I have not come across any colleagues who do not take pride in the job they personally do.

If you have "pride in your job and pride in your work" that will almost certainly not correlate to always having work in aviation, here anyway. It could be stated that you are not really viewed as an asset by an airline if the way you are treated is testimony. You're an unfortunate requirement; the same as insurance policies, GNSS approvals and noise certificates. Thats the way it is - business. We are all used to that and nobody moans about the lack of recognition.

Weary of the whole damn thing my sights are lowered, a decent full time contract that allows my family to stay in their home country, the odd job opening that recognises some good old fashioned experience rather than peddling a falsely titled full cost but flexible pay type rating 'cadet scheme' aimed at young starlets and some half decent time off will do. I can't be fussed inciting much hope for anything else.

Playing the Devil's advocate; If you want to always have work, It's better if you don't overly value what you have to offer and as you say gladly take pay cuts to fly. They know it and use it, we have done it for them collectively. The crystal meth like habit the UK seems to have developed with cheap trainee schemes/PPY/ flex contracts sheds light to the claim. As a brand new Pilot walking into that first interview room at CTC/ John Doe airline, the stench of love blindness with the idea and Kamikaze like devotedness permeates for all to smell like a cheap cologne.

Best of luck with your training by the way. It's good you have industry experience to fall back on and it's a sensible way round to do it.

I understand the difficulties involved in getting a good paying job vs lifestyle. But what I don't understand is all these complainers of how the job sucks, money is bad, odd cockpit personalities, all of you have many many posts on pprune. Just give it up already, log off pprune, and get on with your life.

btw, I landed a great job last year, very happy. But it took me 13 years of flying tprops, jets for 2nd rate airlines. And you know what, even flying for 2nd rate airlines I made more money and had more time off than almost all of my friends/relatives doing something else.

Have fun guys, otherwise I don't wish to see you on my flight deck.

15k + hours, done the turboprops, done the jets, done the passengers, done the cargo, done the corporate , done the instructing&checking , done the 3 aircraft airline , done the 200+ aircraft airline, done the permanent jobs, done the contracting jobs, been based many places......is it really that bad?
Well it definitely got worse and worse over time and I would not recommend this career to a youngster.
Having said that there are worst jobs out there but this one is quickly climbing the rankings of the least attractive careers.

There are 2 aspects here. There are those who say they enjoy their job, those who loath it and those who say it's just a job and there are much worse out there. All true and it is affected by so many factors as as been said.
Then there are those who say they do it because they love/loved flying.
These are the 2 aspects: it started out as a flying dream and became just a job as it has very little to do with the rock & roll of real flying dreamt up as a kid. And there are those who entered it as an OK type of job with a bit of glamour. Whichever it is it will turn out to be a 'lifestyle' and that will be impossible to predict unless you know from the start who you are going to work for before you pay out loads of dosh for a training course.
You can go to assessment agencies to be tested to see if you are suitable to be a pilot and coordinated enough to handle an a/c etc. etc. You can jump through all the psychological hoops and be deemed acceptable. But will you like it as a life style. All these tests will not give you an answer, nor will they alert you to the trap you are about to fall into.
Caveat emptor.

Thanks for shedding some light, I am definitely starry eyed, hence being Mr. Naive. I look at airline pilots with envy and admiration, its a little hard to accept that so many of you HATE your jobs and want out...

Everyone seems to fall back onto this 'negative'.
The FO's here (Australia) in the QF Dash 8's are on a base wage of about $80K. That doesn't seem terrible for a foot through the door, with a lot of room for improvement.

And as for the "return on time and money invested", I really fail to see how it varies from a dentist, a lawyer or a doctor?
They invest more time (I think its about 5 years) in further education, and I'm sure they would have a similar, if not greater debt than $80K-$100K. Then, they have to land their first job, and they too have to claw their way up the ladder also.

But, I suppose it could be worse. Like operating and cutting people open, or pulling out stinky, rotten teeth. The major up side is helping people and saving lives. But isn't that was pilots are obligated to do also?
I'd much rather sit on the flight deck, staring out the window feeling 'bored' any day.

