Pilot or Tube Driver?
 

true doctors and lawyers get paid a fortune as well the problem is lots of people want to be pilots for any number of good reason and as long as people put up with bad treatment it will continue , that said taking off on a cold winters day with the sun shining and snow on the ground is worth a lot! better than driving around in a hole !!

I work on the underground and it's always been a boyhood dream of mine to become a pilot, but after spending the last 2 weeks on here reading posts and seeing how tough it is in this field I have now decided to stick to my current career and just get a NPPL or PPL. :ok:

Remember the old saying:
"Show me your pay cheque I'll show you your status".
The difference between Underground train drivers and pilots is that the management respect the industrial muscle of the train drivers, pilots these days are spineless in defending their status.

so i know most people have a career change and become a pilot but what do pilots do if they want a career change. stuck in the doldrums and want out. i loved flying but my current employer is sucking the life out of me. I see far too many depressed old timers on their third or fourth wife aged 40 but look like their 60 because they are constantly tired and frustrated.....I don't want to turn into that. would say i am having a mid life crisis but i'm not even 30 yet.

i thought aviation was going to be a career but its not anymore....

low cost = tube driver

legacy = chauffer

I'm both!
 

I’m a Tube Driver and I honestly can’t see much wrong with the latest pay offer.
One percent ahead of inflation over 4 years in return for a multi-year deal that the company have asked for. As a backdrop, similar deals are to be found across the railway industry.

I think that the key question here is why are similar deals not commonplace across the airline industry?

The Telegraph article has overcooked the current salary by around £2k, so whilst £50k is a real possibility over the lifetime of the proposed deal, it is by no means guaranteed.

The irony for me is that I took the Tube job to fund my Pilot training, but since I started, my T&Cs have steadily improved whilst airline T&Cs have rapidly deteriorated and now with a family to support, I genuinely couldn’t afford to take that elusive first job if I could find it!

When I joined London Underground I had little knowledge of Unions and the ways that they work. There are without doubt good and bad sides to them, but I have to say that on balance they have achieved more good than bad during my time with LU.
Unfortunately, Bob Crow is seen as a spokesman for the whole railway industry, and he’s a blunt tool at best. His union, the RMT, encompasses a wide range of members and is in some ways more akin to BASSA with ASLEF being to Drivers what BALPA is to Pilots.
Collective bargaining has kept the company honest with regard to pay reviews – no getting away with big payouts for a few whilst claiming poverty to the workers for example – and where the company have wanted improvements in efficiency, the unions have negotiated something in return.
What you’re left with after that is a broad trend of pay rises either in line with or slightly ahead of inflation. I’m not sure that I can think of a valid argument against such an aspiration!

I R ...
 

Is the 48-50K achievable by all tube drivers, irrespective of time served, or is that just a "headline" figure?

I'm just thinking how often the press will use a headline along the lines of "Airline pilots, who earn £100k/200k/etc a year" to stir things up when in fact only a relative handful of pilots across the industry, e.g. senior bods/trainers/managers and even then only at certain airlines will earn such amounts.

(BTW my wife, who is an Oyster card holder, will be travelling with you at the weekend - Piccadilly line - any chance of her getting an upgrade......:})

Rgds....

One professional career is upheld by one of the strongest unions IN THE WORLD, the other by old rich farts who are only interested in serving the upper elite of BA and other legacy carriers. Hence the modern dilemma that is pilot recruitment and Ts & Cs.

Most TOCs pay a trainee driver in the low £20Ks and on completion, when driving productively, pay the full rate. A few will stage the full pay over three years but not drastically, perhaps 4/5K between the new driver and the full rate. The only seniority pay to be found will be for extras responsibilities such as instructor/mentor.

A headline rate of £50K in four years depending on inflation will be on the low side of the norm across the network. Several companies today pay over £50K basic. Because of this companies are always trying to run depots without a full establishment of drivers. They offer inducements of time + a quarter to work rest days, the same to work a Sunday when they are outside the working week and some will offer an extra £50 for turning up to work a rest day. The unions are constantly fighting for full establishment figures so that drivers do not feel pressured into working days off with the attendant fatigue risks.

Personally I will work two Sundays and two rest days every four weeks, this pays for 6 hrs training towards my NPPL(M) after stoppages.. However, some of the lads in their early/mid 20s will work every hour they can to reduce London size mortgages and achieving a £1K net weekly average is not uncommon.

