Is it really that bad?

[truckflyer]

The quality of life is the question - believe me, money is more important than you think.

From what I told you in previous post, name one good thing you see in it?

Of course unless you don't believe this is the reality.

I know of few guys, unless better things to come (note with few thousand hours on type), they will rather quit flying forever, than continue.

Imagine that is a massive statement, after spending 5-6 figure amounts on training, and even got a job, experience and hours, the quality of life is just not good enough.

There are good jobs out there, but if you imagine 2 - 3 % of the low hours getting a chance of a job, of all of those it is only 2 - 3 % who will get a job with a good company, where you at least might feel appreciated and respected.

For me appreciation and respect is not some fancy words, it's hard cash, anything else does not show me any appreciation. We living in the real world, nice words will not pay for my mortgage, rent or food.

[truckflyer]

Don't underestimate the power of money!

Read the post link Superpilot gave:
The Ugly - The Truth About the Profession

Roof over your head! I know of guys where the only way the managing to do the job is because wife/partner has a good income - now imagine your wife/husband/partner would like to have children!

Still do I regret spending £70 - £80 K, probably not, as I have avoided debt.
But if I think about that I could have used that as deposit on a house, I would think again today, knowing what I know.
Add the loss of income during training and when you start working compared to other work/business, and my cost is probably close to 3 times that amount. I elect to not think about it, same time if I decide to cut my bonds with aviation, I will probably miss some parts of it, but I will know I will have done it for something better.
Problem is, when you don't have the job, aviation is your life, when you inside, and you spend 80% of your month in aviation, your view will change, if you are a normal human being of course.

(£40K shows you still got a long way to go my friend)

[Wodka]

IMO Perspective required!

I spent 10 years working in various jobs saving money to fund my licence. My first flying job was living in a caravan on the airfield... loved it!!! ... even in the bleak mid-winter when my toilet froze over and it snowed in my shower!

Why? because I got something gained from ten years of soul destroying jobs I hated, that sinking Monday 7am feeling and the relentless grind of Mon-Fri 9-5.

That thing is an appreciation that SO many jobs out there are total and to be able to work in something you have an outside interest in is priceless. I agree the industry is in a race to the bottom and its sad, it is resulting in good guys being turned away from aviation.

Sometimes I have days on the line when I want the day to just end but whenever I am feeling really crap I just take a moment to recall all those awful jobs I endured to get here and then I am able to take perspective and appreciate that warts and all this is by far the best job I have ever had - it's my career and my vocation. The flying I am doing now on the lower rungs is my apprenticeship and when I am finally in a 787 at FL380 I will look back on this all with fondness no doubt!

That is just my opinion from someone who has really had to fight to get into the RHS. I am as a result an older than average FO but I feel much richer for all my experiences along the way, it has largely made me who I am.

[pilotho]

I fly with guys who hate being at work, guys who does it because it pays the bills and guys who do it because it's what they have passion for.

Guys who doesn't like coming to work are the ones who have been in the game for the last 20 years and have experienced the "good days" of the industry.

Guys who do it because it pays the bill are the ones who have been in it for about 10 years.

Guys who are passionate are the ones who have been in for about 1 year.

I guess this just happens as you do the same thing for a long period of time and I'm in no doubt it will probably happen to me one day.

However, none of my colleagues are struggling to live day by day. They aren't always looking over their shoulder to see if the bailiffs are coming. There are much worse jobs out there and I don't regret picking this career.

[Bealzebub]

I could hardly be accused of being an optimistic cheerleader for the prospects of new entrants to this industry (see myriad posts of mine, passim). However, writing unsubstantiated tosh like the above detracts from the message.

John, if you have a look through his posting history, it is a recurring theme.

[SEAMASTER]

Can I suggest you change the title of this thread to working in the industry in the "LCC world" none of this applies to me and I would suggest many other pilots who work for reasonable outfits, 6 days on 1 or 2 off and then same again, over and over again !! Are you making this up ??? Seriously if your not happy do something else !! It's boring reading the same old rant that turns into a personal argument boring, boring, boring !!! Get a new career !!!!

[truckflyer]

john_smith - Really you think my numbers are to negative?

Ok, rumours was that AL got around 4000 - 5000 applications, for approx. 70 jobs. Similar was for EZY, what about RYR, how many applications do they have?

Please you do the maths!