Being a pilot is a privilege in my eyes and always will be, not only from an intelligence perspective, but from that of health as well.

It is a job that took major hits in recent years and it is far from what it used to be.
Signs of recovery? None.
I better get ready to leave the studio flat of the city where I am based but where I don't live to prepare for a long night flight up into the northern weather hoping my payload isn't too big in order to have room for some spare fuel in case of snow and not being forced to re-file in flight and land elsewhere because that would spoil my commuting plans the day after and I was hoping to be able to spend 2 full days with my kids before leaving again for a duty of 6.

Add 'pilot' to list of jobs that aren't so great now - USATODAY.com

This thread kind of proves the following
30 Years + Final Salary Pension = Smug, lucky Pilot
20 years + in Flag Carrier on Legacy T&Cs = Happy
15 Years + Major Western Carrier Big Jets = Happy/Satisfied
10 Years + LOCO = Looking to move on due Lifestyle
5 Years + LOCO = How can I move on?
3 Years + LOCO = Have I made a mistake?
1 Year + Any Jet = I've made it!
0 Years = I'll take any job.

ME = How can I get home.
FE = Will they send me home?
Bizjet = Whats a roster?
TP = Will I get out before I lose my hearing?

Very much tongue in cheek!

That has to be the most astute and succinct post on this site. You might say it's tongue in cheek but it sums up pretty much every member in these forums, self included.

Bravo.:D:D

It's missing one important factor though. If at any point between 10-30 years your employer goes bust, then you can expect to join the bottom of the queue all over again quite possibly starting on a salary you last saw when you had hair on your head. Can't think of any other industry where that happens but there you go.

Beautifully summarised here:

The Ugly - The Truth About the Profession


Handcuffed/Starting Over
One of the ugliest things about the airline pilot profession is the fact that we usually are handcuffed to our ultimate employer for our entire career, and if our employer goes out of business, we're forced to start over as if you're a brand new pilot fresh out of flight school. Let me explain...let's look at an accountant and a pilot, both working at Acme Airlines.

Let's say you wish to ultimately become employed by Acme Airlines, which is a large, currently profitable major airline with good career prospects. You spend 15 years of your life earning your Bachelor's Degree and accumulating thousands of hours of flight experience, and you finally make it to Acme Airlines. Fast forward 10 years down the road after you were hired by Acme, and Acme is not doing so well. It's chronically losing money, it's now poorly managed, and it is in danger of bankruptcy. Employees are facing yet another round of pay cuts in order to help support this struggling company.

Now if you were in any other profession (assuming normal economic conditions), when you became unhappy with Acme, you could just leave and find a healthy company to work for. And that's exactly what the accountant does at Acme Airlines. He sees that his employer is struggling and that another round of pay cuts are on the horizon. So what does he do? He looks around for another accountant job and leaves. When he makes this move, it's very likely that this accountant will be able to find a job at another company earning a salary resembling his old salary at Acme, or perhaps maybe even find a job that pays more because he was a great employee, worked hard as an accountant, and his accumulated experience at Acme is appreciated and rewarded by his new employer.

But what about the Acme Airlines pilot? Certainly he could do the same as the accountant and jump ship to a healthier company with better prospects? Nope. As airline pilots, when you leave your current employer for a new one, your new airline employer will start you at the bottom of the seniority list. You're handcuffed to your current employer because leaving would cause you to have to start over at entry level wages and seniority at another airline, leaving you with really no choice but to stay and ride it out.

Let's say you stay and "ride it out" but unfortunately Acme Airline liquidates and ceases to exist. If you were a 747 Captain at Acme Airlines when Acme liquidated, you'd now be competing for the same entry level positions at other major airlines as you were 10 years ago when you were just starting out in the profession, working your way up. And what may be worse, if the economy is poor, and only regional airlines are hiring, you'll be competing against people fresh out of flight school for that $20,000 year regional airline job! That's quite a long financial fall for a 747 Captain. Unfortunately, this story has been played out time and time again. In fact, this story is playing out right now at some airlines. It can be financially devastating, and I personally know pilots who have lost their homes, their marriages, and sometimes their life because of this.

