And my point is if you under sell your skills to that degree, the good times will never return.

That's going to be a fight between yourselves and BA management because they clearly believe that the market value of your skills is below that which you believe. Fortunately for you, Britain is not entirely a market economy.

But how is it any different from the ambition of any new starter at a LCC who takes whatever job they can get simply to get current and rack up the hours? - they all have the ambition that things will improve in the future and that they can move on to better things.

Currently there is a glut of pilots on the market and for those that wish to stay in the industry and have no job their options are extremely limited. The forecasts are that the industry will recover in about 3 - 4 years so someone who is currently unemployed but wishes to keep flying will find a job that only pays basic wages for a short time quite attractive at the moment I would suggest.

Good luck to you and I hope it all works out - having gone through several crisis in the Industry before (9/11, SARS etc) where I was made redundant and even had to get out of the industry for a while I'm glad that I am now retired and not facing the difficult decisions all you guys are now having to make.

Being made redundant myself in the last financial crisis with a ****ty type rating and very few hours I can feel your pain BUT:

Although it does not seem likely right now but there will come better times. Always have been, always will. Give it a year. Drive a van for DHL or stack shelves at Tesco’s but do not fly for free. Seriously have some decency and be patient. Better times WILL come! People will fly.

When your neighbours in your Emirates village are topping themselves, and the ambulances keep flying past, it brings things into perspective.

I have it on first hand that these pilots, a380 15 year skippers amongst them, are willing to work for free for the foreseeable to keep themselves current for the upswing. That's what you're up against BA.

They've got enough of a rainy day fund to see themselves through 3 years no salary or 20k gbp or whatever, but not 20 years no career. And your awful higher BA management will take full advantage of that. And permanently.

It's not on.

How have you drawn that conclusion from anything I have said?

Well if that is truly the case, they will kill the career and never earn a reasonable salary for their skills. With several years of financial contingency, they would be far wiser to retrain to do something else. If things recover, they continue their flying career with new skills under their belt. If things do not recover, they embark on their new careers.

So what’s their plan at the end of the 3 years? Try & get their old salary back? Once those kind of Ts & Cs are out of the box, they won’t go back in.

Quote:

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It's not on.

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agreed.

Walsh comes out fighting against the government report.
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https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1bbfb784a0.jpg

Doesnt look like WW is in the mood to back down. And I do think he has a point that it is a bit of a cheek for Huw Merriman to complain when it is his Party who have introduced the 14 day quarantine (and the 2 meter distancing) that is effectively killing the industry.

Out of interest, who are these 15 yr a380 skippers going to fly for if virtually every airline is downsizing their A380 fleets? I’d be more concerned about the 777 guys being let go as they are a bit more useful without having to pay for conversions, etc.

TG aren't operating an services until August at the earliest

Do you actually believe there are a lot of jobs available, whichever the sector is?

.

Is it that they believe the price is too high, or that they know it’s the going rate but just don’t care because they’ve found an opportunity they otherwise would never have found to reduce terms anyway?

No I do not.

In my opinion, the job was barely worth doing on the salaries hitherto offered. It's clear that airline management industry wide has long had pilot Ts&Cs firmly in their sites and this crisis has provided them with the golden opportunity to swing the axe. Even any changes presented as "temporary" will inevitably turn out to be not so temporary.

The problem lies in the fact that very few pilots have the qualifications and experience to go and do anything else, without making a significant investment in terms of time and money. WW, PB at easy, MOL etc. all know that they have pilots over a barrel, and that they can offer literally anything they want knowing that the majority of people will sign up just to keep some money coming in. Maybe people will sign up thinking that the "good times" will return. Clearly demand will rise at some point in the industry, but with a seemingly never-ending queue of kids (or their parents) willing to pay £120k for flight training, there's no reason to think that Ts&Cs will ever return to the level we saw three months ago.

Yes, blame the kids. Not all are stereotypically rich family children. Most parents have bent over backward to provide their kids with their dream ambition. You would probably do similar steps if your children were adamant for a certain career. Having been lucky to be in a situation where I was able to attend a 'big' flight school should I have not gone just so the number you talk about became slightly less? The decline in the T&Cs at the top of the ecosystem is not caused by the those at the bottom who enter. Get a grip, become a union rep, walk the walk, instead of writing utter crap.

The latter.

Once Ts & Cs are trashed, this will no longer be a sought-after career, with all the initial training costs, continual pressure from fatigue (FTL limits set as targets), being away from home, sim checks, medicals, etc, and the ultimate responsibilty of many lives.

Who knows in how many years, but I think there will be a global shortage.
Unless of course the industry will change with technology to a single pilot with a ground-based back-up, or even no pilots at all!

I'm not blaming anyone for it. It's a fact that the primary barrier to entry into a career as a pilot is financial, and not academic qualification based. The airlines don't care about hiring the best people: they want the cheapest possible to achieve the regulatory minimum standard of safety.This has allowed airlines to take advantage of an endless supply of cheap labour at the bottom, without having to invest anything in them. Compare that to real professions like medicine and law, where the barriers to entry are extremely high, and serious investment is made to recruit the best people.

There is no solution to the problem. The regulator doesn't care because it's proven to be a safe way of operating an airline. The union might care, but in the UK at least is seriously restricted in what it can do. It's fanciful to suggest pilots will go on strike to do something about entry level conditions, even if it was legal to do so (which it isn't). Oh and I was a union rep.