So you want to be a pilot!
 

You decide to go along to an open day at one of the well-known flight training establishments and are subjected to a slick marketing operation, which makes timeshare sharks look like amateurs. In addition to a free lunch, and an inspiring presentation, you get fed some impressive employment statistics. And while they can’t actually promise you a job at the end of the day, they do provide a list of the placements they’ve made with different airlines - averaging 200 a year!

The cost of the course, including accommodation and living expenses, is in excess of £90,000, but that’s no problem. They can fix you up with a 10 year bank loan with reduced repayments for the first couple of years, in case you don’t find a job straight away. The only problem is, the loan has to be secured on someone’s house, and there’s an extra couple of grand in fees for setting up the loan. That’s where the ‘Olds’ come in. Well it’s a bit of a risk, but if you’ll be earning upwards of fifty grand a year, it must be worth the gamble? Anyway, that go in the simulator did the trick and you’re hooked.

You pass the Skills Assessment and medical, and pay your deposit. You work your :mad: off for the next 9 months on ground training, and then get to fly aircraft in the States for another 9. If you are lucky, all will go to plan and you end up with an ATPL. Now all you need is a job.

Half of the 200 trainees from this particular establishment were taken on by easyJet or Ryanair. You go to interviews at both companies and decide that easyJet is the better option. You are offered a two year contract via Parc Aviation, with the possibility of full employment after a probationary period. There’s just one ‘fly in the ointment’. You have to pay another £35,000 up front for Airbus type rating, and Parc Aviation will take 3% of all your earnings in admin fees.

The contract doesn’t look too bad though, with a decent hourly rate and a minimum winter period guarantee. In any case it’s a job, and you need to start paying off your loan, which has now risen to over £125,000 and is increasing at £100 a week due to interest.

All goes well for a few months, although. Parc Aviation never answer any of your emails. But hey, you can’t have everything. The flight crew are all friendly, and your pay always appears in the bank on time.

Then ‘out of the blue’, you suddenly get an email from Parc – Your two year contract is terminated with a month’s notice, as per clause x of the contract. You are offered a new contract in Berlin on two thirds the hourly rate you were getting in the UK and no winter guarantee. You are also being paid in Euros, and will have to pay German rates of tax, pension and social security contributions which are much higher than in the UK. Well you’ve been well and truly suckered and screwed by all concerned, but what choice do you have now but to take it?

IF YOU READ THIS, AND STILL END UP GOING DOWN THE SAME ROUTE, YOU WILL ONLY HAVE YOURSELF TO BLAME WHEN IT ALL GOES PEAR-SHAPED.
:=

FP. Be careful what you say on here, Your story could possibly identify you to Park or easy and you could easily find you get dumped all together.

"Be careful what you say on here, Your story could possibly identify you"

:ok: I realise that, but if you keep it to yourself, how can you stop others falling into the same trap? The main point of my post was to demonstrate just how easy it is to get 'led by the nose' into a situation like this.

In any event, Balpa are on the case now, and have written to Parc, calling it 'a cold and harsh approach to dealing with professional pilots'. They are pushing the de-motivational, safety and fatigue aspects, by drawing attention to the stress caused by the short notice, the significant drop in pay when there are large TR loans to be paid off, and the fact they will probably have to commute to SXF initially because they haven't had time to make proper alternative accommodation arrangements.

Maybe, if it were a unique case, but I suspect there are a scarily high volume of similarly lucky individuals with the same sh*t sandwich

Hate to say "I told you so," but : I TOLD YOU SO!

I guess it will only be a matter of time however, before the usual suspects like Alexander de Meerkat or Norman Stanley Fletcher will post that 'it's all not really that bad for a real career airline,' and 'BLA-BLA-BALPA is working on a solution.' Mind you, most are on a fat old DEC contract and make a living line training young suckers like yourself, so they're probably not 100% objective in this matter, hehehe. ;)

Anyway, what's your point with moaning here, flyingpicket?

You should have done better and more realistic research before you started, instead of thinking that you could just buy your way into a cushy right/left seat of an Airbus with a "career airline" and be happy ever after! :rolleyes:

You made your bed so now you have to sleep in it. Maybe Alexander can read you a nice bedtime story or sing you a lullaby! :p

You make it sound like you were forced to take up a job with FR/EZY...

If you had taken a second to think about it, instead of rushing for the first jet job in site, you may have realized that it would be more beneficial to wait for a non-P2F job. The loan repayments are irrelevant, you would have had to wait longer for the job, but you're saving yourself 30k in the meantime. With the likes of Monarch, Jet2, Flybe, all hiring in recent months, you can't say there weren't options, plus many more option abroad.

Avoid P2F! Nevertheless, good luck getting out of your self-dug hole.

