I see what you did there.

Supply & Demand huh? P2F/SSTR?

Only serves to demonstrate my point. There is an excess of selfish pilots in the world when compared to selfless Doctors. After all, who wants to study for 7+ years (more like all your life) when you can command the "same" salary in 1.5? From whence does that rhetoric arise?

I'm sure there are all kinds of reason why the professional pay of Doctors and Pilots has diverged over the years.

Pilots exist along an employment continuum. Senior pilots were behind much of the UK SSTR/P2F malaise.

The UK prohibition against Secondary action seems convenient to some posters here. But you can guarantee, if you're content to sit back and watch from the sidelines, things will only get worse. I can't quite conceive of how that might make things better, can you?

PS:
I only went to University for 7 years.

You need to be a hell of a lot brighter to become a doctor than you do to become a pilot. Medicine is an incredibly academic field. That's not to say pilots are all dumber than doctors. To get into the LHS of a UK airline, you will obviously have to display a high level of skill and intelligence. However, to get to study medicine in the UK you need pretty much straight A's in heavyweight A level subjects. This ensures a high likelihood of success during the subsequent 7 years of intense study. This is not the case for pilots. Thank ****!

Back to the subject in hand. Striking over XMAS so your colleagues have to miss their family Xmas is a crap idea.

I realise reading this text might a bit of a challenge for us dumb pilots :mad:, but here's a bit of light background reading about the state of play in Europe, and why under the present rule set any attempt at cross border Industrial Action is usually fecked:


http://www.europarl.europa.eu/docume...ATT24274EN.pdf

Section 3, the Laval-quartet, probably best illustrates where we are now legally, like it or not (I don't).

BALPA does get a mention, section 5.2 - at least they have been asking questions

Actually I think the reason that there is no Pay to Butcher is because not many of the general public would happily go under the scalpel of the latest rich kid wannabe surgeon. Certainly nobody that I know would anyway.

However, they appear to be more accepting of the flying version of PtB. Why? Knowledge, or lack thereof, of the risks involved. Maybe.

So who's really to blame for the current state of this industry? Rich kids, the airlines, the demanding public? All three.

Certainly not those of us who have been speaking out against P2F since it's inception. Should we help those of you who were happy to jump the queue and contribute to the slide, regardless of legality, because you didn't listen before? Or is it your hole to get yourself out of? Should I just look after my own affairs because you've nadgered the industry?

CAE PARC today looking for DEC easyJet LIS base.

Starting Christmas Eve????

Yeah, failing that, April 1st I'm told.

Back in the late 70's when I left school if you wanted to be a doctor or a pilot the barrier to entry to these occupations was about equal, controlled by high academic requirements in the case of doctors and scarcity of opportunity for pilots. (P2F effectively still then existed in a minor way as the old self improver route via instructing. You had to have a substantial amount of money to learn to fly in the first place, followed on by paying for the various tests and exams along the way.) What changed was the 'scarcity of opportunity' in aviation and the explosion of flying jobs available first in Europe, now worldwide. If you look at today's school leavers the barriers to becoming a doctor are still largely academic. (Anyone who questions this should have a quick look at the BMAT and UK CAT tests required by many UK Med Schools, they are seriously challenging.) The academic barriers for pilots were 3 decent A Levels (the modern equivalent is a half reasonable degree), but what has changed is the surplus of people having access to huge lines of wealth or credit. So moderate academic requirements + ample availability of money = over supply of qualified candidates. Result continuous lowering of Reward.
Largely, I think the complaint that we have lost pay parity with the medics has been overstated. If you look at pay rates for Consultants/Registrars/etc down to 1st Year Post Grad doctors there is reasonable parity with Training Capts/ Line Capt/ Fo's in a legacy carrier. This diverges downwards if you take in the fixed pay rates offered by many LoCo's, but there are similar downward pressures on many of the less glamorous medical positions. Even the hardships of being a P2F cadet for a couple of years can be financially balanced by the 5 years a med student spends not earning and the 2 post grad years of poor pay.
The one big difference I can see is that the Medical Profession have been much better at working as a cohesive unit to maintain their Terms and Conditions at an appropriate level. Mainly this is achieved because there has always been a scarcity of supply of doctors with an ever increasing demand, but it would be interesting to observe how T&C's would change if the high academic barriers were lowered and Pay 2 Doctor was invented. I suspect the results would mirror our own predicament very quickly.

My worry is not pay parity with Doctors it is that highly experienced and skilled Captains in Europe have pay on a downward trajectory rapidly approaching London Underground Train operators. I am sure LOCO Captains work harder, have fewer benefits and I have no doubt within 10 years their pay will be below Train drivers.

Is it the high educational requirements? or are the train drivers just more unified?

Standard CRM stuff, a group is more likely to do something risky than an individual.

Nothing will change all the time there are 0 hour wonder kids willing to work for French fries. In my view this airline career path is dead. Accountants have seen the light, woken up and smelt the coffee and will fight tooth and nail to keep salaries down so not the effect the bottom line for share holders.

