easyJet Pilot Recruitment 2012

[EpsilonVaz]

As flexicrew I never took home less than £2700 (avg was around £3300), not really sure what previous poster is on about.

[ARNOLDJ]

My figures take into paying back my training loan. That way it can be compared to cadet salaries of say the old BA cadet scheme.

You will have also had busier months than me looking at your figures.

[Delta Charlie]

Arnoldj, for the net salary figures you have quoted above would I be correct in adding a £1000pcm for the total figure? Assuming that is how much your loan repayment is?

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

For anyone who wants to look up my record of being Dr Doom I was banging a huge drum on The Wannabes forum from Jan 2007 urging caution to wannabes then queuing up to borrow £75,000 from HSBC Hythe branch to join CTC. Doug the head you are a tit for suggesting I encouraged people as an a-scaler (bollocks term). The opposite was true. Hatred that it brought me.


Arnold - CTC changed terms in 2008 when everything was looking black. Anyone signing up since late 2008 or early 2009 has not had any cause to cry that terms changed.



Doug you clearly hate Easyjet and believe that it is not a career airline. Well I'm 37 and joined ten years ago and they pay me £118,000 in pay then 9% pension plus share scheme plus bits and bobs to fly from a regional base in a spanking new jet. I have a fixed roster and average 790hrs a year. This is a career airline for me. For others too. It suits us and it didn't suit you. We get that. Perhaps just shut the hell up and get on with enjoying your new fantastic career - wherever that may be?

There is no perfect job. One man's meat is another man's poison etc.


Learn this and, please, get a life and move on..


WWW

[dwshimoda]

WWW

Have to say guys, WWW was preaching words of wisdom for a long time, and took such a kicking for it he (rightly) spent less and less time offering his opinions.

DtH - so it's ok to believe everything a salesmen tells you is it? all the big integrated FTO's promise the earth, however just one day spent on Google and finding as much out about the industry as you can (due diligence perhaps?) should highlight all the pitfalls.

Quoting salaries after loan repayments is irrelevant - if I go and buy a Ferrari tomorrow can I start saying my take home is only £500?

It's a very, very tough gig getting the first job, but anyone who started training by taking out huge loans after September 2007 (Northern Rock anybody?) and expecting to jump straight into a shiny jet needs their head examining, and their judgement questioned...

[Narrow Runway]

The wisdom of WWW...

"Well I'm 37 and joined ten years ago and they pay me £118,000 in pay then 9% pension plus share scheme plus bits and bobs to fly from a regional base in a spanking new jet. I have a fixed roster and average 790hrs a year. This is a career airline for me. For others too."

That's the "wisdom" of WWW for you. Boasting about his pay on a thread about the split in treatment for pilots in his cherished company.

Pity him, he knows no better. Always been low cost, never seen the world in order to broaden his very narrow horizon.

[ARNOLDJ]

I like the sound of your hypothetical Ferrari dwshimoda.
The trouble with my hypothetical Ferrari is that I am required by law to own one and I'm not allowed to use it when I'm off duty. Is yours the same? ;-)

Look, we're never going to see eye to eye on this broad topic so we'll just have to agree to differ. I was merely highlighting the overall net pay so that people can make comparisons with traditional cadet schemes (which seemingly never seem to get as much criticism for some reason.)

For the record, I like working for Easyjet and I can see why people have been there so long and don't want to leave. I just wish i could have a perm contract to remove this financial uncertainty which is very stressful. I only posted to show people like BlackAndBrown that it isn't a picnic at all for some of us...

This is my last post.

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Narrow Runway, thanks for your pity although I assure you it is not needed.

Several flexicadets in their first year and with way less than 1,000hrs TT in their logbook have taken transfers to bases such as Paris and Rome and Madrid. Whereupon they have received a permanent contract and started taking home €4,000 a month. Roughly a Jet2 Captains wage for a guy in his first year as a junior First Officer.

I'd have ripped your arm off at the offer of a flexicrew contract when I was starting out. It ain't perfect and it ain't comfortable and it could be made better with a tiny bit of effort BUT as one of the few games in town its the one most worth playing. Thats a fact and not opinion.


WWW

[SpGo]

WWW, take home in France is BEFORE tax!!

[ReallyAnnoyed]

On this topic, I agree with you WWW, but 119 K? In my fag packet calculation, it ends up at 5-10 K less, but I may be missing something as usual.

