Proof that we do it for love!
 

For all the GA charter pilots out there who are feeling the relief of new pay award increases in your hip pocket, a full time C206 or similar driver should be recieving an income in the low thirties, consider this.
I saw an advert for a job in the paper last weekend. The job was for a part time library assistant, suitable for a school leaver or part time student. The advertised salary was $34,625.00.

This morning I attended a training graduation for apprentice Boilermakers in Brisbane. I ended up speaking to a trainer from a large company involved in oil and gas. Some of his specialised pipeline welders are guys (and girls) in their early thirties who are taking home nearly two hundred thousand dollars a year, with $100K quite commonplace and they have more work opportunities and employment prospects than they could ever want. He remembers most of them graduating not so long ago and has watched them grow and grow.

Something to consider for all those who are looking for a salary somewhere in between. It's just more proof that people must be in flying for the love of it rather than the money or job security.

Well I somehow doubt very much that there are many 206/207/210 etc drivers earning in the low 30s anyway

Nice and quiet.

Air conditioned.

Good money.

Part time, maybe 20 hours a week?

Where do we sign?:E :E :E

But seriously, it does provide an interesting comparison.

Another comparison....

Mine workers doing anything from driving a tipper up and down an incline can recieve renumerations well in excess of 100k a year. Most here work 2 weeks on, 1 off through to other fairly extreme roster sequences but they are well paid for the inconvenience. Other positions are well over the 200k. Not all are shift work, and pretty attractive incentives are occasionally attached. Some have their families and rosters working well together. Contractors are on their own with their companies under various awards so I wont comment on their financial positions. Its lifestyle vs finance. Some employment groups have both. Where I stay, it "aint the Hilton" but they are a great bunch of folks and I get fed three square meals a day so I cant complain.

Im the lowest paid on site at 70+k except when the pilots stay! Equilivilent qualified paramedics in other states would laugh at that figure BTW. The NT para is about the lowest paid in Aus apart from thise who do it on a volunteer basis. Our guys sign up for training at 29k, progressing to 32k by the completion of their first levels. (about 3 months by the end of tehor qualifying logbooks) Not bad since these guys and gals deal with saving folks lives every day in some pretty medically critical situations. By the time they are out of ambulance level and onto paramedic level the pay starts at approx 36k baseline..... are you GA guys feeling better yet???!!!!

But there is the other side of the coin that you cannot measure in financial terms. I still miss flying at sparrow-fart down the coast line off the NT showing the tourists all the beautiful features. There are other nights where I miss watching those spectacular storms from the air or being chuffed after pulling off a challenging weather approach to minima.

I still believe pilots are underpaid in reality. If the award is adhered to in terms of penilties and so on, the average GA pilot would be much better off. There are so many companies about the place that have pilots that allow themselves to be undervalued.

Horses for courses. If you are happy to stay in GA, then I'd agree, you are definately doing it for love. If you are hoping to break into a big commercial, then you are like any other aspiring worker who is looking for the big dollars.

On a side note, do GA pilots have the same representation as the Commercial guys? I only ask because, generally, strong Unions can equate to healthy work conditions.:confused:

Heard a rumour that with jet-craft/Mac-air pulling out of NSW on RPT services, that there will be redundancies and that the guys and gals have ABANDONED the AFAP in favour of the TWU!!!!

I hope that the TWU thingy is true, and that they accept the challenge.

Here's another example:

I with what is considered a respectable GA operator (RFDS)...if there is such a thing! I am on 60k a year (the max increment) plus a car.

With that comes all the shiftwork; nights, weekends, public holidays etc.

I have mate who works similar shifts to me, drives a front end loader in a large company, with no pressure, no check rides, not a very dangertous environment and no bosses watching his every move and he's on 70k a year.

In another story I was recently talking to one of our paramedic associates and he was telling me what a great job i've got being on 150k a year etc., when I informed him of the true salary he would not believe me until i showed him my pay advice slip.

Its definately done for love.

