If you fail the final interview then maybe an idea to go to interview training. Or do more research about aviation interviews.
I did do research and found many questions. Then find for yourself answers how you would answer them.

But those trainings might help. Because the rest you seem to do ok then.

Dont give up and improve your weeknesses. There are techniques. I did and managed to pass interviews this way.

CANT POST LINKS SO SPELT IT TO SEARCH

vp89 try this for final interviews AIRLINE PREP CO UK or go to a local Uni and and join their career fares. Plenty of schools, colleges offer free interviewing at graduation time in particular. Practice at home at the kitchen table with a suit on so ur relaxed and comfortable with friends and family, write your answers out for questions etc. There is some technical book that everyone has, cant remember the name of it, read that ace pilot technical maybe or similar name.

yap800 here is free pilot event: PILOT CAREERS LIVE

Same as anything in life if you quit you defo wont get it, ideally you should get a job within 1 or 2 renewals. I still keep my licence and renewed my IR a while back, am rusty, takes time and money to keep it current at £350 an hr, even a solicitor doesnt charge that much!

I will do everything in my power to stop my children to pursue this career, I would be very disappointed if they did want to do it, as I have seen the chaos and instability it creates and I dont want to deal with that in retirement!

I am curious. What was the appeal in the first place to embark on this occupation?
Only BA being LHR based gives stability. The roster style however is something you need to adapt to.

About how much do medical and Ir renewals cost?

@parkfell mix of childhood dream/early mid life crisis/grass is greener....

@andyh009 medical annual cost of £200-300 and IR £400- well £3,000 (if you let a school rip you off), can alternate between SIM and aircraft each year and sim often cheaper. As always shop around.....

I've been in the flying business all my life and, seeing the wriggling that you young guys are having to go through these days, I would hate to part of it today.

My career started with failing an RAF interview. It was at the time of the Duncan Sandys White paper. They call them SDRs now. It was the first real failure I'd had. I was a (then) state grammar school lad who had played a decent game of rugby, achieved good exam results and helped out at the local airfield.
I had to get a job as it was too late to go to uni that year, stayed in it and hated it.
I was actually doing a bit of Auster flying with a neighbour and he never ceased prodding me to try again but I was in my late teens and just didn't want to fail again.
Later the Royal Navy were advertising for pilots. I still had the PASSION and applied in the December. I was more PREPARED this time and, after the hoops, was in uniform by April !
I then fully trained, got my Wings and, in 30 months in all, was ready for FJ carrier ops. on a frontline aeroplane. Amazing these days !
Then another SDR and the politicians decided to scrap all the carriers !

OK, get some civvie licences and an 1179 - not as expensive as today - and instruct.
Then, 2 years later, instruct at an airline training school. They paid for my IR ! 4 years later and an airline came knocking !
I didn't even have a proper interview or have to pay for a type Rating. I took quite a drop in salary though - for 6 months.
As I had jet time, another Type Rating was all paid for and I was put up for a Command after a couple of years.
I did 25 years of it with little appreciation but lots of experience of our environment, people and what (hand) flying was all about.
After retirement I set up a company and did all the things I had wanted to do. To teach at an advanced level - instrument, aerobatics, formation and the icing on the cake - maintenance test flying (14 years of it) !
I've retired again after 18 years and I'm still flying but only for me now.

It's all about PASSION; the NEED, not the money. It is a tightrope but GIVE IT YOUR ALL - the MONEY will come anyway !

Good luck. :ok:

Classic! -The bit about lying about passing all your exams was hilarious.
Did you keep a straight face over the phone saying that?

Great to hear you got there in the end. Thank you for sharing some reasons about the difference between making it and not, that is really helpful. Know any who were prepared to do all that and still didn't get there just out of interest?

Those contemplating flying as a career need to take careful note of what appears in the QUOTE

1. You might think that going straight from a light twin to a Airbus/Boeing etc is the best move. For those who regard themselves as “an ace of the base” then the choice may well be valid.
For the ordinary Joe, two years on a TP, multi sector days flying ILS, LOC, VOR, NDB approaches is the ideal apprenticeship. You build a solid foundation, with a fair amount of hand flying, visual approaches etc. Now ready to make that move to a medium size jet.