Part of the cause of this is the greedy TOCs that want to wring every last penny of profit out of the franchise before it is invariably lost to another company. They will provide the minimum of service they can get away with, employ the fewest staff they can, put up fares as much as they can and through higher salaries 'poach' qualified drivers from other companies so to avoid training their own as much as possible. Training costs are far more than an integrated course, MCC, JOC and TR put together.

Is it fair? No, but it is market forces coupled with strong trade unionism.

Sky9, there is another difference. Mate of mine tells a lovely story of how a train driver(named, Driver West) was looking round the Flt Deck (in the glory days when we could do that). He then turned to the Captain & claimed that he didn't think pilots were worth the money they get as they didn't seem to be doing anything & yet, he, the train driver, was bombing up & down the Glasgow-Euston trail at around 125 mph with anything upwards of 500 pax but got a lot less money. My mate, quietly turned to him & said, "well, at the moment, we are five miles above the planet earth ", 'YEAH', replied Driver West; "And, we are doing, around, eight miles every minute"; 'YEAH' said West," And, if anything goes wrong...............we can't stop"; :mad:!' said West, and disappeared back into the pax cabin.

Fascinating discussion actually, speaking as one who has an instant "hackle rise" at seeing the article. I do have to say the contribution of some of the drivers has made me soften.

I think the major difference is that in the airline industry there is competition - hence if airline A is £20 more to the destination of choice than airline B, then ariline B gets the business. This keeps a deflationary pressure on the airlines to ensure they get and retain business.

The tubes/trains are almost a monopoly. There is very little alternative for those working in London than the commute and this means that the operators can - and do- charge almost what they want - which in turn means that the trade unions CAN negotiate deals like this - because it's the travelling public that has to bear the brunt.

What will be interesting to see is in how high an esteem Bob Crow et al are held when it gets to the point that the price of public transport forces an alternative. Because I rather suspect it will change rapidly when a viable alternative exists.

For the airlines, perhaps a giant merger of ALL airlines everywhere so that you can ONLY fly with one carrier would yield similar results. Or alternatively, perhaps everyone would start going by ship again...

I think an important difference between pilots and tube drivers is that we don't throw our toys out of the pram when things don't go our way and threaten to hold the country to ransome and strike.

Getting an extra £1800 to cover the olympics due to "extra" work is quite laughable.

Perhaps if we did the industry wouldn't be in the bloody state it is now?

The company I'm working for pay more than 10k a year less than a tube drivers salary and I'm talking captains not f/o's.
:confused: :ugh:

Too much I'm alright jack screw you in aviation. It's about time we all stuck to gather and helped each other out, but then we would need a union with a 'pair' to achieve that.

Roll on retirement!

So what are you going to do about it?
 

I most certainly don't see the job of a Train Driver as an example of perfection (if nothing else I worry for my mental health in the long term due to boredom) and I'm no union activist, but If I’m bitter about anything it’s that the guys on the inside of the aviation industry don’t seem to have done anything to stop the rot. I have refused the ‘opportunities’ offered by the Captain Curds of this world to pay a vast sum of money to work, whilst lining several undeserving pockets. It didn't do me any good and the industry didn't appear to notice and that's my point I guess - change can only come from within.

Kapish,
I think that you’ve got the right idea. I’ve spent close to £60k on flying, which is hard to write off but at least I chose to earn it first. A friend from my CPL course recently got in touch with an early warning that his company were going to be hiring this winter and offered to put my CV in front of the CP. After the initial excitement at the best sniff of a job that I’ve had, I had to call him back and say sorry I can’t afford to! A jet job with a half decent starting salary but self funded type rating would see me over £100k out of pocket over 5 years. At that time I MIGHT make Captain and get a big payrise. But will Captains pay have moved with inflation over those 5 years? Unlikely I think – I’d probably be back up to Train Driver money :E

Wiggy,
When I joined LU I was paid a reduced salary whilst training (circa 60% from memory). Full salary was awarded on passing a test a few weeks before the final driving test (but failing the same test would return you to the job market!). Once qualified, all drivers are paid the same salary regardless of length of service or any other factors. So perhaps it would be fairer to compare mean pilot salary to the £50k. Or, as Train Drivers are single operators who shoulder the responsibility for the safety of their train and everyone on board, perhaps fairer still would be to compare mean captain salary...
Voluntary overtime is a no-no so the salary is pretty much what you’ll get.

