of experience....

Ok, nice idea BUT be careful, bear in mind that africa is full of South African pilots camping on the airports and waiting to have jobs. In Namibia for example, it is being harder and harder to obtain the work permit! Same in Tanzania! A lot of countries here clearly don't want any more foreigners.

It was not the case a couple of years back!

FACT: a friend of mine went for an interview in Kenya recently, to fly a C206; they have asked him for 1000 hours ON TYPE!!!

Here the pilots on the caravan have thousands of hours....

So the market is really bad. Nobody is hiring, so people stay in those bush jobs, and that's why nowadays, they are asking for such stupid requirements!

So the point is: just don't think it's that easy to just go and have a job here. It's not!

In Europe, if you don't have anybody to help you out finding a job like paradropping or stuff like that, again the minimum hours they ask is totally crazy!

So when you get ouf of flight school.... what are the options nowadays???

Well you'd better pray for ryanair to call you because it's one of the only airline in europe hiring people with 200 hours TT and only requiring to speak english an not an other language!

And if you don't get called by them... well you have to think at the other options which may be to pay a Type Rating and a line Training. Again be careful, because the people involved in this business are crooks, so you can't trust them at all.

But once you have 500 hours on type, the war is not over!!!
Because beleive me there is a lot of us with more than 500 hours on type out there. (you will realize once you will have them).

And it's not because there are adds saying "we are recruiting with 500hrs on type" that means that they will call you for an interview.

But after all if you hang on, if you are willing to go in Asia or Africa you could make descent money, enjoy beautiful sceneries, have quite an unstable private life but do the job of your dreams!

Make up your mind!

Happy flying everyone ;)

This thing of go flying in Africa, is also an utopia!

First, going to Africa does not work for everybody, fair enough trying to live the dream, but making insane decisions to achieve this is also another part of it!

Friend of mine works with insurance within aviation, and told me there are jobs there, but you do it on your own risk, as safety, bad maintained aircraft etc. claims many lives every year!

The only positive with bush flying that it might give you some long term connections, however short term - it is not going to give you to much.

To be honest heard better things about people who worked for Susi Air than!

Why not CFI instead of P2F?
 

How about flight instructing? Is that not an option? Your knowledge of aviation will be amazing after you've instructed for a while. You get to build PIC time and you truly get to work with some great people. You are a professional and you can make contacts. Flight instructors are aviation professionals, P2F FO's, sorry guys, you are not aviation professionals. A professional is someone that is paid for their service amongst other things.

Yes, FI pay sucks and it's not "glorious flying" as wearing a nice new uniform sitting in the cockpit of a shiny new jet. But guess what, they are paying their dues, and FI's will get the job. It may take a few years and yes seniority in this industry is everything. But guys that don't pay for expensive PFT schemes will not be burdened by debt til they are 50 and will be able to afford such things as a mortage, a new car every few years etc.

And guess what the other advantage of obtaining your CFI opposed to paying $50K for P2F is? If you do get a gig with an airline, and when you do get furloughed (which you will in this industry), you can flight instruct part or full time. It will supplement the income with the part time job at WalMart. And guess what, while others are sitting at home, waiting for the call, you are flying, staying current and making some $$$.

My experience
 

I can tell you first hand that I decided against P2F and it has worked for me.

I made the very foolish mistake of paying for a rating years ago but when all my friends rushed off to buy 500 hrs on type (in most cases this takes more than a year so add your living costs on top of the initial outlay for the hours),
I however refused. Of them only a few got jobs and mostly in places they hate.

My road was much harder and involved taking risks and traveling across the world to build hours over a period of 2 years, holding down bar jobs as I went along.

Then I landed a skydive job back home, completed a season, learned how to actually fly an aircraft and what true decision making is, build some PIC time and managed not to kill anyone or myself.

I just got a job with a TP operator who is paying for my rating, and paying me a reasonable but not rich salary while i go to the gym and wait for the winds to die down... No bond either.

And truckflyer before you open your ignorant mouth I do have a family to support and am doing a damn fine job of it.

Also the poster above is correct, of the people who were hired alongside me most came from instructing or skydive backgrounds like myself. We wont get rich here, but we will have fun and when I make it to a major airline in a few years I will just shake my head at the P2F guys. :=

jobs
 

Also to make the point, when companies recruit in the traditional manner like this it has just created 2 skydiving positions and 2 instructing positions across the UK for other guys to step into, natural progression not basterdized one-up-man-ship

cgwhitemonk11 :

What is the reason for your bullish behaviour? What you have done is good, so why attack me in your success story?

You are 24, good for you! Some of us have different expectations in life, some have different backgrounds, different goals!

If this makes you happy, good for you, topic here is about TR and paying for line training, and think we both agree on paying for line training is cancer of the industry!

Maybe I am not willing to give up a good lifestyle for my family and myself for my own selfish gratification!
That's why I do not give up my business, as flying alone can not support my families and my expected lifestyle!

It's not all about me, me and me! When you hae family, the picture becomes more complex, but I also know few guys who puts priority in themselves !

cgwhitemonk11, Aren't you quite the hypocrite, having P2F the C208!


Copy of your old post:

Did it
Came back from Belize myself in November after spending 3 amazing months there, don't slam something you have never tried guys. Unfortunately I think they have upped the price dramatically and its now not really worthwhile.

PM me if you want anymore details but this is the link

Hour Building : vendita pacchetti ore di volo. and Llovis is all legit. Anybody got a good contact in Susi?

truckflyer, i think paying 2000 dollars to visit some friends and to get some experience on a C208b is not quite the same league as paying 50,000+, you also fly alongside the locals and they are quite happy to have you. I am proud of that experience. Would I be incorrect to say you didnt get your CPL for free?

You are the most ridiculous poster on this forum so if you really want to go down the road of bringing up old posts you will fall flat on your face.

And truckflyer I am merely giving my opinion to encourage guys who may be in this horrible position, that you can succeed by saying no to P2F.

Unlike you who merely comes on here to complain about how boring your life is

$2000 for 3 months, on a SEP aircraft, not many hours you did there?

Did you log the hours? I mean their AOC was for single pilot ops I assume!

Seems like you got a steel!

yes i did get a steal as i had several friends there at the time, then your P2f buddies came along and they realized they could charge whatever they liked and i suitably left. Yes I did log the hours as relative experience and no i wont be using them to apply for my ATPL, but they have helped me get jobs because unlike you, I do my research.

This will be my last response to you in this or any thread but let me be clear on something, I am trying to give people advice based on my own experience, they can take it or leave it and i hope it helps some.

You on the other hand are a 44 year old FO with RYR who i am fairly confident has never had any other flying job, little to no GA experience and a terrible attitude towards your chosen profession, what possible advice can you give anyone? :D

Hence why you got blasted in your own 'feeling sorry for myself thread', and suitably called a 'bell-end'.

That is all.

Finally
 

A C208b is not a SEP either, but I would hardly expect you to know that...