8 days a month for 300K/? Who/where on Earth is that?

That money and easy roster would be fairly typical at a US major airline. Work a bit harder and earn even more.

European pay is way behind unfortunately.

Good post Flylaw and I agree with most of it, except the bit about going into business, by which I include any type of self employment. Sure, you're pretty unlikely to end up as a multi millionaire, but I know plenty of folk who earn a very decent living answering to no-one except themselves, paying little tax and mainly having their weekends off. It's not for everyone, but then neither is aviation, but I certainly put it out there to be considered.

The return key is your friend.

I'll give you that. I literally can't be arsed to even start to read that 10,000 chars of TEXT.

Although I will nominate this for the soon to be annual 'Worlds Longest Paragraph Awards 2020' (to be held digitally).

Great post, Flylaw.

I wonder if you sometimes miss the intellectual challenge?

After all, this job is 99% routine, and with a few years of experience even the 1% become a rather modest excitement...

And what do you talk about in cruise? Yes, colleagues in aviation don't steal your job, but don't you find this all a bit boring compared to your previous life?

Serious question.

Good post flylaw. Sorry that some are so rude about a subject that is of relevance to many at the moment. The first sentence summarises the post nicely and those who are disinterested can move on.

Absolutely true. Someone just needed to put it in plain text. It's downright delusional to think that anyone taking an early retirement does so for the sake of some random youngster keeping their job. Most of the time, those pulling out before they get on the wrong side of 65 have some substantial personal reasons to do so. Deteriorating health is often one of them, followed by family circumstances and overall tiredness. Even under today's circumstances, for most who take any VR deal that's a decision which has been almost made during the better days and COVID-19 was that last straw which broke the camel's back. Of course, a good severance package can further stimulate such a decision, but, overall, don't expect anyone to set themselves on fire to keep you warm. Not blaming anyone for it, that's just how life works. Survival of the fittest also has its place outside biology.

As for some of the previous comments, implying that pilots are a simplistic and boring lot to spend time with, they just beg the question why those who consider themselves more intelligent and interesting to talk to than the average pilot still spend their downtime on pilot forums.

Very interesting words, flylaw, thanks

It will be the exception from now on. It’s famine or feast in the US.

I’d imagine Ts & Cs will suffer worse than in the EU until the good times return. Post 9/11 - widebody skippers in the US on c.$120k and I remember exchange rates of $2 to the £1..... it all averages out over the course of a 30 year career.

"Yes, colleagues in aviation don't steal your job".
Are you sure about that?

Your honor my client would like to strike that from the record.

On a serious note when hiring resumes or airlines start to recall pilots, many will find that the terms and conditions will be greatly reduced and those willing and in a position to fly for next to nothing or indeed willing to pay to fly will have cockpits to go to.

Sadly, but you're right. Shame on those pilots willing to pay to fly, or accept greatly reduced conditions. When will they learn?
Pilots are their own worst enemies

It might be my own wishful thinking, but wouldn't now be a good opportunity to campaign against P2F, using the number of unemployed pilots as an argument for the law makers? Actually, P2F is no good for the already strained state budgets. Instead of having employed professionals earning a salary, paying taxes and spending on goods and services, P2F effectively leads to those doing it having no income, just like those who are unemployed.

How about we campaign for reciprocity. I would like to get a fast track legal qualification, skip all that junior experience building nonsense and buy myself a set of silks and a silly wig, pay for a seat in chambers and a QC title. All the other QC's can just show me what to do until I get the hang of it. Obviously I'm just being silly here and I know P2F has been flogged to death. We will however be facing experienced pilots being expected to essentially pay to get their jobs back soon. Oh well, at least I saw a few good years. Good luck to all.... We are going to need it.

Agree with the P2F thing. But if in a few months time my current employer was to say that to keep my job in the left seat of an airliner I would have to accept a £60k salary I would almost certainly say yes, and if I didn’t plenty of people would. At the moment the alternative is to earn £10 per hour delivering parcels, and I know which option would pay the mortgage. The time to try to improve terms and conditions is when you have a position to bargain from.

Probably one of the most sensible comments on PPRuNe for a while...

Staying in work right now is more important than anything else. And keeping as many pilots also in work goes along with that. Then there should be no need for "Working Life After Flying".