Clanger32/Superpilot,
I agree that lack of competition on the railways changes the game, but it can’t be the whole story. On the trains, all drivers earn the same and they’re all in it together. The benefits that they enjoy have been hard won over decades and there’s a feeling that you should be willing to fight for the next generation even if there would be no immediate benefit to you personally.
The pilot workforce has started to resemble a pyramid marketing organisation where the ones at the top hold the influence and get the big rewards and the army at the bottom face ever diminishing returns.
What do you think would happen if London Underground advertised next week for ‘Train Captains’ who would pay £30k to be trained and then work for the balance of their first year for nothing? Exactly!
It’s already happened in your industry and tragically, no-one offered any resistance!

Blueskiesup,
Given the drivel that the media spout regarding aviation, what makes you think that their work in other areas is any more accurate?
Yes there is a deal to cover the Olympics - because the company wish to alter our terms of employment for that period. Why would we give that away?
They want the option to make some of us work longer/start earlier/ finish later and those that do will be rewarded. As a pilot you must be familiar with the difficulties that that causes when trying to maintain any sort of work/life balance. The rest of us will have to leave earlier/arrive home later because half of London’s roads will be closed to the masses during the event and public transport will be at bursting point and we’ll get I think £500 pre tax for that. Whilst £1800 may be theoretically achievable (I don’t know, I haven’t checked), the vast majority will, I suspect, receive much less. Personally I’m expecting about £30 a day after tax for making sure that I overcome all the extra obstacles and get to work on time – not that much for another hour out of my day that I don’t particularly want to give. Out of interest, what value would you put on reduced sleep and less time to see your kids for 2 weeks during the school holidays?

One thing that the unions do not do well at is managing the media.
I’m a member of ASLEF because that union provides some protection in the workplace and looks after my interests as a Driver. As a member I believe that if the union call on me to support strike action then I should do so.
Over the last 9 years I must have read 20 or more pieces in the media that state ASLEF are going to strike on the underground. I haven’t been on strike once for them though! Admittedly I’ve had rest days on one or maybe two strike days, but that’s still less than 10% of the level that the media hype would have you believe. And you have to dig pretty deep in the articles to find the true source of any dispute – it really is not always about money!

SuperpilotYou really are wrong. Balpa is the members, if you stick together and back your CC you will achieve something. The problem is that pilots are too often not prepared to do so. It's a sad fact that airline management look upon their pilots as a bunch of softies. The reality is that they are key personnel in a company and should be respected. They won't be if they keep turning up for work for a pittance.

The problem at the present time is that the seniority system worked fine when companies had final salary pension schemes. In the current situation seniority stops pilots moving from company to company so limits the ability of people to leave poor employers. Something needs to change, I tried to do something 40 years ago and got outvoted.

I R Baboon,

Can I just say thank you.

Amongst all the drivel written on Pprune these days, it's nice to find a post: interesting, insightful and coherently written.

:D

Superpilot

The people who constantly wheel out the same old criticism's when referring to Balpa are the one's who have no idea how it works, and are clearly not members.
'Balpa' are the company council reps. They are the guys/girls you sit next to who are trying to improve things for their collegues, and could probably really do with your support. 'Big Balpa' are the umbrella organisation who your reps will go to when they need legal/professional advice.

Balpa appears strong in BA because our reps enjoy 95% membership. Do you see the link?
BA pilots make up less than 50% of the total number of Balpa members and hold as much sway as any other company.

How about you join Balpa, support your reps and stop whining about the hard one T & C's enjoyed by other companies. You might be surprised what a bit of solidarity can achieve!

Tube Train Drivers - A dying Breed
 

Can someone explain why we even have Tube Train Drivers?

They operate an electric vehicle steared by tracks in a tunnel. The driver controls the speed and open / closes the doors. Yes there's more to it - including some safety aspects - but really, how much more?

A driver's role could be automated saving cost, probably improve safety and reducing distruption due to manning and strikes - just like all the airport skytrains and the DLR. Redeploy the drivers to the platform and provide better Customer Service. The only reason I can see for them is LU operates a monopoly and can paralyze the capital with strikes.

It could happen today if the political will was there because the technology's been around for 20+ years and it will happen, it is just a matter of when.

Not trying to belittle their job but really, £50K, when soldiers and nurses with far higher training and responsibility get far lower salaries?

Of course they are totally unneccessary. A quick glance on Wiki will show you all the driverless trains in the world, but be careful what you wish for. It is coming our way too. About the only hurdle left to overcome in the pilotless passenger aircraft is public perception....

pilot or tube driver?

I'd rather be a pilot, thank you very much! The view is much better.......

I'll try and explain further. The majority of the system is of the Victorian era and built to the standards pertaining then. To upgrade all the tube routes to be able to run automatic unmanned trains would be at least a 30 year job with a massive expense and equally importantly massive disruption. Automatic trains running on underground sections would still have to have an observer that is trained in evacuation/fire/division procedures.

