If some of you still believe in pilot shortage, here 2 things for you :

1) remove your pink glasses
2) slap yourself

and 3) if it does not work, well...good luck in your life then. :D

There may not be a pilot shortage granted but there is a shortage of pilots with the right stuff.

Greenlights, can i ask you what do you mean when you say there is no pilot shortage?

Do you have any kind of support to back it up or is it just your opinion, i am not saying there is something wrong in that but you seem very certain and then i would like to ask?

Also is shortage seen from the short, medium or long term?

There could be a short term shortage but in the long term possibly not and vice versa obviously. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Slap
 

Greenlights. Spot on made me laugh so much. FWIW I am languishing with 6000TT and an Initial T/R credit at a well known sim provider and absolutely zip on the job front. There is no shortage

The only shortage there has ever been is experienced captains,there are a good thousand + cpl holders just in the UK with no jobs.

If there was a shortage they would all have jobs, ive lost track of how many friends i know with 50k + debt from 2001-2003 with no jobs.

I tell every one who comes to the flight club i instruct at to do there home work, its a simple one.

Ask the CAA how many CPL passes since 2000, then work out how many jobs the think have been created.

Then the proof ontop, if all these CPLs had jobs then realistically as soon as they could they would upgrade to the ATPL, so the next question you ask the CAA is how many ATPL upgrades in the same time frame.

You will find a split quite a big split

Crash Landing:

You're idea is worthy, but irrelevant to a certain degree.

You'd also need to ask yourself how many people gained a UK JAA CPL, and then went to work for Ryanair for instance. They insist on an Irish licence I believe.

Ryanair have, one could argue unfortunately, taken on large numbers of UK CPL holders who will have never upgraded to a UK CAA issued ATPL.

You may also be able to find other operators in areas of the world who also insist on local licences.

Therefore, I think we are probably trying to use incomplete data to solve a problem.

However, broadly speaking you're absolutely correct. Too many licences, too few jobs.

To add to the figure are all the guys with ratings working on type with unfrozen licences out in the @rse end of the earth and scattered all over the globe who have been trying to get a stable job in the UK for years without success.
Im not referring to the guys earning good money in the ME either.

The sad fact of life is there has been more recruitment over the last few years but it has been more of a closed shop during these periods than ever before

If by some miracle there becomes a pilot shortage in the UK then this void will simply be filled by one or two large ftos - they are well geared up to regulate the flow of fresh resource.

There IS a real shortage of idiots with 1500+ hours who will commute to work for 14K/a. And rightly so! :eek:

Even 737/A320 Captains are not guaranteed a job. China is that great hoover of pilots in the flying universe who, in principal, would offer jobs to any pilots who are current captains on these types. The problem is that the people who are desperate to employ you are the very same people who will go out of their way to kick you out with crazy medical requirements just to get rid of foreigners. Therefore pilots of 50+ who are exactly who the Chinese want will not darken the door of the place because they know that after a year they will be thrown out for failing a medical or some crazy sim check over some bizarre issue that no other nation in the world would care about. It is such a shame as many pilots would love to spend a few years there, but dare not because it is a mad house. Very strange indeed!

Why are so many people so negative about their careers in aviation, do you think all your friends and family love every bit of their jobs!! Get real, if you have started to hate your career get out of it, and make some room for the guys who actually want to be there! Sorry about the rant just getting sick of all the negativity on PPRUNE!!!!

People,

Its about a shortage in Ryanair here. People can say what they want, at the rate Ryanair is losing captains and experienced FO's at the moment it will cause problems for them. You can replace a person but not necessarily his or her experience. Ryanair is simply losing experience. They dont lower their command upgrade requirements for nothing all the time. And for direct entry captains, they can hardly get any as they are also put on nasty contracts with Brookfield or Storm McGinley and get a base they dont want, if not immediately then most likely at some stage. Some that join leave soon again as they dont like the BS they get or are almost never home while floating around 65 bases and live in cheap B&B's or hotels. The direct numbers they get in definitely dont cover the amount they require. At the moment they are simply losing pilots faster than they can replace them. Ryanair's problem wont just be not having enough pilots, but also having lack of experience in the flightdeck and that might actually be a bigger problem and possibly become a liabilty.