Not a bad precis at all, but in addition Superpilot's comment I think it's worth emphasising to some of the newbies/wanabees that IMHO the scale is a snapshot of where we are now in March 2014.....

What the zero bods need to ask themselves is what are the chances that in 2044 the 30 years pilot will be a "..... Final Salary Pension = Smug, lucky Pilot" ?...Actually scratch the Final Salary bit, we already know the answer to that one :(

For interest perhaps one should consider the inject point for a time served, 20 year, ex-fast and pointy, frozen atpl, trying to enter the food chain? :E

EXMIL + fATPL = wishing it was 2004
FUTURERETIREDPILOT + DC Pension = there's a job in B&Q (Home Depot)
PPL + PA28 = Glad I became something in the City.

:ooh:

Ha ha ! Nice one !

:ok:

perhaps in the future

+5 Years Still paying off loan
+10 Years Paying for the fuel
+15 Years Paying for the fuel and renting the aircraft

(hopefully) tongue in cheek! :)

I almost never post on pprune but threads like this are important to people thinking about entering the industry so I'm going to throw my 2p worth in.

I fly a heavy jet around Europe working very hard in the summer and not so hard in the winter. I love my job and couldn't imagine doing anything else. However having said that if I had my time over again knowing what I know now I wouldn't enter the industry. This is a feeling echoed by many of my colleagues.

The reasons I would not enter the industry again are as follows:

As a new trainee entering the industry will realistically have to pay around £100000. This is a life changing amount of money. If you are not lucky enough to have that kind of money lying around either you or your family will have to get a loan, re- mortgage your home or work and save for a very long time to save £100000 of disposable income.

If you need a loan there is only 1 company in the UK that will fund flight training. They have very strict criteria that have to be met in order to be offered the loan. The criteria are more difficult to satisfy than getting a mortgage for buying a house and is for a maximum term of 10 years which is substantially shorter than most mortgages. The repayments for this loan in the most optimistic scenario with interest remaining at their historically low level is about £900 a month. This has to be paid every month or the home which you have secured it on will be repossessed. This is a real scenario and has happened to people. £900 is a lot of money to find each month on most entry level salaries in the aviation industry. If you are not lucky enough to get a job straight out of training add on to this the cost of keeping your licence current in order to remain attractive to potential employers.

The percentage chance for a newly qualified frozen ATPL getting a job that pays you to fly for an airline on a proper employment contract is very very slim. Particularly in the UK where highly experienced many thousand hour jet captains are struggling to find gainful employment. It's a huge gamble to take with such a large amount of money that if it doesn't pay off will hamper the rest of your life. If your credit rating shows such a large debt you will struggle to achieve any more debt so things like mortgages, credit cards and even mobile phone contracts become more challenging and all you have to show for your troubles is a cheap blue plastic wallet.

For those who will immediately say that's only the UK and European markets this is true but in order to apply to other parts of the world eg Middle East / Far East a very quick check of the current requirements for these jobs shows a requirement for at least 3000 of hours experience on jet aircraft and most above the weight categories above those the pay to fly schemes will satisfy. If you can afford to buy into these schemes and remain on them long enough to build the hours required to move on then you are lucky but you will be among the very lucky few.

To everyone who will say follow your dream and paint the romantic picture of bursting through the clouds a sun rise and tell you there's nothing like it, it's true. However the excitement and sparkle of this soon goes when your on day six of your run of early starts with min rest in between and all you want to do is finish so you can get your 2 days off to recover get your life organised maybe see you friends and family before you start again with the only difference being that your now on lates and will get home at 4 am instead of getting up at 4am.