[Greenlights]

Indeed maybe we moderators could change the title.
Some airlines may have better conditions (not for long though). But most of the case new pilots will start in a LCC, as I did. LCC's are the present and the futur.
As I said before, wannabe have to be really aware that they will start in LCC not necessary in Europe, so they should not expect to move in a Major. The queue is huge. Prepare a backup plan. That's my main advice. I said it already, but nowadays, it is good to remind it.
5 to 10 years ago, having a backup plan was a good advice, today it is MUST IMO.
Most of the pilots in LCC today will have two choices : staying 40 years there, or change career.
And actually there is really nothing wrong to try and change career. Nowadays, people have known many serious jobs in life. Life is a wheel. Just be smart. But pilot is not a real career with real transferable skills. Get a enginering degree, or something like that. Today beside my main business I study again online course in hard sciences (environnment sciences), it is a lot harder than the atpl theory (wich is a joke to compare with hard sciences) and type rating...I start to make my brain working again lol!
Be happy ! A job is a job, we work for a living we do not live for work.

[truckflyer]

LCC are stretching and bending the rules, and unless change is made, they will drag with them the good companies, as this will be the only way they can survive.

I do understand there are some serious and good companies out there, but they are becoming less and less of them.

The fact is that the world is that everybody wants to make more money, so companies will look for ways to become more profitable in every department.

If companies like Ryanair are bending the rules close to what is illegal, how can you expect that your TC's will remain in the top bracket in the future.

It's a fight for survival, and time will tell if the warning signs was all there to be seen, but nobody did anything, because now it does not concern you or your life! Fact is that only the minority will be able achieve these top level jobs,as in all walks of life.

[UB6IB9]

"Give a pilot a bag of gold coins and he will probably still complain about the weight"

Having flown for jet operators in both Europe and Canada I still think being an airline pilot is still hands down the best gig out there. Compared to my working stiff friends (9-5er's) I have the best gig out of all of them.

[truckflyer]

"Compared to my working stiff friends (9-5er's)"

Maybe your friends have crappy jobs, does not mean all other jobs out there are giving you stiff working hours.

Now I have never worked any 9-5 job, the the pilot job is more 4.00 to 17.00, or 11 to 24.00, add minimum rest in between, and ask yourself what life that is?

If your life only fulfilment is to fly the metal tube, I would say you must have a very sad life!

Forget the gold coins, they will give you peanuts instead!

[wiggy]

This is all starting to sound like Derek and Clive's "What's the Worse Job You've Ever Had Sketch"... There are certainly good, well paid rewarding jobs to be had outside of aviation, and there are sure as heck bad jobs inside. Nobody is right, nobody is wrong, own opinions are shaped by where we are in the scheme of things and may well be very different to those the poor soul living thousands of kilometres from his family, at a base not of his choosing and perhaps also 100K in debt (because despite the rose tinted spectacles those people do exist).

I don't see many/any of the FTO's mentioning the down side of working for the LCCs, they are too busy plastering pictures of sunglass wearing "graduates" across their websites to mention all the realities....so despite the bickering maybe this thread is doing some good.

[blind pew]

"Give a pilot a bag of gold coins and he will probably still complain about the weight"
Sums up Pilots to a T.
I was lucky enough to be sponsored...My first airline was diabolical, pay, terms, bullies, accidents, venereal diseases whilst my course mates who had gone to the "charter boys" were creaming it in. It was only nine years after I started at flying college that my parents stopped funding my holidays and I could afford to take my family to a restaurant.(after I changed airlines for the second time). Twenty years of airline flying to a command.
Hardest part of the job was being a FO...dealing with incompetent bullies and their special mates and fortunately there were few in my last company.
In the meantime I had a lot of aviation related health problems but the job gave me a life time of memories.
Closing the throttles six miles up and spooling the engines up as land flap was running 2 miles out. Watching the sunrise from on top of a great Pyramid. Circling Mont Blanc and Mont Mckinley. Dropping out of cloud abeam the Angel falls. Watching the sunrise sipping Caiparinhas on Coppacabana with a choice of crumpet but even better was popping out of the winter smog to play chasing the clouds along the valleys of a sheet of strata CU.
The industry has always been littered with Bullies and bankruptcies - many of my former colleagues would sell their kids along with the grannies but it's no different to the many scumbags who rob us "legally" today.
I was in a flight deck of a well known Loco last autumn...The aircraft was newer and cleaner than most of those in one of my old employers, maintenance no doubt better than my early days. The skipper had more than double my average time off at base, he took home more money than he needed and was ten years younger than I was when I got a command. What he does for a pension I didn't ask but many cast iron ones like TWA and Pan Am disappeared.
My daughter had a high powered city job, loads of money (SFO pay) and for that she worked 100 hours a week, absolute wreck.
I have mates in their 60s still flying commercially...most don't need the money...they just love the life.
Me - I lost my medical nearly two decades ago...I spent ten years teaching various flying disciplines (unpaid)...I climb and fly off mountains now...can't get it out of my system - even wrote a book.
Go for it but don't think heavy metal is always the flying best job or requires the highest skills.
It also can buggar up home life.