:D

i hate so say this, some do it for the love some don't.
most people see the 250K salary at the end of the rain bow(qantas) .unfortunantly most don't make it and are stuck in aviation. By the time they find out they aren't going to make it they have already invested so much time, money and effort in this career that starting a new career would put them at the 'bottom of the barrel' again.
the earing potentional of a pilot is one of the highest career fields out there including doctors. potentially you could make 300K in your early 30's as a pilot. (if your more than lucky)
Doing it for the love of flying, if you ask me.... i don't know.. most of my mates are here for the retirment and six figure income and the 15 days of a month.

Show me where that job exists - if you're very, very lucky, you might be on 1/4 of that!

Pilots' salaries are now as (relative to others) low as they have been during my time in this industry, and I'd strongly advise anyone looking at thinking of entering it, to have a good, hard look at other alternatives.

For the enormous amount of money you will outlay just to gain your basic qualifications, with absolutely NO guarantee of employment - and when you eventually do find work, it will be for a miserable salary - you're probably far, far better off financially undertaking another profession or craft, imho.
Then you can spend that money you've saved by NOT taking up flying - not just the training $$$$'s, but also the years spent wprking basically for love - to hire an aeroplane.

It's all business.
 

Captain M and all.

I think that most pilots have a problem with running their lives as a business. It wasn't until I met my wife and she told me that I had an "irresponsible attitude to money", that I finally realized that most pilots do.

I worked briefly for a float plane operator and the pay check was late, and when it did show up, it was short. I left immediately! Unless people take a very stubborn view of what they are worth and don't sell out their colleagues we are all doomed.

Unfortunately this message was lost in the 1989 dispute and it seems to have done irrepairable harm since then. I have just read a thread where it appears that a crew did not know the difference between a traffic alert and a resolution advisory. I really have to question what shortfalls in training have been going on at that operator. If I responded like that I'd be taking evasive action every morning I go to work, although I doubt I'd stay employed very long.

I talked to a QF crewmember I went to Sydney Tech with the other day and I think that corrected for cost of living and the exchange rate, there's more money where I'm at flying a nine pax biz-jet if you can believe that?!

Well just for the record, I am in training and doing shift work to get myself through, and I am aware of the fact that I earn more doing 20 hours a week now than I will busting my ass in Northern Australia when I'm done.
And as crazy as it may seem, I am happy with that because I DO love flying and I AM willing to do it mostly for love...
I know, I know, ok for one who has no financial responsibilty (except the 30k debt after training lol), no kids, no mortgage... But come on guys. My mum's wisdom was: if you love something then you'll succeed at it no matter what. And although money is sure helpful it can't buy you those mornings when you take first time fliers into the sky just as the sun rises... Or the feeling of accomplishment you get when you resolve a difficult situatuion.

Yes, I am an eternal optimist. Watch my posts in the next 6-12 months. Maybe they will change but I sure hope not!!
:ok:

If we all ran our lives as a business - to maximise ROI we would be doctors, lawyers, accountants and other high income professions.

There would be no plumbers to clean out the crapper when it blocked, no garbos to empty the wheelie bin and no mechanic to fix the Beemer when it breaks down.

I work in IT because I heard it pays well and had a future.

I sit in a windowless office in front of a screen writing software and taking calls from clueless users. While I'm lucky - some companies have decided to outsource development to India where a programmer costs 1/5 the cost in Australia. Pretty rivetting stuff. :rolleyes:

When I talk to friends who are working in aviation, either civilian or military, I wonder whether I made the right decision....

as a unqualified sheetmetal worker with 5yrs experience im on $14.75 p/h,(just iver 30k p/a) qualified sheeties earn upwards of $20+ p/h and at the top of the heap stainless steel workers earn anywhere from $25p/h upwards, my dads a qualified sparky with 33yrs experience and hes only just breaking the 50k p/a mark, i have a cousin and her husband who are chefs and work in western australia in the mines earning 50k p/a each, and then a mate of mine at a timber town in the north island drives a forklift, no worries in the world $70k, i feel sorry for some of my mates in the army, who are on call 24/7 can be sent into dodgy situations given outdated equipment (this sound familiar bush pilots?) and earn sfa, sometimes the lucky ones are given the 'break' they need to make it, and some of us have to make it the hard way.