Fully automated railway systems are almost always new build. Never say never but which Mayor/Government would commit to such an undertaking?

Could also read "tube driver or head teacher in a primary school". Enough has been said already. Stop paying your BALPA subs because this is where they have got you.

Or alternatively, think where we might be if we hadn't continued paying our Balpa subs.

Good grief, is it any wonder. :ugh:

Tube driver or pilot ?
 

Quite simple really, you either want to be a pilot or you want to be a tube driver, if it's money you want don't do either ! No pilot in the company I work for earns less than 50k, the most senior F/O will get 95k, the most senior line capts 135K, some trainers earn more. Don't expect too much when you come out of flying school with your brand new licence and on the other hand don't be drawn into short term money on the tube for long term regret if you really desire to be a pilot. Things take a little time, with time and experience the outlook gets a brighter !!!!

Because the LU kit and infrastructure is ancient and needs constant human intervention to keep it going.

A big part of a tube driver's job is figuring out what has caused the train to stop moving and getting it moving again.

@SEAMASTER

you are right friend, in my company almost all the pilots who started from the bottom earned less than 500USD(yes no typo) per month flying light plan, with time and experience they got promoted to bigger machines and now earning 10 to 20 times more than what they got when they started.

Its not all about the money, if someone wants to be a pilot for the money then they took the wrong decision, most of us who joined this profession is because of passion. I earn very less but I am very happy with this profession, with time and experience I do believe I will move to the better

A big thank you to the tube drivers who have contributed to this debate. I've gained a small insight in to your rôle.
I am often cornered in the kitchen at parties by :mad: who tell me, in all seriousness that "I don't do anything. The autopilot does it"
Sadly there are a couple of pilots here who have conveniently forgotten that experience.

Don't blame the Tube drivers (or teachers) for getting themselves a good deal. Pilots are stunningly bad at acting collectively and in many cases will sell their own mothers for a job, command, overtime, with little thought at the longterm consequences. Well, after 25 years of racing to the gutter, now we can see the consequence, our differentials have disappeared!
More fool US.:ugh:

ps there are one or two posts from old school contract holders in legacy airlines on this thread, they really need to know that they are the last generation left to get T&c's like that.

Seconded. Would also like to thank McG for his contribution the JB thread of the same nature (which is currently up to about 6 pages).

In the JB thread i've sought to determine the reasons for the salary; if this is down to specialist knowledge, like for example a degree in engineering from a reputable university with a good grade, or if it involves for example an impingement on the personal life of a driver, or if it is a specific commercial pressure in order to recruit, and retrain drivers, or prevent them being poached by other operators in a commercial environment etc etc. what it seems to be is that the salary is there, because, quite simply the tube is a monopoly, strong union with a weak LU management that does what it must in order not to upset its service levels.

So, in terms of what pilots can do, for inspiration is simply t0ss all. weak and fractured unions in a competetive environment prevents progression in T&C's. when unions take harder lines to protect all pilots, not just those in Big Airlines and work with each other, in order to provide a cohesive representation, preventing one carriers disputes leading to a rise in traffic for other carriers, then the situation will continue to worsen and drive being a professional pilot further into the grounds of a temporary job rather than a career.

Stuckgear,
a lot of what you say is right, but it shouldn't stop the unions taking up battles that they can win. The bosses have as much vested interest in keeping their airline solvent as the worker do, so will often compromise rather than risk disruption which hemorrhages money.
Just think of how the outcome of the BA cabin crew strike last year, would have been different, had ALL of the crew stuck together.
Divided we fall.

I chuckled when I read the title of this thread. My aerobatics instructor happens to be a train driver and only instructs part-time.

He has certainly put on a favourable spin to his career. :D

Stuckgear, in the case of the Underground this is right on the money.

The overground nation network is also essentially a closed shop. To become a train driver you have to be trained by a TOC. No external training agencies. It would be futile to start one up because if a prospective train driver coughs up the equivalent of a full ab-initio to frozen ATPL and cannot find a company willing to take him on he can not even drive trains for fun. (Preserved railways excepted but you will be selling tickets and polishing locos for many years first).