One word of advice...you generally get what you put into it so always be up to scratch and read as much as possible - there are several recent discussions where so called professionals - the highest paid in the industry -didn't do their job properly and bent the aircraft because of lack of system knowledge or plain incompetence.

I have a poem on my wall

Everyone who lives dies.
But not every who dies has lived.
We do these things not so much that we may die
But so that we can say we have lived.

[Three Lions]

I see the arguement that this thread is more inclined to reflect life of the "the poor soul living thousands of kilometres from his family, at a base not of his choosing and perhaps also 100K in debt" type character.

However the most important point is that the effect of the LOCOs clinical and sometimes brutal chase of hard currency is dragging the whole industry downwards. It is a very good point that some of the quality operators are having to adapt to survive. hence they are been driven downwards in the slipstream of the likes of RYR and EZY who have no option but to operate the way they do due survive.

The industry has evolved in some parts into something very vulgar.

All that said I disagree with some of the comments of the day to day work apart from the early mornings and occasional brush with security

I for one enjoy the job although I have to admit my own particular heavy bag of "gold coins" is linked to never really being a good riser on a morning and some of the shifts can be brutal on those more advanced in years such as myself

However if you can find a good work/lifestyle balance as you can with the other good careers out there (yes unbelievably there are more decent jobs out there than Airline Pilot especially if you graduate from a decent University) then it can be one of the best jobs in the world. The problem is as stated further up in this thread there is an evolution going on - this evolution suits the operators and the ftos not those at the pointy end of the ship

[truckflyer]

Being oblivious to this "this evolution that suits the operators and the FTOs not those at the pointy end of the ship" - is the short sighted issue at the moment.

"It's great in my company today" - but these companies are also in a race to survive, cutting cost is one of the factors used.

RyR have recently seriously make a U-turn in their pax service, as they discovered it was only so much S.... the pax would put up with.

Still I believe it will take a miracle for them to make the U-turn, as many pax are already so fed up, and will not believe in the new "customer friendly" company!

Unfortunately it might never happen for the employees, as they still believe the future will be brighter, reality is that their escape routes are to companies who have similar philosophy, cost cutting to increase profit margins, avoiding social responsibility, exploring every loop hole in regulations under the sun, totally missing the big picture.

What will happen they day the legacy carriers can't compete with these grey zone regulations. ME companies getting subsidised fuel costs, open skies, exploring the next avenue of acquisition of another company to maximize the profits without regard of the real cost.

It is more likely that legacy carriers will dive towards LCC TC's, than the opposite will happen.
So it involves everybody, not just the newbies, if you have 20 - 30 years career left, be prepared, it most likely will not get better than just now for most!

[Bealzebub]

I don't see many/any of the FTO's mentioning the down side of working for the LCCs, they are too busy plastering pictures of sunglass wearing "graduates" across their websites to mention all the realities....so despite the bickering maybe this thread is doing some good.

Looking at the Three car brochures I have on the desk in front of me, none of them have pictures of a harassed driver, running late for an appointment, and stuck in snail pace queue of traffic on the local motorway/freeway, with torrential rain pouring down outside. Whilst I do not doubt Mr Mercedes product is broadly as described in the brochure, I doubt selling it, is enhanced by portraying the reality of the likely customers experience within minutes of driving one out of the showroom. Indeed if I was paying for "glossy brochures," before a single penny changed hands I would want my product to reflect a message that portrays success on every page. Welcome to the commercial world of capitalism!