[silverknapper]

My figures take into paying back my training loan. That way it can be compared to cadet salaries of say the old BA cadet scheme

No point in quoting figures including loan repayments. As I said before it was your choice to take the loan. The small print in the whole CTC deal has always been there, sadly to coin a phrase 'fools rush in'. Ask the guys who were chopped after their IR's as CTC didn't want to present (sell) them to Easy. Those guys are now either bankrupt or servicing huge loans from £20k office job. As Dwshimoda says we may as well all complain about our jobs if we borrow unbelievable sums of money and the job doesn't satisfy the repayments. And please don't try and compare yourself to a BA cadet as it was. They had their training paid for, bar a small percentage. You guys didn't, you were paying it yourselves and at an exorbitant margin for the provider. And people here told you not to. But you knew best. But that phrase perhaps highlights the problem. You thought you were being sponsored, as CTC no doubt allowed you to think. And maybe you were too scared to read into it too much for fear of uncovering bad news.

Its almost twice my mortgage

That should have sounded alarm bells for a start. Who in their right mind borrows twice their mortgage. especially when they could have received the same training for half the cost.

Most of us wouldn't have started on this path if things were as risky as they are now. I don't know why that is so hard to fathom.

They were always risky. Economists predicted this downturn for a long time. The fierce nature of it has taken most by surprise but it was always going to happen to some extent. The reason it is hard to fathom is that people advised you all not to acquire that sort of debt just for a job with easyjet. But the lure of a jet job was too much ( and I do understand ).
Also I get the impression that having got into the rhs of your dream job, most of your collective automatically assumed they were due the 'Airline pilot lifestyle'. Whatever that is. Look at the LPL car park at the height of the cadets coming on line and you'll see what I mean. Brand new Audi's and Beemers being driven by shiny 2 stripers, whilst most of the skippers arrived in metal worth a quarter of that. Now with a debt of that amount hanging over my head the last thing I'd do is finance a new car. Again look at the historical route to a jet job. People earn 3 figures a month for a long time before they get on a TP when it becomes just about liveable. And they didn't complain, just kept the head down and an eye on the final goal. If you got straight to your jet fantastic, well done. But to then moan because they're paying you what you would have earned on TP's, that's just life.

As WWW says most of us would have jumped at the Ts&Cs as they are now, hence the lack of sympathy for your 'plight'.

[The African Dude]

sadly to coin a phrase 'fools rush in'

most of us would have jumped at the Ts&Cs as they are now

You are contradicting yourself.

The complaining here comes down to what has been achieved versus what was actually reasonably expected given all the information at the time.

When you started flying, you expected to be on 3 figures for a long time.

If these T's and C's had been known - including the finance details - as they would become, when we were thinking of signing up, then I suspect that there would be a lot less complaining on here now. Expectation versus achievement.

It's all relative, so try to be a bit less abrasive in your response.

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Price Discovery happened in the marketplace for jet airline first officer in about 2006. It has continued happening since then and during this phase there has been a credit crunch and a recession.

The price discovery process revealed to airlines that junior first officers would accept a significantly lower price for their labour.

I'm not sure whose 'fault' that was. The employers for exploiting new information? The labour for lowering their price? The banks for supplying the credit? The government for allowing a property asset bubble and loose credit market to establish?

There is no right answer. Only the fact that the airline market is a tough one for all involved. Has been since the 1970's.


I save my real sympathy for the poor sods who couldn't pony up the money for the glitzy schemes and are plugging away in the sub-airline sub-jet underworld. You don't hear much about them.


WWW

[dwshimoda]

Required by law?

The trouble with my hypothetical Ferrari is that I am required by law to own one and I'm not allowed to use it when I'm off duty. Is yours the same? ;-)

No - you are not. You chose to acquire an ATPL, and chose how to go about achieving and financing this.

[Mungo Man]

Originally Posted by ARNOLDJ

£552;
£1325;
£1192;
£1170;
£1526;
£1807;
£765;
£669;

Average, £1130.

Lets say your loan is £1000 a month, though I suspect for many it is even more. That is an average take home of £2130

Well my average take home flying a jet was not long ago £2300. The real bug for me is that now I've done the time, got a few thousand hours jet time in the book and feel relatively experienced, I can't even apply to join Easyjet. Yet some people are starting off on even more money and bitching like hell about the conditions.

Originally Posted by EpsilonVaz

As flexicrew I never took home less than £2700 (avg was around £3300), not really sure what previous poster is on about.

Not bad by my standards at all. If that figure is genuine then I'd gladly swap my current job for a flexi Easy contract. £3,300 a month take home? After 5 years on jets I've never taken home that much, let alone average it. That's not far from what I'd get if I ever got a command in current job, but if I could just use my experience to get into Easy then I'd have a hope of earning decent bucks like WWW.