*mr higgins, i cant see anywhere in this post where i mentioned ansett, u can carry on all u like till the cows come home, nothings gonna change if u keep bringing it up over and over again, its ever so easy to blame the little guy in new zealand, and air new zealand, if u live in a glass house dont throw stones, if australia had kept its part in the open skies agreement this would never have happened.

Always interesting....
 

It never ceases to amaze me how many people feel thay have to "one up" another's hard luck story in this industry. Chicago garbage collectors earn $100 k a year and that's US!

How? They stuck together!

You have an award system in Australia..bloody well enforce it!

ZK-NSJ, you have absolutely no idea what went on at Ansett, yet you have chosen to add input to that on another thread too. Aging aircraft, the accounts raided by Air New Zealand and an irresponsible level of management might surely rate a distant first to blaming work rules or unions!

What anyone does for the "sheer love of flying", in other words, working for free is scabbing and it's breaking the damn law!

Have some backbone, stop the poor pity me crap and take some responsibility for your own actions.

Meanwhile, any operator that hires these scabs should be prosecuted and the names of those individuals blacklisted.

That's it - I'm out of here! :ok:

Let's see, ................."there's no free lunch"...........yup that still works.

We are all pretty much paid close to what we are worth in the market at the time.
Yes you can take some control of that with unions but you can also price the product of which you are a part, out of its market.

There may not even be a market if the operator for whom we aspire to work for, was to price it according to the real costs. Think about it.

The market and operators aren't there just to provide an opportunity to support your habit.

Oh and just for the record there are plenty of doctors, lawyers and accountants out there who dream of $50k a year.

There was and will be a "price" or "quid pro quo", paid by the Chicago garbage collectors for the 100k pa , it's rarely that simple.
You, may or may not be prepared to pay it.

When a lad (1970 ish) I (or anyone else interested) was offered what was then a kings ransom per month into a Swiss bank account plus another princes ransom walking around money to fly (command yet) DC6-7/Constellations for a big time relief agency into one of the more unfriendly and inhospitable parts of Africa. Pretty atttactive for a 20 something when airlines were closed for the foreseeable future and it was for a very worthy cause and I probably should have done it for free for that reason alone. But it wasn't my fight and they weren't paying for my skills ??, there were thousands of pilots more qualified than I.

The reality was, they had just set the money bar where they knew they would find some of those people desperate enough to take the risk or would chance their arm for the opportunity to fly the big 'uns. And one of my mates took it. Did he make a $, yes, did it do him any good, dunno, last I heard he was back in rehab for the third time.

Having said that I did meet some pilots who were doing it because they believed it was important and moved on from there.

You pays your money you take your chances.

The market pays what you are worth, if you are not getting paid what you think you are worth then, it's either because you are getting paid what the market thinks you are actually worth or there is not really a market that can sustain your personal expectations.

It's always your choice.

But you're not in Africa fighting someone elses war and getting addicted to drugs and alcohol is a choice you make too!

The issue here is abiding by the law. if you are not being paid the award, you are breaking the law by receiving a non-award wage and agreeing to it. You don't have to be a maverick union member to realise that!

Australia is, of course, a remote country, laws are difficult to enforce, but telling people to just go out and break the laws is not right either.

The bottom line is that if everyone refused to work for no less than award, not pay for a job and all that kind of rubbish, we wouldn't have scum bag operators that have no business in the industry in the first place, preying on peoples hopes and dreams.

lol
 

i earn $40,000 a year to load aircraft but only $20,000 for instructing, if you ask me which i prefer i would say instructing.

doesnt wreck the back
office with the view
love aircraft

i still need the other job to pay the bills yes! but i never enjoy going to work.

everyone on this forum is the same. alwasy whinge.
tell someone you are a pilot and watch their eyes light up.

no one dreams of being an accountant!!

so shut up and Enjoy.

Chris I think you missed my point entirely, I must stop being so subtle.:p

Excel,
In one post you have described the problem in a nutshell. You need the loaders job to survive, yet you instruct for half the money.

It is difficult not to get to cynical, but I would think that your students get what they pay for.

Gaunty,
Try a steam hammer, might get more results than a sledge hammer.

Prospector