I agree with many of the commentators here and particularly those that understand how the market has evolved. It isn't necessary to hate or applaud that evolution in order to understand it. Parts of it are indeed vulgar, but of course "vulgar" sells, which is often why those exemplar companies have done very well out of it. As with most walks of life, the revolution in communication, and particularly mass market accessible communication, has stripped away the mystery, glamour and aura, that once shrouded the occupation called "airline pilot" from the masses. The romance of the job crucially depended on the shroud that those factors were an intrinsic part of. Today you can flick through your 250 channel TV subscription and watch any number of "Airline" type shows edited to show the glamour of tired, fed up, mishandled, abusive, passengers and crew doing a day-in day-out job that is routine. The characters change but the scripts are almost identical from one programme to the next.

You can log on to any number of websites and social media and find out how much your neighbours house is worth or how much he or she earns. If something happens at an airport or on a flight it will be transferred from someone's (anyone's) camera equipped phone to hundreds of thousands of people before the paperwork has even been started. "lo-cost" a term that is representative of the global airline scene in the new Millennium, yet some would labour under the illusion that the term should be "lo-Cost except my salary and T&C's." Over the last 30 years flying got safer. Flying got cheaper. Flying got easier. There have been huge improvements in many aspects of the job. Technology introduced its own set of problems, but without doubt it brought radical improvements in safety, cost, and efficiency.
The 4 crew flight deck of the Fifties and Sixties became the Three crew flight deck of the Sixties and Seventies. Then the Two crew flight deck of the Eighties and Nineties. Then regulation stopped any advancement on that score, so the attention turned to reducing the input costs of the incumbents of those flight decks. Potential new First Officers were queuing around the block for the opportunity to sit in that seat. They were prepared and willing to assume the entire risk element of training themselves at the best schools for the chance of a shot at the major league. Where once "self improvers" needed at least 700 hours for a "non-approved" CPL/IR to start their journey over the commercial stepping stone jobs to the big league, so licencing changes meant that anybody with "250 hours and a dream" could think they were in with a chance. As a result tens if not hundreds of thousands decided that this was the career for them. The supply massively outstripped the demand (or even the most optimistic projection of demand), and still continues to this day.

In the days when flying was expensive, there were far less opportunities available and far fewer people as a proportion chasing those opportunities. The "glamour" jobs where you spent a week in a four/five star hotel with a team of crewmembers twice a month, are a rarity these days. Airlines want maximum" bang for their buck" and if they have to assume this sort of cost they will do so for the minimum level of time and price point. Lo-Co's would choke on their breakfast if their operations didn't maximize every potentially productive hour they could squeeze from any cost clawed out of their vice like grip. This is their lifeblood, their very raison d'être.

In 1974 there were a few really good jobs, a lot of mediocre ones, and some very poor ones. That was true in 1984, 1994, 2004, and today! The names have changed (in some cases) and the T&C's have changed. The better ones attract what they see as the best people. With so many people clamouring at the door that is a bar they can set at whatever level suits them. Nothing new, this has always been the case.

The clever and the wise research the market they are proposing entering. They take the time to understand the history and the evolution of what they intend to participate in (or not.) They may agree, disagree, accept or reject the advice given or sought, but they would be wise to listen. Despite that, there are no guarantees, and luck will always be a significant ingredient of success. Of course the option is to simply rail against the world and highlight how unfair your life is. If I were to invent an adjective for the latter, it would be ......to truckflyer oneself.

[Artie Fufkin]

Truckflyer, I'm trying hard not to react to your nonsense, but somethings cannot be left, such as your disgraceful hypocrisy in a recent comment to AIMINGHIGH123;

It's time for people like you and others to stop feeding the industry, because it is a massive own goal!

... says a man who decided on an ill considered mid forties career change, and chose to accept a job that he openly hated from day one, on a different continent to his family, for money he considers inadequate.

Get your own house in order before flaming others!

[blind pew]

A very good friend of mine had a mate working in the same Essex factory 25 years ago...he gambled his money on a license...I thought good luck as he was in his late 30s...at the time I was at the top of the legacy carrier profession...
He went through LOCO onto exec jets onto a rich man's pilot....
now semi retired...big house, heated swimming pool, nice set of wheels.....works if he feels the need....
It is still out there...you need a bit of luck, a bit of skill and a lot of integrity and hard work.

[Greenlights]

http://www.balpa.org/My-Airline/Airl...014-03-01.aspx

[truckflyer]

Artie Fufkin;

Not worried about my house, but there is a few that should be worried about their houses!

Been there, done that, and my report is of how it really is for the majority!

There will always be some that enjoy to been taken bent over regardless!

That's the Machavellist in us humans, however being to analyze it and face the reality, is very few who can do.

Denial is a bliss for some!