If you want change the only way is what the Lisbon guys are doing, period!

I hate unions, but this is what it's come to. Planes stop flying and profits stop coming and the company will start talking.

You guys are putting doctors on WAAAAY too much of a pedestal.

Several medical schools in the UK, I hate to break it to you, are accepting people with 3 Cs at A level because they are deemed underprivileged:

BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Doctors qualify on access degree

Another dreadful one for it is that St Georges in Tooting. I also personally know of several people who have bypassed the standard school leaving process and gone into medicine as a 'mature student' - don't need much in the way of grades for that - just need the:

Foundation/pre-clinical year - Courses - Students - Medical Schools Council

I can think of about 6 doctors I know that are 'junior doctors' (two who begun as mature students) - In the most part they can't look after themselves - they're pasty, eat appallingly, don't exercise, have zero social skills and seem to just watch things at 'work' rather than do anything - which they will freely admit. They vacillate on 8 month placements in paediatrics etc. What they can do is lock themselves in a room and learn a book. Smashing. Speaking to family friends that are consultants they say the job is mind numbing - it's generally very routine with the same 'spikes' of difficulty that we have in our field.

Anyone who has qualified as an airline pilot will tell you that there is a huge amount of practical assessment early on in the training and career - non stop progress checks. A practical assessment isn't like theoretical assessment - it wasn't until I'd completed pilot training that I realised how easily theory exams are.


Then there's the fact that if a doctor screws up he or she kills one person. If we screw up we kill a lot more. If the doctor screws up they don't take their lives with them. If we screw up, we have it in the back of our minds that we too will die! Just because, with experience, this job can seem a breeze does not mean it is a breeze - that's why we ARE paid well - because we have experience and capacity to perform the job well inside an acceptable tolerance.

All of that said - I agree there needs to be far more filtration as to who can join this industry and who can not. No quotas, no short of bums on seats for courses, no who can afford it - just meritocracy and profile fit.

……And if our job is so easy to do and requires little in the way of anything - I do hope all crews flying into LGW this afternoon relish the G55 crosswind right across the runway. You'll earn your money as PF or PNF.

You'll earn a P45 if you land outside the aircraft limits of gusts 38!

WhyByFlier
Trust me, from bitter experience, a pedestal is the last place I'd put several doctors that I have had the mis-fortune to run across!
The Access/Foundation routes to Medicine you quote aren't really representative of the mainstream route to medicine. (By coincidence, I know someone on one, who has a degree in Fine Art, go figure...). What I can say is that I have done entry exams/tests/interviews for several 'difficult to get into' airlines and there is no way in the world that they were as "academically " challenging as the requirements to get even an interview for somewhere like Imperial or Barts. Not by a country mile.

The argument that we will end up on Train Driver salaries isn't up to much either, see here
Trainee Train Driver - Pay And Conditions For UK Train Drivers

I know there are loads of PTF on a lot less, let alone TProp FO's, but the fact remains with luck and hard work, a command in a decent airline puts you way over this and in many cases closer to Junior Consultant Doctor pay.

The undoubted erosion of our pay is, IMHO, mainly due to oversupply of pilots, particularly those well heeled enough to take the P2F route and survive the first few years. Also, we are an independent minded lot and are often reluctant to join or participate in Union activities. If we were all 100% represented by our national unions, they would negotiate from a position of strength and things would not have got so out of hand.

Lastly, I don't think anyone on here thinks that a Pilots job is easy. I feel that I have well earned my salary after that 38kt xwind landing.:eek:
But there are very many occupations that are not easy for many reasons, that are remunerated much more modestly than our own.

Whybyflier has a massive chip on his/her shoulder as he thinks the sun shines out from behind having gone to ctc. Keep on bragging about how good you are flying your a320 as a new fo. Only takes one slip up to bring you mentally down to earth with all your actual pic experience.

:yuk:

We can talk about making our profession competitive again, but the day flying training became a business was the day that died. Particularly in the last few years if the schools were asking for good aptitude scores, rigorous academic standards and a personality then they would have had very few candidates, because you already have a small pool due to the financial barriers.

It's supply and demand. And it's in the schools interest and the airlines interest to keep supply high.

I think anyone who has graduated in the past 10 years will know of at least 4/5 people who have no business being anywhere near a toy aircraft never mind a 320. Yet they threw money at the problem when they failed things. It's these same people who then throw money into type ratings and get jobs flying A320's.

(No that's not a generalisation that anyone who pays for a tr is a bad pilot or fits that profile, but still) sorry for thread drift.

I probably couldn't have less of a chip on my shoulder regarding this industry if I tried. I would hardly say that 4.5 years as an airline pilot and 3500 hours on the A320 makes me 'new' but I agree I still have a lot to experience and learn. I'm sorry my posts have offended you so much! Merry Christmas - I hope you get some tampons in your stocking!

Sadly, I think, by your last comment, you proved her point. Shame.
Happy Christmas.

WBF.........:ugh:

Sorry why should I take 'experience' chat from someone who is asking about paying for a type rating with no job offer. Girlpower what is your experience?