I do not know what the airline industry can do to reverse the current system where we have a great number of aspirants to the RHS and the ability to independently train to fATPL standard. Probably nothing as it is not in their financial interest to do so. :ugh:

Just a word on the standard of new '5 minute managers' that have been popping up over the last few years in the railway industry. Armed with a third from a former polytechnic they see the railway, LUL and Notwork Rail especially, as the last refuge of the desperate. This is where many disputes have their origins. Urged on by more senior management to implement change for profit (they wisely keep their heads down) they try to implement change without knowledge. When it backfires they are 'let go' and more cannon fodder recruited. :cool:

Roll on retirement.

macdo,

i understand what you are saying. And likewise I find myself in a contradictory place; While we need to see T&C's in the industry improve, it is also a competetive situation not only between airlines but also between regions and countries.

Personally, i think that we falling away as there is no solid promotion of the industry at a governmental level. We all know how aviation serves employment, trade and industry, international competetiveness etc etc. so don't need to run through it all again here and now.

A problem comes when decisions are made at a governmental level on policies of one department that specifically affect this industry and there is little to represent the impacts this has. Our industry encompasses the realms of the trade secretary, the home office, department for work and pensions, even through to the secretary for energy and climate change [sic], even throught to EU policy (eg EU-ETS), transport secretary and so on.

What this means is that policies are enacted from time to time that impinge on the aviation industry and lower the ability to be competetive in wider environemnt and while costs like fuel, lease rates and other overheads are largely inflexible, salaries are one of the few areas which can reduced...

So if a policy is brought forward that benefits other sectors of industry while is detrimental to the aviation industry the challenge to that may require the involvement and cohesive efforts of several governmental departments. The only way to address challenges to this industry is a fractured body of associations all with different representative body.

Some of the work these associations do is good, but some of it is misguided and wasted.

So back to T&C's, train drivers and unions. Perhaps we need to see a stronger body that is cohesive with associated representative bodies, rather than this industry being a 'can' that is kicked about?

Hi MacGoonagal,
do you know what the upper end of the salary scale is for tube drivers? (Bob Crowe excepted:rolleyes:)

...and that's why this 41 years on the railway person retired at 61 rather than 65. e.g. A twenty something instant manager telling me, "don't run an empty train into a platform where the passengers arre waiting because it's dangerous".

Redhill Phil. I sympathise. Still putting up with this bollox on a daily basis.

No pay scale for tube/train drivers (apart from trainees and one or two companies who stage full pay over 3 years) a qualified 22yr old is paid the same as a 64 yr old.

Thanks for that, so Rail = LoCo as far as payrises are concerned. Although Pilots should be concerned about pay differentials and we have certainly lost ground over the years, there are still a hell of a lot of us earning a hell of a lot more than 50k. It is tempting for those at the bottom end of the scales to sound off here (with ample justification, having spent 100k to get a 20k a year job), but, and assuming we pilots don't allow further erosion of T&c's, we do have the oppotunity of earning around about 100k after a number of years and a few of us up to 150k. We, at least have career progression, where the tube man gets his 50k and won't be on a lot more in 30 years. (Bob Crowe having been retired by then).

I applied to be a tube driver 2-3 years ago, and having past all the assessments and an interview back then, I have only just been given a start date for training this month! Since I applied as an internal candidate at TfL I've had to endure several organisational change reviews and I've seen more than half of my department culled. Somehow I survived all the crazyness and it's a nice surprise to find out thetube drivers salary has increased by £10k since I applied!

As an internal candidate I will retain my current salary while training and should I fail, I can go back to my old job, so there is really no downside to it for me.

Flying wise I am less than half way through my ATPL ground studies, but I'm honestly starting to think that it just doesn't make sense to fly for a living. The terms and conditions seem to be pretty bad everywhere.

I think I may just look at part-time instructing unless something good should just happen to turn up.

macdo, you make a valid point, but one spends a long time in the RHS at the more desirable companies (like yours), years even, earning less than a train driver, 15 yrs possibly and in that time, house prices go up faster than affordability, if you take interest owing plus capital repayable on the average student loan plus FATPL and type rating into account.

You would have to engage an actuary to give accurate projections of capital accrual against investment expenditure to enable a purely financial decision to be made as to the best choice of career, and it sounds from this thread that the train drivers seem have the upper hand at todays prices.

In general, one thing that does stand out is the high quality of the postings from the train drivers, in stark comparison to the often rabid and grammatically challenged rantings that blight every thread on this website, purporting to be from qualified pilots.

Perhaps the fact that the mature, civilised and intelligent contributions to this debate mainly come from the train drivers and not from pilots (or people who say they are pilots) explains why the train drivers are taken more seriously by their employers.

Fair point about the rantings sometimes lacking intellect. However, remember that many pilots do not speak English as their first language. So grammatical errors can surely be forgiven to some degree.

Ask the train drivers to make their posts in French and I am sure we would see a few wee errors here and there ;-)