Current North Sea Pilots Salaries
 

Hi there folks,

I am currently a ppl (H) looking to progress through to ATPL (H) with (IR)

I have my class 1 medical and am currently in the process of accumulating the finances required to make this happen. I am however a tad concerned about what my salary will be once I am in the fold as a first officer. I ask this because I, like many others, will more than likely have to borrow some of the funding to complete my goal.

Before I embark any further financially, I would really appreciate any guidance that anyone can offer with regards to the level of salary I can expect to be offered from my initial first officer posting through to Captain.

Thanks for any advice.

Ho ho ho!

Very good!

:D

Go spend about £110k to get all the qualifications you need, then sit around waiting to get a job in the North Sea as there are plenty of other folk waiting for jobs, being made redundant and generally not feeling that North Sea flying is the be all and end all they once imagined. Be careful what you wish for.

expect to start on 35k at the very bottom, and after 20 years you might be on 6 figures.

Thanks for the advice there Helimutt!

I appreciate your honesty.

Wobble,

I would go for it; building hours, CPL module, IR will probably take you another year to complete (hope your looking to book your IR course now). Although the market for new co-pilots isn't that great at the moment, things can change quickly. Particularly as most job losses are due to companies "tightening belts" rather than demand offshore.

Its handy to have another job you can keep ticking over till you get your first offshore job (and one you can fall back on when made redundant!)

I started on about £45K as a 200hr total time CPL IR and as said before it can go up to 6 figures.

Good luck!

Commercial & IR
 

Hey SFHawk,

Cheers for the post. Thats cheered me up a little bit. I was ready for throwing the towel in earlier today but I think its still worth plodding on for now.

Im sure im not the first and certainly wont be the last aspiring commercial pilot to have second thoughts about progressing any further.

I know that there are already a lot of qualified guys out there who are still waiting to get a foot on the ladder and are quite understandably becoming dissillousioned with it all.

But hopefully things will pick up by the time I get through it all.

Thanks.

I reckon I spent £40k net on pilot training up to the year 2000, and was lucky enough to get my IR sponsored, but if I had to spend more than £100k now with no immediate prospect of a job, i would say that it is not worth the risk.

Luckily it all worked out for me but if I could do it all again I would go fixed wing, there are just so many more jobs around

CF

And probably not all in Aberdeen....

I had a similar experience to Camp Freddie, 40-50k outlay for CPL/FI, sponsored IR (although im not working offshore) but I agree totally with what he says regarding job prospects/risk etc... If I had to do it all again I would go FW instead although I prefer rotary.

Good luck,

BC

It's possible to do zero to CPL/IR for around £70k - £80k, but it takes some careful planning and research. You're unlikely to get any financial help unless you're young (under 25, typically) and even then, there's not a lot around.

There is no waiting list for IRs currently - you can get on a JAA ME course within a month or 2, if you have the cash and hours ready to go.

There don't seem to be any co-jo offshore jobs around at the moment, although that may change in the next 12 - 18 months. There appear to be even fewer low-hour jobs around generally than usual. If you do go ahead with pilot training, I strongly suggest having some other career or source of income to live off until you get your first pilot job; this goes double if you're planning to fund any part of your training with a loan.

That said, now could just be the genius time to start training.

Lack of training demand and oversupply of trainers and idle helicopters could lead to some good deals. Nobody training now could lead to a shortage of graduates in a few years time when training and cheap hour building is wrapping up.

Buy in a down market, sell in an up market.

What is my chance to find a job
 

Hello there ;
ı am an ex army pilot. Recently retired from Turkısh army. I have 1900 flight hours. SAR pilot. Deck and ship landing qualified. Spend last four years on SAR battalion. HUET.
Bell 206 , UH-1 (AB-205) , AS-532/332 UL SAR rated. Have a JAA Cpl / Ir (H) .
What is my chance to get a good job in northern sea.

Murat KAYIN. Heli pilot

Regarding North Sea employment, are pilots expected to pay for their own type rating now, or does the company provide that?

Thankfully, no! (Or at least not yet. Please don't suggest it to the management).

But expect to be bonded for the value of the type rating. Anywhere from £30-50k.

North sea type rating bonds are circa £25,000.

But they aren't really legally enforcable.

Murat Kayin: absolutely NIL chance. Unless you can think of a way of bypassing nationals queueing up in front of you????

Wobble wings: Please please heed these warnings. Don't know your age background financial status etc, but would VERY STRONGLY suggest if you need to fly, you:
Learn to fly FW.
Fly FW commercially.
Fly rotary as a hobby.

um... lifting :
that is a great news. but ı havent heard anything about that. ı will call my friend in red star. and googled CHC site but couldnt find anything.

I am the man of that job :)))

the job in Turkey is being run by CHC global, however, that will be changing. at least one of the aircraft is a 332 based in Aberdeen till recently if they havent changed their minds for the 100th time!!

Can anyone share what an FO with one of the UK north sea operators would get paid in today's market?

£50-60k starting rising upto circa £120k at the top of the ladder as a Captain is probably in the right regions.

