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!