I think that if you get treated like :mad: then you better get a lot of money for it. And thats also not the case in Ryanair.

Sadly Ryanair do not value experience in the flight deck, nor anywhere else within the company. I have never met such a bunch of morons as the management there. Every normal large corporate tries to attract and retain experienced and talented professionals. Why wouldn't they? :ugh: Ryanair just see another short term opportunity to recruit younger and less experienced people at lower salaries. This strategy is now biting them severely on the backside, and I for one, am absolutely delighted to see it, and be playing a small but active part in the exodus.

You shall reap, what you sow, Mickey boy! :ok:

Know the SOP book inside out. Never deviate: everything goes according to plan 99% of the time; who needs experience? Hopefully by the time you find yourself in a pickle, and the book is not much help, you might have acquired enough gumption to work it out. It's the modern risk management model. Why else has command time reduced from 5000hrs to 3000hrs over the past 20 years? That's about 8 years experience down to 4. Lordy Lordy. Mostly, after 8 years, you had some gumption in the RHS as well, but now 3000hrs in LHS and not a lot in RHS is not a recipe for a happy outcome if you are still on the gumption learning curve when the book becomes no help.

It's my opinion and it is a fact too.
Basic economy fact : shortage = income go up.
Why this is not the case then ? If someone can explain this to me, that would be nice.
In USA, regional airlines prefer to sell their planes instead of paying their pilots more.

Other point, I heard it many times when I was in the industry. Never happened...

A shortage of accountant or plumbers, yes I would believe it. It is not glamour to do these job, you don't wear a nice uniform, rayban...
But a shortage of pilots wannabe ? NO WAY. They would pay and die for a job in a shiny jet. They just want to fly, they don't care about family, money...(mind changes after 30 y/o though).

Other point, article by BALPA in march 2014 : http://www.balpa.org/My-Airline/Airl...014-03-01.aspx

What does seem to be common between airlines around the world is the desire to hire inexperienced pilots while senior management take lottery sized salaries and bonuses from the business each and every year. The US Airways management just shared $80m between a handful of executives. However, here Easy Jet seems to be in a class of it's own in terms of lottery payouts to its senior team. For a company with a market cap of £6.7bn, and still handing out low-paid temporary contracts to its pilots beggars belief; it's back to the cotton mill ownership business model, except this time the management team take no risk at all.

contract staff low wage
 

At present easyjet are battling to get contract technical staff in the UK, word travels low pay rate low weekly hours no contractors want to work for that.

I cannot speak for the technical side of the house that Capt_Tech is referring to, and what he says may be true. I can, however, speak for the pilot side of the house that no sponsor refers to and can say with confidence that his comments are not accurate. I have worked for easyJet for ten years and know the system fairly well.

Following years of pilot/management dispute over contracts, the war pretty-well ended with the arrival of the 'New Entrant Contract' about a year or so ago. That basically gave a guaranteed job to anyone who passed the selection system and got rid of the old 'flexicrew' system. It is quite complex and has been done to death elsewhere. The figures I am about to quote are from memory so there may be the odd glitch in there. The basics are that you work on a 'pay by the hour' system on a temporary contract as a Second Officer for one year. Assuming you have not done anything stupid during that year, you are automatically offered a permanent contract after a year as a First Officer at £39k with no sector pay. After doing a year on that you go up to £46k +£17/sector sector pay (work on around 450 sectors a year). After two years on that (it may be one but I think it is two - can't remember!) you become a Senior First Officer on just under £57k + sector pay. The only reason to have that first year (where you will earn more than you do in your second year!) is just to ensure that we have got the right guy. If you are not a dork you will automatically advance into a permanent contract. Therefore the statement given previously about giving out 'low paid temporary contracts' is not correct - the temporary bit only applies to the tiny handful of idiots who get employed by mistake in every airline. It gives easyJet a way of getting rid of people without difficulty any time any time during the first year, should the need arise. The system is still transitioning-in, but I do not know of anyone who has fallen foul of it and not been employed. In reality it is early days yet so it is a bit soon to make absolute judgements, but at this stage it looks fine. Hope that clarifies the situation.