There seriously needs to be an impartial source of information about job prospects and conditions that every single person who considers training has to have shoved in their face to negate the utter rubbish the FTOs spin out to visitors. Very few people will question anything they hear them say. After all - 'they know what they're talking about'.

I know there's GAPAN - but do many who visit flying schools and who are new to aviation even know of their existence? The biggest threat to long-term conditions lies in the supply-side. Anything that can be done to cut the numbers training - usually on false pretences - will go a long way.

17PA and others,
P2F is not the way to describe the easyjet set up. You fund the type rating and then you are paid for all the flying you do. The T & C's are rubbish and these are accepted by the pilot in question and as such its a little baffling why people complain about said accepted contract.

If you consider this to be P2F then you can include Jet2 and also those easyJet SSTR guys of the past.

In saying that how can you berate the OP for accepting a contract (which financially was workable) only to be treated with contempt and forced onto a terrible contract in Germany. Nobody can guess whats coming but even for easyJet that was (and is) a disgrace.

I wasn't aware you paid for the TR with Jet2, I still think it's absolutely insane to pay 30k for a type rating the current climate, with a little patience there are other ways.

Thats a bit of a narrow mindset, what you all have to realize is that when the bottomfeeder airlines screw enough people over with these schemes, their cost base goes down. This forces all the other competing airlines to follow suit in the race to the bottom. Shortly there will be no "best" jobs cause they will all be bottomfeeders.

And don't forget that you will be stuck on the right seat -if you're lucky enough to find a job- for an unbelievable amount of time. The jobs are in the hands of the agencies, and you will always require 500 hours as a captain on type if you want a captain job one day...

This has all be done before. People have warned today's wannabees about their prospects. The forum moderator officially threw in the towel as he was sick of being accused as being a negative barsteward. The fact of the matter is, neither EZY or FR need to recruit another FO for crewing purposes, both airlines are no longer expanding and the so called 'exodus' of experienced crew has slowed to a crawl. Pay to fly, here today, gone tomorrow cadets are recognised revenue generators among management today. A continual rotating door of 200hr jet jockeys looks great on the bottom line. That's their purpose, to make wonga. And business appears as brisk as ever.

Again callsign kilo not quite correct. easyJet make no money from taking on a new cadet. In fact they open themselves up to expenditure in the form of winter hours protection. Its CTC who make the profit on each cadet by charging over the top for a type rating whilst taking a cut of the hourly rate.

Boring facts getting in the way of a good theory . . .

so what do you recommend wannabe pilots to do
reading this has scared me but hasnt stopped me from wanting to be a pilot(im having to extinguish the smoke coming from my pen everytime i revise for my GCSE'S)

Dct_Mopas,

You have it exactly. UK FTO's, some big & some small have really made very unrealistic sales pitches over the years, to the extent i'm amazed that trading standards are not involved. I'm nearly a decade clear of those shisters who constantly plead poverty and operate tatty recalcitrant aircraft out of crappy little shacks but park a Porsche outside....But its a symbiotic relationship, the airlines get a continuous supply of cheap deluded naive P2's and the FTO's make good money out of training them up...and the regulator just lets it happen because no rules are broken, theres no safety issue (until a prang occurs that is....) & of course the FTO's pay fees to the regulator...........

Generation Z; blind trust in the sales talk of flying schools, bankers, second hand car salesmen, autoflight and politicians. :ugh:

“In any event, Balpa are on the case now, and have written to Parc, calling it 'a cold and harsh approach to dealing with professional pilots'.”

Just seen a copy of the reply from the top dog at Parc. It wasn’t their fault after all, as it was forced on them by EU law…. And there was me thinking the EU meddlers were all about minimum wage and improving working conditions, not maximum wage and degrading them.

He goes on to say that they discussed the matter with their personnel, and found them far from de-motivated …. That’d be the ‘take it or leave it’ email they sent with 48 hours to make a decision one way the other.

In fact, a number apparently volunteered….. Yeh right, that would be the lemmings with their hands up to be first over the cliff!

...And the majority are looking forward to working at their new base….. The turkeys who think they’ll be playing with their Christmas presents on boxing day. Afraid I haven’t come across any yet.

A move of base is apparently a time to be aware of each individual’s concerns and wishes…… But ‘I DON’T WANT TO GO’ doesn’t appear to count for much.

He suggests Balpa keep statements like ‘risk of fatigue & demotivation’ and ‘potentially fatigued and anxious’ private and not disseminated further…. Well we would’t want to upset the guys at the bottom of the cliff or belly up on the Xmas table. In any event, if the wings do fall off, we don’t want any finger pointing.

He concludes by saying that they will ensure the pilots concerned are motivated and looking forward to the new challenge….. Yippee :D that must mean relocation expenses, a decent hotel provided free until suitable accommodation is found, net pay increased to what it was in the UK, and a winter guarantee. NOT!