Ultimately the excitement of flying a big aircraft doesn't really exist for very long it becomes just a job very quickly, a fun job where you mostly work with nice people, but really it's just a way to earn money to fund your lifestyle. It is very regimented and repetitive job you see crew room, flight deck, runway, sky, runway, 10min outside doing the walk round, say hello to cabin crew then flight deck, runway, sky, runway, crew room and repeat. If you make a mistake there are questions to be answered ranging from file an ASR and forget about it to sorry you've lost your job depending on severity of the mistake.

There is also the issue of it can be a very unstable industry with redundancy a real possibility. I thankfully have never experienced this so cannot talk about it intelligently but I have worked with many people who have lived through this scenario and it is a tough one to survive financially.

This has been a very long post so thank you for reading it is only my view so I'm sure there will be many who do not agree.

My final comment would be that to succeed in this industry has very little to do with ability, willingness to work, determination or cash it is mostly luck in qualifying at the right time and being in the right place when a job becomes up.

Wanabee1000

Your post was worth reading to the end.

I would hazard a guess that there has never been as much recruitment on Jet aircraft in the UK as there has been in recent times. Id also guess the recruitment has never been extensively ringfenced to one or two FTOs as it has before.

It is ok for the few who have manouvered themselves into position to gain from this scenario such as the shareholders of the ftos etc (you do on occasion hear all sorts of rumours) but it isnt difficult to see what it is doing to the overall industry

I understand wanabees are advised not to read too much on this website as it is allegedly full of negative stuff from envious people. That may be true to a certain extent however spin like this from the ftos does dilute the excellent advice and guidance from established, independent and well placed sources of information from within the industry.

My own attitude about the industry I work in isnt fuelled by individual concern it is fuelled by the fact this is having on the whole industry

I make no apologies for the fact that I personally, do not have much sympathy for anyone who gets sucked into one of the big schools whether they don't get into the industry at all, or end up marking time for a year or two, or even those who end up "winning" and getting there backside into the RHS of an airliner albiet in such a ridiculous financial situation with huge debts and not much in the way of paying them off. They surely are not the sole cause for the direction the industry is going however they certainly do play a part this cannot be disregarded

My advice is to read the informative posts on here, filter out the rubbish and hidden agenda, understand the industry, understand the lifestyle (especially at the LOCOs such as RYR and EZY) be very very cautious with the spin from the FTOs and any related sources of information.

Is it really that bad?
 

In a nutshell, unless you work for a large national carrier, yes.

Following the two excellently considered posts from Wanabee1000 and Three Lions plus the constructive input from macdo, I would like to offer the opinion of a time-served airline captain.
I wanted to be a pilot from the days when I used to carve solid balsa scale model aircraft as a 9 year old.
Later I hung around an aero club, doing all the stuff that nobody else wanted to do and was rewarded with some super flights with super people.
I then flew fighters in the military, instructed at one of the major (now) FTOs and then landed an airline job at a starting salary a good bit lower than the FTO's.
Btw, the FTO paid for my IR and Commercial Instructor Rating! The airline paid for my Type rating and base training !

Magic ! ……for a while !!

As many have said, the fun waned at a rapid rate, far outweighing the fulfilment I always got from doing the job properly, sometimes with aeroplanes carrying a large number of DDs. The hours were long and the sectors were shorthaul. A large number of taxi journeys, up to 3 hours, were regular occurrences …..and didn't count as a sector !
Family life began to suffer as, even in those days, I was getting fatigued because there was never any time to recover.

To cut a long story short, I endured this for a further 25 years. At the end, I was relieved to retire and go back to flying and instructing on little 'uns again.
The improvement was immediate. I was much better company; I was enjoying teaching motivated, rested students again; I was flying the way it should be.
There was little pressure, no ingratitude; no threat of being failed on your next Base Check because you had dared to question a completely unreasonable request to "help the Company out." I became valued again.
To do it again with the lifetime financial load, the higher hours caps and the continued thanklessness of the modern task ? No,…..no matter what the challenge.
Get a wellpaid job in the City and buy your own aeroplane ! Don't buy your future in the most thankless profession going. := Good Luck.