Alexander,

Thanks for the numbers, give's the rest of the RYR guys a good idea about other LOCO standards. May I ask in general terms if there are any other benefits included in the package, such as: Yearly pay rise to match inflation, pension schemes, loss of license insurance, profit shares, any other relevant benefits?

172
The details quoted by AdM are pretty accurate. Once you are given a permanent contract you are subject to the company benefits which include pension 7%, pay rises as negotiated by the relevant union (BALPA UK), loss of licence, benefits package, loyalty and performance bonuses, staff travel, application for base transfer, opportunities in various areas of the business, promotion subject to experience company requirements and demonstration of competence.
These are in general terms and applicable to UK contract. I believe there are some differences with some of the European mainland contracts. Some of the benefits I think are subject to time served restrictions such as loyalty bonus.

Thanks pitothead!

an AVG of 2 pilots a day have left RYN over winter months. Report from a NOR CAPT that they have taken 500 from RYN.

I know RYN are stressed about the amount leaving but they will never admit it to anyone.

Over the winter in my base. 5 capts gone and 2 senior FO's. Im in a small base

Heard a rumour (I suppose this is the place for it..) that they are having to wet lease aircraft and dry lease a few more, for the summer season. Any truth in this?

I have heard that some are going into Dublin, so for those wanting Dublin base no summer contracts are being for there, not sure about other bases though.

Heard 4 in DUB and 6 in STN.
No summer contracts.

Some aircraft coming from flydubai as far as I'm aware.

Also, one other company sending 2 planes from Central Europe. They are 400s!

after new exciting 6 years (?) deal in STN everyone understood the message:D...
greed must be punished

In 1996 and 1997, I worked for a European carrier who over the period of a few years prior to 1997 had got used to having a plentiful supply of Pilots. As a result of course the conditions got worse and worse. The morale got very low. All of a sudden at the end of 1997 the market opened up for Pilots and in the one month of November 30% of Pilots just left. They put salaries up quickly after that but it was too little too late. They were paying high leasing costs for aircraft that they had to sit on the ground. They were out of business a short time later.

If there only was a Like button..

.. and a Dislike.

Is it something similar to the DUB offer?

actually I worked for a European Carrier in 96-97 too. GO Airlines opened and took 5 out of 6 from my batch. 100% pay rises after that, 737 FO's £19300-£38000 pa.

I think we are all looking very much forward to eating popcorn and watching the Irish machine grind to a halt as the exodus of crew ramps up. Lets enjoy it.

FR
 

Well maybe the continuos rush of English wannabes will dry up but I
Doubt it, plus the UK flight schools will just keep reeling in young hopefuls,
FR are now so big they set the standard in Europe, albeit a very low one for
Current and future employees , I for one take no pleasure in watching
Our industry continue the race to the bottom

I think we all know that there will always be a continuous supply of wet-behind-the-ears, young 200hr pilots desperate to do any flying job at any salary and to accept any terms and conditions. That is not where the problem lies. The difficulty lies with the retention of captains who will not stay at the scum airlines like Ryanair one day longer than they have to. Norwegian have provided a genuine alternative to Ryanair for 737NG-rated captains and they are understandably flocking there. O'Leary has sown the seeds of his own airline's destruction and frankly it could not happen to a better guy. I do not particularly like Norwegian, but all they have to do is be a little bit better as an employer than Ryanair (not the hardest task some might argue), and they will have an infinite supply of captains to fuel their expansion. How they handle their expansion into the Airbus world remains to be seen - but they will sure have to try hard to get significant numbers of experienced pilots, particularly training captains, to leave easyJet like the Ryanair guys have. EasyJet has lost one guy (top ex-BA captain) to go onto the 787 as a trainer, but that is the only one I know of.