Maybe some people need a reality check.

Maybe I should borrow £30,000, get a 320 rating and finally get myself into Easyjet. I'll let you know how it goes! I reckon it might even pay off in the long run.

[BlackandBrown]

Mungo man if you are going to do crazy things based upon what you read on pprune then you need a reality check. There is a reason why the pay is slightly higher - flexicrew are contractors - they have no pension, no security, no extras paid for, no one to go back to if they are dissatisfied and barely any kind of leave structure or holiday pay. If you're sick then you get a statutory sick pay and that's it. Finally you won't necessarily be where you want to be based like you may be with your current airline which I'll presume is regionally based if its such a poorly paid jet job - probably bmi baby or jet 2. So you'll have the cost of selling everything and moving for a contact job or paying to commute to work - perhaps to somewhere like Rome, Madrid or Paris. If there's no staff travel this can be painful. Selling the house and moving could cost anywhere between 10 and 30 grand on top of your hypothetical type rating. Why do you do desperately want to fly for easyjet that you'd pay 40-60k more to earn a little more, for less security ( even if you do work that tinpot outfit bmi baby) and ultimately do the same job. Oh and if you are inexperienced on type you'll prob have to take 1200 a month for 8 months too.

[ReallyAnnoyed]

Do remember that flexicrew are moved around the network at the company's will as well. They can not be based in Berlin for more than 6 months before they have to leave, for instance.

[Mungo Man]

Originally Posted by BlackandBrown

Mungo man if you are going to do crazy things based upon what you read on pprune then you need a reality check. There is a reason why the pay is slightly higher - flexicrew are contractors - they have no pension, no security, no extras paid for, no one to go back to if they are dissatisfied and barely any kind of leave structure or holiday pay. If you're sick then you get a statutory sick pay and that's it. Finally you won't necessarily be where you want to be based like you may be with your current airline which I'll presume is regionally based if its such a poorly paid jet job - probably bmi baby or jet 2. So you'll have the cost of selling everything and moving for a contact job or paying to commute to work - perhaps to somewhere like Rome, Madrid or Paris. If there's no staff travel this can be painful. Selling the house and moving could cost anywhere between 10 and 30 grand on top of your hypothetical type rating. Why do you do desperately want to fly for easyjet that you'd pay 40-60k more to earn a little more, for less security ( even if you do work that tinpot outfit bmi baby) and ultimately do the same job. Oh and if you are inexperienced on type you'll prob have to take 1200 a month for 8 months too.

What you say is very logical but doesn't necessarily apply to me. After 5 years I'm still not based where I want to be, and consequently I haven't brought a house yet so I'm very flexible in terms of moving. A few years abroad appeals to me (as long as its in Europe as I'm not interested in the Middle East).

As to the other points about lack of pension, sick pay etc, well at the moment what I've got is what I will always get if I stay, and its not a great deal. Its ok, but not as good as permanent at Easyjet. Buying my way into Easyjet would be a stepping stone towards long term financial reward. Basically its all a numbers game; what course of action would give the greatest return?

But back to reality, I'm not really going to give up a permanent job with a command round the corner, go back into debt (having spent 8 of the last 10 years in debt) all to spend an unknown length of time contracting, all to gamble on making a few extra quid in a distant and uncertain future. I suppose my point is that it seems like this is the only option these days now that proper flying experience doesn't count for anything much. Frustrating times. I remember an FO who left my company 5 years ago who went to Easy as one of the last TRSS guys, permanent contract, fixed UK base, good salary, loan repayments to cover type rating, probably a Captain now enjoying money not short of what www is on. Lucky guy I say. But that door into Easyjet closed soon after and has remained heavily locked ever since and its hard to understand sometimes.

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Selfish? You want me to go on strike to stop other people borrowing £85,000 to enrol on a course at a school an be offered a job that they asked for?

If Wannabes did not have, or could not borrow, such vast sums of money then airlines would all run fully sponsored cadet schemes. But sadly we live in the real world.


WWW

[Piloto2011]

A little bit of a drift away.

But I'd be curious to hear from people having gone through CTC/easy about the actual numbers of cadets with a whole bunch of debt hanging over their heads and either not finding employment or/and not being able to pay off their loan?

I know of at least one guy on flexi who just came very very close to filing bankruptcy. And I am certain there are more. According to him he's been rostered for one or two flights in whole November.

And another friend of mine has just started with CTC and he is saying to be charged unbelievable 90k sterling (!) for his entire training. This does not include any extra training which may be necessary nor a type. But, so he says, he's got a plan at the end of it.

This industry's gone crazy!