I always wonder if these "well paid jobs in the city" are devoid of stress and burnout, and are bastions of morality, and exist in sufficient numbers to satisfy the default position of dissuaded, disillusioned or failed commercial pilots? Come Five o' clock on a Friday evening its Bowler and umbrella off the hat stand, hop on the commuter train home and look forward to a weekend flattening daisies in your very own light aircraft.

Flying has provided me with a very good career and there is no doubt a lot of luck was involved, but it is still a reality that there are good jobs out there. I am very lucky in that I see a stream of people entering a profession who are also getting a good start to their careers. The mechanics of entry have evolved over the last two decades as indeed the industry itself has evolved.

For those that really want a career as a professional pilot in 2014, I doubt that telling them why they can't, won't, shouldn't, or mustn't, is going to make very much difference. You can spell out the realities, you can recount tales of horror, you can highlight each and every pitfall. Some will heed the advice and use it as a part of their journey, others will simply believe whatever they choose or simply have to believe in order to justify a limited range of options. You pay your money and you take your choice!

As posters above have said, it is a job and once the illusion of glamour has started to tarnish it is still a job. It is what pays the mortgage/rent and pays the car bills and the food, loans, credit cards, clothing, heat, light and entertainment. Monthly bills get very mundane, and remuneration is what (if you are lucky) keeps them mundane rather than a personal crisis.

The roads into the better remunerated jobs are either very expensive or very long. Often they can be very expensive and very long. There are no guarantees. The risks are enormous. Crossing the raging torrent to these better remunerated jobs is fraught with difficulty. There are plenty of "I have no agenda" folks, clinging on to these slippery rocks telling others not to pay the toll to cross the bridge.

Would I promote a career in commercial aviation to my own children? No, not beyond many other choices that may be available to them. However if they were determined to take this route, then I would provide a very detailed and specific roadmap to help them achieve their goal. That roadmap would be full of many of the same warnings that are highlighted in this and many other threads.

Have to agree with Bealzebub.

I get to meet a lot of pilots in their 20s joining my airline. The vast majority are mature and well motivated and came into the business eyes wide open, well aware of the negatives. They all chose a route which was expensive but which they felt gave them the best chance of getting a job. No guarantees were given and some of their contemporaries who followed the same route have not been so fortunate.

I invariably ask them about their school/university mates and it does not make for happy listening. The top guys with good degrees may well end up in the city but they seem to be a tiny minority and the pressure can be immense with little job satisfaction. Many of the others seem to end up in some other form of employment which is neither fulfilling nor well paid. The only really happy ones seem to be the ones who have followed a more vocational route. Meanwhile the guy sitting next to me says he has no regrets and talks optimistically about the future.

I do worry for my children and will not encourage or discourage them to go into flying but if I was starting again and determined to fly I would go MPL or, at a push, Integrated with a known UK School. Without that relative security the risks are too great. It's a great shame because the route I took was a lot more fun and open to the majority of people who do not have access to huge amounts of money/credit.

"It is what pays the mortgage/rent and pays the car bills and the food, loans, credit cards, clothing, heat, light and entertainment. "

That has to be the joke of the century!

The profession is as it is because to many like to moan and complain, if they have a chance to change something they have very little loyalty and courage.

There are more good jobs than just working in the "city", so let's not just keep on how that is the alternative to a flying career.

Would I spend the next 25 years doing 900 (or 1000 a year) short haul? No way, it will literally kill you. I think the majority have painted a relatively dark and gloom picture of the profession, which unfortunately is very correct.

"It is very regimented and repetitive job you see crew room, flight deck, runway, sky, runway, 10 min outside doing the walk round, say hello to cabin crew then flight deck, runway, sky, runway, crew room and repeat." also add no chance for a proper rest or hot meal in a 12 - 14 hour day.

It's funny how on one of the Wannabe threads I got slaughtered by a certain poster here, who seems to maybe have some interests in continued training, I am guessing TRE's probably don't need to worry about if they can afford some peanuts at the end of their day!:D