However, for those who do need to think about that, do not 'aim too high' to start with, get something and build from there. Work of some sort on you C.V. looks a lot more impressive than "time spent at home thinking about something".

Utter tosh. If we all accept a 50% pay cut all we will achieve is destroying this profession. I for one much rather stay at home for two years if required and return to a fair paying job than to keep my job but work for half the pay the rest of my career. Is simple maths if you look a career earnings. How many pilots are employed is determined by how any aircraft airlines want to operate NOT by how much we are willing to cut our pay. Even if you accept 60K MOL will want 30K. If you accept 30 K he will be after 15 and so on. Willie Walsh, Alex Cruz, MOL and the rest are after the absolute minimum they can get away with. If they can get you to pay to work even better. Don't fall into the trap.

I have done pilot selection in the past. I judged candidates on their technical knowledge, their performance in the sim, the psychometric testing, their hours on type and on seat and on wether I could sit next to them for a 12 hour stint without going mad. I did not care wether they did a paper round when they where 16 or wether they took a career break at 40. I specially did not care if they agreed to take a 50% pay cut to stay in their job.

I completely agree with you. I would suggest those pilots willing to work for a lot less pay to take a look at Continental Airlines in the early 1980's when ALPA lost a strike
because some of their pilots accepted a sharp reduction in pay and crossed the picket line along with new hires. At the end who suffer are the pilots and the profession.

I’m pleased to see your experience in airline recruitment Calypso, that’s an experience I don’t have.

However, what I do have is a 36 year career in aviation during which time I have worked for eight airlines and undertaken six type ratings. I’ve never put any money up front into any sort of “cadetship”, I’ve never worked just for flight pay in order to get a type rating, but it did take ten years of hard aviation graft and 5000 hours in GA before I got a job in an airline. To my mind it’s not people who might be prepared to take a pay cut to keep their jobs in the face of an unprecedented global pandemic who are destroying this profession. It was destroyed when companies like Astreus, Ryanair, EasyJet and all the others started to schemes where holders of fATPLs could get a type rating and then fly for 500 hours effectively for free in the hope of getting a permanent job. But even then those schemes wouldn’t have destroyed the profession and started a race to the bottom unless those fATPL holders hadn’t jumped on the band wagon to avoid working their way up through instructing, single crew air taxi, regional turboprops etc on the way to a shiny jet.

And you’re right, the maths about career earnings is simple. Having had to survive for some of those years on savings due to airline failures I, unlike you, couldn’t afford to sit at home waiting for the good times to come back. And if I did in two years time I would be looking for a job having no current type rating, not having flown for two years, having only three years to retirement and competing with thousands of out of work pilots from BA, Virgin, Norwegian, Thomas Cook, Flybe, Emirates and possibly every other airline on the planet.

So however much you want to pontificate I will do what I need to do to keep a job and put the money in the bank that my family needs, and I’m sure I won’t be alone in that. And if that means accepting a pay cut for a while then I’ll do it. And if that means that someone with ten or twenty or thirty years of earning potential ahead of them are upset then so be it, why should I sacrifice what is left of my career to help you with yours.

Did you and pilots with your level of experience do anything to stop such schemes when they started popping up?
Who was seating in the LH seat of a Ryanair flight 15 year ago, a 200h fATPL pilot or an experienced one?

Nothing new here.

Most people won't have a home, if they don't work for 2 years.

That's the entire T&Cs debate in a nutshell. Everyone will do what they find to be in their best interest and not what some fellow on pprune suggests as "the best way forward for the next 10-20-30 years to come". For some, it might be staying away from aviation for a year or two. For others, it might be a complete career change. Some will agree to a basic pay cut, others will be more than happy to go part-time with work and pay reduced pro rata. Nobody can tell you what to do in this situation, at least for as long as they are not contributing towards your mortgage, not putting any food in your fridge and not sharing your bills.

excrab, FlyingStone and PilotLZ are living in the real world.