Just ask yourself how much manual flying will you get flying a big silver bird a month compared to a TP?
Just how competent are you when it comes to hand flying, raw data without that TP foundation?
Why not ask to fly a few 1500’ visual circuits early on during your MCC course? Good introduction if a circling approach is part of the syllabus later on.


2. At the very outset, if you are not prepared to move, accept FO pay, fly a TP, then why bother with the training in the first place?
These are all overcome without question if you really have the passion. The acid test.

If you are not 100% certain that this is what you have a burning desire to do, then forgot it; choose something else as an occupation as you are simply wasting your money.

My story,
I got my EASA frozen in 2012 and could't find a job. In 2013 i wen't to Nepal to fly a tiny ultralight sightseeing flights for food but was not successful as they required some experience in fixing things - including the airplane. After returning home i was lucky to secure a job on a little turboprop for a demonstration flights. In 2015 this whole thing went belly up and i shifted to freelance flying - light singles and multi turboprops on demand. Later in 2017 I took a loan and bought myself a real type rating on a regional turboprop and got a job in EU(I am a 3rd world citizen) . Recently i had unsuccessful attempt on getting a jet job but was ditched 24 hours before the sim. I have about 1500 hours tt and all jet offers i get are equivalent to my total time in euro. Turboprops on the other hand pay triple but hours are almost worthless.

I have a friend who after a lot of PPL and CPL flying finally did his ATPL parallel to some other job. Being some "old" newbie now seems to kick him out of many airline tests. Maybe it's combined with not being a 20 year old and airlines feel he is not so flexible for their company style anymore? Just meant as a word of caution for non-standard career choices. So he ends up flying business jets partly with their low proficiency owners on the left seat...

I always laugh when I hear people in mainly western Europe that have the perfect picture that they will finish flight school and immediately join a major airline flying the big jets!

Some tips for those people:
Take any job anywhere in the world. Accept the low pay (at least for a few years). Be prepared to take further loans in the case you get an offer from the likes of Ryanair... NO you are not selling out or bending over for them, you are investing in your future.

Once you have that first job the road to better jobs is a paved one!

A friend of mine paid for his flight training from his semi professional music career. After he got his EASA licences he moved to Namibia to fly Cessna Caravans. A year later he was offered a job in Europe flying freight in an ATR. 2 years later he joined an airline in the UK flying Airbus 320's and has recently joined one of the Middle East 3 flying A380's.

A 'bad' job in Africa paved the way for his career, not to mention a few great stories for the pub!

Why would anyone get into flying commercially if they are not prepared to move away from their home town? That just sounds like a ridiculous argument when getting into a career in aviation!

A pay cut to get into the right job is a short term pain to a long term issue. I have taken a 50% paycut more than 8 years into my flying career, I am now better off than I would have been if I had stayed with my previous company...

Taking a job with unfavorable working rotations - it's a stepping stone to a job with better lifestyle conditions.

I know of a few pilots who joined Ryanair with the standard fATPL and minimum flight hours, then left during line training as they got based somewhere else in Europe and they wanted to live at home. :ugh: (they are still unemployed now.) They potentially blocked other pilots willing to do anything to get their foot in the door to a flying job, that is the worst part!

The main point I was trying to make to people is basically don't complain and moan that you don't have a job if you are not AS WILLING as the next guy. It simply comes down to what you are willing to do to create a career for yourself, no one will make your career for you. If you want a 9 - 5 job working in your home town then it's probably better join the local flying school and work at a more regular job or by all means work as a flight instructor!

@ bulldog89 It sounds like you are already set into the market. You seem to have a job which although you may not be 100% satisfied with you still are not an unemployed pilot with minimal experience. I am referring to the subject of this forum "Unemployed pilots fATPL holders". There are many pilots in this category that wonder why they get left behind, sometimes it is simply because they are not as willing to move in order to secure a job. They then complain on PPrune and other sites that the market is unfair and make excuses for their own lack of enthusiasm and willingness to fight for their goals.

