RFDS feeling effects of global pilot shortage
Just perused the RFDS website, I see an advert for B350 pilots with required min hours of 2000 plus 500 ME. Seems a tad on the low side unless all they’re doing these days is flying the magenta line.
Deja Vu is correct about the history of GA pilots conditions. I look back on my career and shake my head at what I accepted just to get a few more hours on the next level up, Only did well after leaving to fly overseas. A move that I cannot recommend too highly to anyone wanting to lift themselves out of the poverty cycle.
Deja Vu is correct about the history of GA pilots conditions. I look back on my career and shake my head at what I accepted just to get a few more hours on the next level up, Only did well after leaving to fly overseas. A move that I cannot recommend too highly to anyone wanting to lift themselves out of the poverty cycle.
Sadly the overseas options we took have long since become "uneconomically viable" too.
Without a pilot no one is worth anything. Maybe instead they could jump in a road ambulance for the trip from Charleville to Brisbane, at least the ambulance driver would be getting well paid.
I look back on my career and shake my head at what I accepted just to get a few more hours on the next level up, Only did well after leaving to fly overseas. A move that I cannot recommend too highly to anyone wanting to lift themselves out of the poverty cycle.
Bad employers are crying because they don't have a queue of pilots willing to take whatever they offer and even the good ones are battling with retention as the path to the airlines has sped up.
BTW My mate got a job with Flight West on the F28 and is now with Cathy.
Why make a big deal about the pilot being the lowest paid on board? Doctors and nurses need a uni degree and substantial extra qualifications to work in the aero medical field. It’s not a competition between them and the pilots. By all means go for higher wages, but you won’t get the money by pointing to the medical staff and complaining.
So correct me if I am wrong, but if a pilot had a degree from a uni, like a degree in aviation (LOL) from say RMIT Uni he/she should be paid the same as a doctor or a nurse or at least significantly more than the current rate.. And do tell us more about the "substantial extra qualifications to work in the aero medical field" What complete tosh.
Doctors and nurses do a course of study and when it's completed successfully they get a document called a Degree, when a pilot successfully does a course of study he/she gets a licence, same thing really, a permit to exercise the privileges of whatever document you receive.
So until you can clarify it all this particular skygod thinks you talk absolute tosh.
This kind of flying should be the best paid in industry. It’s not just flying it’s single pilot flying which means you do it all. Plus as a poster wrote even though one tries not to be involved there is that emotional attachment that is natural. It’s easy to say one doesn’t get involved but I’m sure it’s always there.
I bet the companies are making a good buck. Tendered contract at a rate. So I ask again all the money raised through public donations where does this go?
Amazing what lengths some people will go to to justify an organisation not paying people what they’re worth.
GA as a whole has a terrible history of taking advantage of people. It’s quite enjoyable watching the industry as a whole at this part of the cycle where pilots are becoming a valuable commodity again and it’s the pilots fault for not being loyal to employers. Ha.
GA as a whole has a terrible history of taking advantage of people. It’s quite enjoyable watching the industry as a whole at this part of the cycle where pilots are becoming a valuable commodity again and it’s the pilots fault for not being loyal to employers. Ha.
Join Date: Sep 2017
Location: Europe
Posts: 1,674
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Amazing what lengths some people will go to to justify an organisation not paying people what they’re worth.
GA as a whole has a terrible history of taking advantage of people. It’s quite enjoyable watching the industry as a whole at this part of the cycle where pilots are becoming a valuable commodity again and it’s the pilots fault for not being loyal to employers. Ha.
GA as a whole has a terrible history of taking advantage of people. It’s quite enjoyable watching the industry as a whole at this part of the cycle where pilots are becoming a valuable commodity again and it’s the pilots fault for not being loyal to employers. Ha.
Once it was a simple handshake. How time has progressed.
Companies have the leverage: too many pilots, having paid too much money for the available employment. Terms and conditions in a slow spiral ever since.
However, demographics and the incredible success of the HR/IR reducing terms and conditions see insufficient supply.
Rather amusing. The industry desperate to hold on to the status quo resorts to calls of loyalty and professionalism. The same thing they considered irrelevant for the last few decades.
I too note only one pilot job on the RFDS website and that is for someone to warm a RHS on a B350 based at Jandakot and paying around $20K below the average Australian salary.. Strange for an outfit that claims it can't get pilots.
Sadly the overseas options we took have long since become "uneconomically viable" too.
Sadly the overseas options we took have long since become "uneconomically viable" too.
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 2
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
She thinks it’s extraordinary how little the pilots are valued by management, and is worried about the constantly lowering requirements to be considered for the (pilot) job.
I wonder what would happen if the flight nurses simply refused to fly with low time pilots?
I’m an RFDS pilot. My partner is an RFDS flight nurse. Thus we have a lot more idea than you do, mate.
She thinks it’s extraordinary how little the pilots are valued by management, and is worried about the constantly lowering requirements to be considered for the (pilot) job.
I wonder what would happen if the flight nurses simply refused to fly with low time pilots?
Read my posts again mate. I have no problem with RFDS pilots being paid more than they whatever they are getting, I don't doubt management want to lower costs by offering lower wages (and they still get inundated with pilot applicants). I was just replying to the guy who seems to think it is an affront to humanity if the pilot is not the highest paid person on board.
Deja Vu,
Am I correct in understanding that you think a pilot with a university degree has achieved a degree of academic achievement equivalent to that achieved by a Doctor? ...or even a Nurse?
Am I correct in understanding that you think a pilot with a university degree has achieved a degree of academic achievement equivalent to that achieved by a Doctor? ...or even a Nurse?
Read my posts again mate. I have no problem with RFDS pilots being paid more than they whatever they are getting, I don't doubt management want to lower costs by offering lower wages (and they still get inundated with pilot applicants). I was just replying to the guy who seems to think it is an affront to humanity if the pilot is not the highest paid person on board.
They are now considering (and more) applications from people who wouldn’t have made the “filing cabinet” a few years ago. It is not unreasonable to ask why the entry standards have dropped so much.
To be honest, the public should be asking this question.
The obvious answer is that while historically RFDS has (rightly) been considered to be the very best of GA and a genuine long term career goal for the right people, in the current environment what they offer is simply not attractive enough to bring in the caliber of pilots the job requires.
What’s happening now is that ****loads of low-time pilots are using RFDS to pump up their resume for a year or two and then leaving ASAP to that airline job they really wanted all along.
What’s happening now is that ****loads of low-time pilots are using RFDS to pump up their resume for a year or two and then leaving ASAP to that airline job they really wanted all along.
What this whole thread is about to me is that GA pilots do not receive sufficient renumeration to live a modest life and a comfortable retirement considering their responsibilities. This has mostly come about, in my view, by a supply and demand situation. Operators like the RFDS have taken advantage of this for many years and now claim that they can't get pilots to work for peanuts as easily any longer and so plead for the pilots to "give back to the sector" while happily paying up to $450K for a GP, if I am reading their website correctly. No one begrudges the Doctor or Nurse earning what they do, thats probably just market forces too.
If we were to pay people based on "academic achievement" alone would aircraft refuellers be making $120K+, train drivers in the Pilbarra $250K+, Alan Joyce $24Million, plumbers $300K etc etc. ???.
A look at the RFDS website shows one vacancy for a pilot in Dubbo, RHS for a B350 earning about the same as check out staff at woolies. There are numerous ads for EOI for pilot jobs, but these are not vacancies but an exercise in filling a filing cabinet with applications. No urgent shortage at all.
I can't help, in my negative cynicism, suspect there is more at play here with this whole issue.