UK HEMS Pilot Pay
 

Looks like the shortage of pilots is being felt in the UK. Babcock Onshore now offering up to £80k according to their Linkedin page, although no mention on how long you have to serve to get that. I wonder if the other big UK operator will follow suit?

I´m sure this numbers are not for a line pilot.

The value for a line pilot is around 60k, maybe some more for a touring pilot.

This numbers maybe.....and only maybe for a TRE on both types Babcock flies.

Not everything that shines is gold, and with Babcock there´s a lot of shinning at first glance........

Happy landings

Incorrect...

Then... can you share some light on the subject?

Safe landings

How many hours a year could HEMS/Air Ambulance co-pilots expect to be flying? Children's Air Ambulance in Doncaster/Kents, surrey sussex HEMS etc.
Just out of curiosity

Whate ever a HEMS pilot is payed in my opinion it is just not enough. What a wonderful job the whole HEMS crew do.

There's nothing to prevent them logging the time, but it can't be counted for the purposes of a qualification.

..or as total time since you can't log P2 in single pilot ops. Which does beg the question why two people..

I fly as P2 in a EC135, HEMS. My rating is 135 MP IR, done MCC, the ops manual states the operation is multi-pilot, and I do my OPCs and Linechecks from the left seat in a multicrew environment.

Creating an ad-hoc quasi multi-pilot operation by using 2 x SP qualified pilots is a very dangerous road to go down. If the operation needs two pilots for safety, then it should have 2 properly qualified MP ops pilots, ( as per what Chorbington describes below) instead of looking for ways to bend the rules!

couldn't agree more. You either do it properly multi-crew or not at all.

or, like me, you can only fly 139 SP(as that was how my TR was issued) and have to undergo MP training despite 32 years of multi-crew experience in the military in order to comply - just like the CAA, it all seems down to generating money in EASA.

You raise an interesting point Crab, I've got a good many years in both MP and SP operations, helped set up a small MP offshore operation and later set up the first MP night HEMS operation in the UK. We developed both operations with similar training and procedures in the knowledge that the HEMS operating procedures would develop with experience. The introduction of the HEMS operation coincided with the recruitment of a number of pilots straight out of the military (mixture of ex SAR, Lynx, Apache etc.) and some civilian trained co-pilots; all went well and I went back to my day job. A few weeks later I was rostered to go and fly at the same base and since I avoid responsibility at all cost, I asked if I could be P2 but PF as I don't get 'hands on' very often. That was all sorted and some time later we were tasked on an incident - I didn't recognise the CRM or procedures! We completed the mission with me biting my tongue a few times but, I believe, totally safely. We happened to return to base just as the late crew and next day's visiting crew arrived, which resulted in an ideal opportunity for me to ask what was going on. It soon became obvious that each branch of the UK military and even different operations within the same service had a completely different concept of briefing, command, role of PF/PM etc. than we had established during training and written in the operations manuals! Because this was a new type and new operation and due to operational restrictions outside of my control, the unit operated 'constituted crews' i.e. the same commander consistently flew with the same co-pilot and in a surprisingly short time, the commanders reverted to type. I'm not saying any of the concepts were inherently wrong, just that was not how the civvy world MP operations have evolved, the discussion went on for some time time but was happily resolved in the end (I think!).

In the UK offshore world, the 'civilianisation' of military pilots tends to happen by osmosis, new pilots to offshore ops don't get a command (no matter what previous military experience they have) until they have flown at least one winter, during that time they will fly with most pilots within their base/fleet and 'generally' they will find every pilot doing things the same way, not because everyone spends their free time reading the operations manuals (obviously they do!!) but because from line training onwards, all but one or two 'individuals' will do things the same way! My initial briefing on MP courses now includes the following statement - "If an observer sitting behind a well performing MP crew doesn't know which seats the commander sits in, the observer should only be able to tell who is the PF and who is the PM, not which pilot is the commander (unless something out of the ordinary happens)"

Just my two bob's worth.

TeeS

Tees,

I don't have a problem with following the Ops Manual at all - and I know from experience that some mil pilots have a poor grasp of CRM, preferring the 'I'm in charge, do what I say' approach - it's why so much time on FS courses is dedicated to failures of CRM and how poor cockpit gradient can lead to disaster.

My gripe is that instead of reading the Ops manual and adjusting the particular words and phrases to achieve the same CRM and PM/PF relationship that I am familiar with from SAR, I have to undergo MP training (at a cost) just to satisfy bureaucrats who have little idea of how many areas of military aviation actually worked with regard to CRM.

I hear what you are saying Crab, I wasn't knocking the mil pilots for poor CRM or MP procedures, it was just not what we had training, they were top notch throughout!

Cheers

TeeS

Many burocrats in EASA don´t have aviation background, but they know everything as they are the regulator. There should be specific requirements for this rule makers without a clue about what airops are about.

Agree, costs of IR is ridiculous.