There are only very few who are lucky enough to stay close to home throughout an aviation career. I have only been flying commercially for 15 years now and have already lived in over 5 countries, moved my family to 4 different countries (2 continents), 3 different schools for my kids.... I guess I am trying to say that there are people out there who are very willing and capable, this determination is very apparent at interviews, hence why some people really stand out amongst the crowd of fATPL holders. Especially when the interviewers can't count on experience, they will grade you on what you can bring to the company.

Completely agree. Hopefully the t's and c's for flight schools and other non airline flying jobs improves over time and those provide an enjoyable lifestyle.

I don't think the money argument is really there for aviation anymore, it is so hard to get one of those high paying jobs anyway that even on a good job the money and benefits are nothing in comparison to other industries. I have friends who are engineers who earn similar money to captains on 737s and 320s in Europe. Flying will nearly never be a job that will make you rich, unless you move to China as a captain! :=

Agree with this flyingmed and bulldog89, you have to really really want it and have the non waning passion of Valentino Rossi to want to keep ongoing despite poor pay, being messed around, giving up your freetime often and paying for so many things yourself even when employed.

Its hard to know what its like until you have tried it but the older you get the harder it is to accept being treated like this, I found the airport security a real hassle, complete jobs worths alot of the time and a rubbish way to start your day!

I would recommend working in an airport for a week or two to really sort out if you want to spend so much of your time there, I guess the drop of rate would be high and you could save alot of your time and money.

What type of engineering at what company? I know some Senior/Project civil engineers at top contractors earn from £45-65k whereas I thought 737 and 320 captains get £70- 90k? at most airlines.

Those engineers work from 7am to 7pm on a 5 on 2 off pattern sometimes 6 on 1 off. So thats 60+hr weeks
I suppose at least they have a regular wake up/ sleep pattern so maybe it cant be compared?

And software engineers at IBM average around 40k (on glassdoor) and software engineers at goldman sachs average £65k

By comparison to other industies do you mean doctors or lawyers, and financial services where the work is very competitive to get a foot in also? I don't really think there are any easy options at that kind of pay level.

(Sorry for helping to derail the thread it wasn't supposed to be sidetracked to about pay, but thank you for contributing )

Its about the whole package rather than headline salary, working from home, holidays, pension contributions as well, FS firms would pay upto 16% pension and many airlines pay the minimum contributions and some paid 0 until law change recently.

From my experience aviation is the most competitive I have come across with the lowest terms and conditions and riskiest business model.

The benefit of Doctors, Dentists and Lawyers etc, you can become a partner/owner and own part of the business and command your own work life balance and salaries/dividends closer to 200k if you own the practice and the property the business sits in, being your own boss as you get older rather being given a non negotiable roster.

Dated but relevant article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...ost-first.html

I think everyone would agree with this, dont do aviation for the 'high' salary, it will disappoint!

Aer Lingus pilots still seem to do very well, good salary and very good pension I hear, although the cost of living in Dublin is, I believe, very high. From what I've heard, the likes of Air France, KLM and Lufthansa also have very good contracts. Unfortunately the rest are/have been going the wrong way for quite sometime, even where pay/pensions are still good, there are longer two crew sectors and shortened rest.

Quite a few comparisons with other professions have been made. First-hand, I can only speak for the train driving world:
£50-70k basic depending on company, best top line I've seen on a payslip was £9500 for four weeks' work (including a lot of overtime).
Defined benefit pension at most places.
Typically a 4 day, 35 hour week.
Some companies are still "Sundays outside", meaning that unless you want to, you never have to work a Sunday. This was standard during BR days, some companies have "purchased" Sunday working from their drivers.
Internal redeployment with parachute payments if you lose your medical, at some companies you keep your drivers salary in the new role.
Fully funded training during which you receive approx. 50% of qualified pay and enrolment on the pension scheme.
Free travel with your own company and others under the same parent company from your first day of employment, 75% off all UK walk-up tickets after 6 months, FIP card for discounted continental rail travel after 1 year.
Job security on franchised passenger work is not dependent on industry financial performance, if your employer goes bust the government will either nationalise it or give the franchise to someone else and you get TUPE'd over. Freight and open access is a bit more like the airlines though.