Hi. Understood re £50-60k. What about a pilot joining with 3,000+hrs and ME time etc? Would they get an increased rate? Senior FO pay rates?

Regards. TTW

SFO's £60-70k on entry...

Thanks. How does Offshore Wind Farm wages compare with Oil and Gas please? Eg. Wiking etc

Similar to hems

Ask any self funded helicopter pilot flying the NS if he/she would do it again....NO. Even with the downturn in fixed wing its a better place to be. Oil and gas is a dying industry.....

And yet they all stayed employed during the pandemic. There are still many fixed wing pilots out of work after the downturn.

I would do it all over again

Yep I'd do it all again too, so neebother isn't speaking for everyone

Great roster. Great pay. Interesting challenging role. Better standard of living for many than some of my friends in fixed wing

I think there is an assumption that everyone in fixed wing works for BA at a nice airfield that they can afford to live next to. Certainly not always the case. Not all pilots get the big jobs and those that do have mixed experiences of how good or bad it is.

Rotary offers a range of different roles, so if North Sea isn't your thing, at least you should be able to find something that floats your boat.

Well said and agree 100%, he doesn't speak for me either. NS is certainly not for everyone but neither is the airline world; my oldest friend was a widebody P1 for a ME airline and I have a lot of friends/former colleagues who fly LH/SH. Apart from my chum's very nice salary (which wasn't quite as much as you might think...) and some nice perks such as staff travel and free uniform laundering ;) pretty much everything else paled even next to my modest humdrum life flogging a 92 around the NS. Before I left the military I produced a very geeky spreadsheet with all the flying jobs I could find (LH/SH airlines, NS, HEMS, Police, Corporate etc) and I met/interviewed various chums doing all those roles and I weighted the various factors (salary, pension, time to command, rosters, leave. fatigue, benefits, lifestyle etc) based on what I wanted/needed, which put the NS easily at the top for me. Out of all the pilots I interviewed, the happiest out of the lot (honestly) were the NS pilots - lot has changed since then and fair to say it's been a torrid few years since 2015, but also a lot of important things haven't changed.

Depending on your age: Join the military and fly there…. Much more interesting flying, free training, friends for life and then do a transition to civil live in 10-15 years when they make you fly a desk. 👍

The salary will be as low as the operators contrive it to be. There is a very effective cartel in operation and passively condoned by the regulator. Engineers pay even worse - it's shameful but I guess you get what you pay for.....

Can I have some of what you've been smoking please? It's obviously some pretty heavy stuff, and I am in need of having my grasp on reality as loose as yours obviously is.

.......and what do you think now?

It is quite interesting looking back on this thread (from 2011) and seeing someone say it costs £70-80k to go from zero to hero CPL/IR. First Officer entry wages at £45k

Fast forward to now £170-180k zero to hero and First Officer entry wages are £58k...

So a 120% increase in training costs vs a 29% increase in pay. A huge financial burden and a very uncertain industry

And thats north sea fo pay, imagine paying 180k for training and then getting a hems fo job

FO Hems jobs pay as little as £35k

zero to CPL/IR is probably about minimum £140,000+ in the uk (R22 for PPL/hourbuilding abroad/CPL), IR on AS355

plus fees/travel/accomodation etc. you might be able to claim the VAT back, not sure if HMRC allow that anymore


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....67131c67f4.jpg

Pprune has been a good measure to determine interest within the helicopter community of potentially interested new pilots. The 20 or so years I've been hanging out here, I've noticed a distinct lack of posts by newbies with questions. It's likely some of them have been scared away by the impertinent regulars, but a decade ago you'd see posts from people who are interested in getting into the industry. You'd then see them posting about flight instruction gigs a year later. Then another year, they've got their first post instructional job, then their first multi job after another year or so. You just don't see that anymore.

t's certainly made the forum more dull, as dispensed advice here can often be littered with golden nuggets. Just about every career rotor pilot I know has abandoned ship and crossed over to the FW side. More money, more stability, more options, no more obstacle environments. It's a different way of life but it assures a quality return on investment. The cost of obtaining a rotor ATP from scratch is pretty much beyond the reach of most now. I don't see things changing anytime soon.

I seem to recall hearing Castle Air were charging around £140k + VAT for fully integrated CPL/IR, that was 18 months ago......

Ouch. So prob about £190,000 inc. VAT now

Even the PPL->CPL->FI route will cost £120,000+ ... to earn £30,000 a year as an FI with zero benefits/prospects....

In the “old days”, pre internet, it was easier for the flying schools to tell you “all the Vietnam era pilots are retiring”.

Now, any prospective student can paint a pretty bleak picture of a prospective rotary wing flying career with 5min and Safari.

I live between two airports (Australia) that both had several helicopter schools (one where I first soloed, one where I worked as an instructor). Now there is one school total.

The cost is high, but it always has been. It would be interesting to compare the hourly rate from 1990 to now in relation to general cost of living. I’d say relative to houses, the license is likely no more expensive.