The obscene percentage of raw cadet recruitment by Ryanair and Easyjet whilst there are so many pilots already trained and experienced across europe is the biggest cause for the downward spiral. All that will happen is that OAA and CTC will simply offer more raw cadets from their extensive hold pools and ramp up operations to cover the shortfalls.

For anyone with a modicum of lateral thought will see the stagnation and the effect this career path via the big FTOs through the two low class low cost operators is having on the industry as a whole.

Dont hold much hope that Ryanair will fail, they are geared up to see their way through this, as are easyjet.

These two companies in conjunction with there "PREFERRED TRAINING SUPPLIERS" are responsible for putting so many experienced guys out of work across europe through their respective expansions - yet have done precious little to ensure these experienced and well trained pilots that have already passed through high standard training departments and hold good no incident or untoward backgrounds find work. They have simply replaced them with raw heavily debted cadets with no experience.

These cadets once gaining experience at the loco locos often jump ship to the better operators like emirates and to a lesser extend Norwegian and the process continues.

I did read a rumour on here that the owner of CTC recently bought a new Aston Martin. And im quite sure there are benefits been made at specific points within certain influential points within the system. Meanwhile the degradation for the masses continues.

Dont hold your breath people, the aston martins for some and the reduced t's & c's for almost all will continue for the forseeable future.

It is surprising how quickly things can change. If you have been round this industry long enough you may remember the days when the likes of Britannia were phoning round the flying schools asking if they had anyone approaching 700 hours looking for a job. Things have changed somewhat in that the training system is much more structured these days, but the movement of captains will trickle down the ladder and in turn the jobs will come to those looking for a first officer position. The lead time for the training establishments is too long for them to react to a sudden fluctuation in the numbers required and the airlines will have to look elsewhere for first officers.

Back to Ryanair, and they will be the first to feel the effects and deservedly so.

ADM, I think that Norwegian will have no problems filling the Airbus seats if the contract and basing opportunities are attractive enough. Alicante or Malaga would suit me fine thanks.

10002 level

I disagree when you say that the lead times are too long and first officers will get jobs.

As soon as the UK airlines need someone they call up ctc and they pluck someone out the pool. Simples.

Alexander
 

You wear a cheap plastic anorak to work just like many of the Ryanair guys do. You are in a "scum" airline like Ryanair who employs guys/girls on zero hour flexi contracts earning close to 1200 quid a month after already paying 10k for an Airbus type rating. You are in an airline who asks experienced guys to pay 25k for a rating, and then employs the "lucky" few on a starting salary of 38k with nothing on top of that. The rest are flexi zero hour contractors.

I don't "particularly" like Easyjet. I can't stand them. Why are the only scruffy looking pilots walking through LGW you lot?

The bad news is
 

Air Transport Capacity in Western Europe - A Market Snapshot :: Routesonline


These two LCC are so far ahead that it's impossible for the race to the bottom
To be stopped, a shame. :{

John Smith- If you believe that experience is a fundamentally important part of Flight Safety, In combination with good Quality training. Then it is clear that the other Airlines which you quoted are safer Airlines as they have more respect for experience.

As I have stated in previous posts it is a fact that Pilots get safer with experience. Please ask any 50 year old Pilot if he believes he is safer now than he was when he was 30.

If you have a fantastic selection procedure which selects only the top 5% of Pilots at 200 hours then maybe you can achieve acceptable multi-crew safety. Easyjet may select but it is all based on money, not on safety.

Therefore it is not subjective at all which airlines are "better".

Easy jet and Ryanair are"training" Airlines.