How do we achieve it? We have a strong union and we also have a standard industry-wide aptitude test which has a 90%-ish failure rate with only one resit ever allowed. You also have to be taken on by a train company in order to become a trainee, so the entire industry isn't awash with newly qualified people desperate for a job. If you turned up for an interview and offered to pay for your own training (which costs a similar amount to an integrated fATPL), you'd get laughed out the door by management.

It's all supply and demand, look what happened in the US to T&Cs once the 1500 hour rule was brought in, if you can cut off the supply of people desperate for a job, pay and conditions will improve.

I'm currently doing a PPL, originally the intention was that I'd look to go for modular training or a funded cadet scheme afterwards, ow I'm tempted to just keep the PPL. Even though things have been "good" from 2014 through to 2018-ish, there's still a lot of people who haven't got jobs despite spending huge sums on training.

I don't know what jobs are like in the UK (from the £ sign in your post) I can say from experience that that a large portion of IT security & IT engineering jobs in Ireland (for example) with the likes of social media companies and computer hardware manufacturers are over the 100K a year mark (maybe just under in £).
I do not have any banking / financial services / medical profession friends so I am not sure exactly what the pay packages are like there. The more unstable the job usually the more the monthly pay is, just like aviation.

The point I was trying to make is that the huge investment needed to get into aviation does not justify the pay for those people who want to get into flying for the monitory side of the job. Someone can spend less money to earn a similar or more money, especially in the USA where the good money is really only in the big carriers and a very unstable market underneath the major airlines. Not to mention sometimes crazy working patterns and very long commutes to work (5hrs +)

For the aviation engineering side of things you mentioned quite a stable roster for some friends, that seems to be quite similar to friends of mine who are in comfortable jobs. There are however jobs out there without the stable roster who are on much more as contractors.

I just saw in another thread the salary for captains in Laudamotion after tax is just over the 3K a month mark. There are plenty of non - aviation jobs which would pay that or more.

Well said bryan . Was great to hear you got to follow your dream and succeeded in getting your licence.
It takes a strong person to achieve what you did and even a stronger person to walk away.

I have had a similar experience, been there done that, had some good experiences some great flying but more bad experiences than good im afraid and had to walk away just to keep sane.
You'll probably find that we're not alone .A majority will succeed and will live the dream but only for a short period and will end up back to some sort of normality ,whatever that may be .

I find this to be a very bizarre comment. I'd suggest that airport security is merely an annoyance and not something to base your career decisions on. There are far more compelling reasons not to fly for a living than the airport environment!

This is an interesting thread, pretty good advice in places to.

Passion for something is a very 21st. century notion, a word that is bandied about, but hard to pin down. I would say that Determination to never, ever, ever, give up is as useful to the aspiring fATPL, demonstrated by some of the posters on here. Certainly learnt by myself 27 years ago when I passed my IR in the middle of the Air Europe bankruptcy. 2.5 years of trying to get a job, finally materialized into one, and the wait was extremely trying, but worth all the effort in the end.

There are differences between then and now. The 90's was the tail end of the good times to be a pilot. I was lucky enough to end up with a legacy carrier which had great t&c, but post 9/11 everything has been a battle to keep them. With the failure of Thomas Cook a few weeks back, I now am looking for work again in an environment that I barely recognise and for pay that I would have laughed at a month ago. If you are new to this game (which I am insofar as selection processes go) I would greatly recommend a course of interview preparation. BALPA has thankfully organised these for the TC pilots FOC, but having done it, I can genuinely say it has increased my chances of surviving a selection day by 100%. The dead hand of HR looks at you from angles that you don't see yourself and you are judged by the smallest infraction of a set of criteria that only they know. But the criteria are generally similar for each airline, so know the game to increase your chances of winning it.

Thankfully, I came to aviation late as a 2nd career, so I'm at an age to walk away and hang up my headset. I loved the first 10 years, but the next 15 made me think that I would not recommend the life to my children unless they just had to do it, back to the passion, I suppose. The money today is there eventually, but it is not so great that plenty of other jobs, which are easier to achieve and hold onto, can't equal. I don't regret travelling the world and having some amazing experiences to remember doing long haul, but to sell my soul to do 4 east Med trips a week, no thanks.

Bit like the X factor isn’t it? One or two will make the big money with the great TCs, the rest will still be singing in the shower or karaoke !

Dont overlook the absolute importance of ‘ timing ‘.
Moving jobs/ companies/ types at the correct moment to get a promotion/ better pay etc.

My timing wasn’t bad and I got a command in my 30s, some I know has been awful ( not always their fault ) and means they are in their 40s with no sign of promotion on the horizon

Its the culture I am referring to, aviation is a very different culture that can be exhausting in all areas.

Ha very interesting thread. I’m at the point in my life now that I’m rather bored of my current ITish job, and an seriously considering moving into aviation.



I know I can support my family and do the fATPL training in the background over the next 5 years, but the question of whether it will be worth it is a big one. I’ve had a love for aviation for decades, but also have just stated a family… currently just shy of £50k in my current job, I do wonder about what is considered “low pay” and what salary increases are realistic.



Luckily, in line with this thread, because I have a job already I’m not hugely concerned if it takes a few years of applications … but the investment vs a potential non-return thought is always there.

If you enjoy teaching, go down the route ( via modular) of part time instructing at weekends and keep your well paid job to support your family.
If you can afford to spend that significant sum without the possibility of any return then do it; what you are contemplating is risky. Family must always come first.

Always follow what is truly driving you, your family and wife will be thankful for that and test you if you really want what you chose. It will be hard but thats the way to fulfillment. Imagine being in a movie, youre the lead star and your son/daughter/wife is watching that movie. Its up to you how itll turn out.

I've read through most of this thread and, oh boy, there is some good advice in here together with putting some things into perspective. Thanks to all the previous posters!

I'm currently in a situation that is probably enviable but doesn't give any indication as to when I'll actually start.

I took the long route to the flying career, studying (and finishing those studies) as well as working as a flight attendant before doing my integrated ATPL training before turning 30. Now I've gone through some assessment centres just before the whole market more or less imploded and as it turns out, as of last week, I'm officially waitlisted with a Lufthansa Group Airline on a Jet AC. The whole process of sending out roughly 15 applications, getting responses, being invited to A/C etc. took about 4-5 months in total if there was a response at all from the respective airline.

The airline that gave me the green light now has no idea as to when they'll actually hire again but its a pretty decent position to be in. I'll probably go and work in my old line of work for a while while waiting for that gig to materialise eventually.
Thinking of what I'd do if I just came out of school and went into training to incur a debt of about 80.000EUR gives me the shivers... Having some sort of higher education to fall back to gave me some peace of mind at least. Money wise I would probably be worse off going for a pilots job anywhere else as there is absolutely more money in my old field but at the same time I have absolutely no drive to pursue a full time career in it. So leaving for passion is a common thing here...

To anyone still in the assessment grind I can only say: keep it up! Just look ahead and take one step at the time. Unfortunately it's just the way this industry works and times will hopefully get better soon. I'm gonna do some more A/C's as well and try to get something to bridge the gap until the opportunity mentioned above comes up.

CAA
 

Re stats

National CAA statistics show issues of ATPL CPL and PPL.

These DATA are shown by year on year.

Not all PPL become CPL requires Exams hours flight test etc..

Not all CPL become ATPL requires Multi-crew IR etc

Possible to work out success/attrition from these DATA

I would argue that this logic doesn't work well due to the fact that a huge and fairly disproportional amount of people gain their CPLs at UK based ATOs and then go on to work for airlines in other countries. Most notably a blue and yellow Irish one. Add to that all the guys and girls on the orange bus that are now on Austrian licences too.

It hurts a lot to be reading this topic. Good luck for everyone...