As I've previously suggested, pilot salaries were ripe for a "refresh" and this situation has provided airline management with the ideal excuse to take the axe to Ts&Cs. From an accountant's point of view, it is easy to see why £100k+ salaries are unjustifiable for a role which has an extremely low (academic) bar to entry, has massive oversupply and is highly aspirational. The "new normal" will be captains on train driver salaries (without any of the associated benefits) and first officers either paying to be there or on minimum wage, zero hours contracts. It's no good stomping our feet and pretending that it isn't the case. The salaries we enjoyed three months ago will be comfortably the highest the vast majority of us will ever earn in our careers.

There’s never been an unity in this game - if you get moral scruples and sit at home, thousands will queue up for your place. Even at half pay it’s better than working outside the flightdeck

Nobody did a thing. That's the root of the problem.

If we assume the wildly pessimistic scenario of pilots starting to get paid as much as cashiers in McDonald's, we'll get where the USA used to be not too long ago. A bona fide shortage of pilots for any but the top-notch carriers. In conjunction with the artificial shortage created by the 1500-hour rule, it genuinely grounded some regionals for lack of crews. Hence, good packages started being offered, far superior to those in Europe.

You can't be doing P2F from line training till command upgrade. Neither can you survive for years on 18K, however strong your passion is. A job is a job, you count on it to make a living. Anyone in their right mind can only survive for that long sleeping in the car and eating canned beans three times a day. This, if it happens, will lead to flying becoming far less attractive and far less likely to be a lifelong career of choice rather than a few-year "I-tried-flying-a-jet-for-real" affair. And things will self-adjust.

Although I'm in the moderately optimistic lot foreseeing a reasonably good future for the profession, I cannot deny that things will get ugly for anywhere between 1 and 3 years from now. But afterwards, demand will be back and higher than in 2019 and many existing crews will have retired. So, who will be needed to get those planes flying? Hint: not only the 200-hour guys, you can't run any airline on cadets only.

I will advise against listening to any of the obvious management trolls who fester on this thread. It is in their interest to paint a picture of the sky falling,so that it will be easier to lower terms and conditions. It is the classic “never let a good crisis go to waste “ ploy.

I really don’t think you need to be a “management troll” to predict that the results of this pandemic will have a devastating effect on the industry. Just read the papers or watch the news, apart from the “our plan is working” UK government daily briefing. For the UK alone there are predictions of the UK economy suffering it’s worst recession in peace time, housing market crashing and 3.5 million people unemployed who won’t be spending money on going on holiday. Let’s say though that it’s not that bad, and is only as bad as the mini recession of the early 1990s. That lasted for four years, and I remember ex airline pilots with 10,000 hours sitting in the right seat of Navajos for no pay, just to get a bit of flying on empty sectors, and people coming out of Oxford in 1991 and taking six years to find a job. Add to that the unemployed pilots from Airlines around the UK and expats coming back from all over the world and sadly I can’t really share the optimism. Let’s just hope I’m wrong.

I think that a big problem is that the likes of ReallyAnnoyed have been stuck at home too long without seeing the real world out there. Not at all their fault, but it does limit their viewpoint.

To see airport after airport after airport full of parked up and sealed aeroplanes (I'm not talking about remote 'storage' airports, I'm talking about normal 'every day' airports), to see totally deserted airport terminals and to see the Departure Board in the terminal of one of the world's major international airports on what should be a hectic bank holiday with only five flights on it -- things are bad. Trying to bang on about maintaining Ts&Cs just does not fit into that real world out there. Taking whatever is needed to keep as many pilots in employment and avoid them having to worry about "Working Life After Flying" is most important right now.

Please do NOT try to confuse this situation with any other. It is totally unlike any other. I will repeat the graph from 'Flight' that I posted some time back:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....69c2b65d0a.jpg
Not a single situation that anyone has tried to compare with in the past comes anywhere near this.

excrab has it perfectly correct:
Best right now is to try to look after each other and ensure that as many pilots stay in work for as long as possible...

All three lines above are correct, but, the current dire situation plus excrabs attitude (which is commonly shared by pilots) means that the third statement is paid lip service to only. Talk is cheap, decent Union representation is scarce and the next gen of pilots will be having the same conversations when the next big event occurs. Pilots have allowed themselves to become a cheap commodity and the only trajectory is down.

Did the generation that tends to moan about the downward curve the most do anything when self-funded type ratings became a big thing? Nothing. Did they do much to stop P2F? Not really. Bogus self-employment contracts for the new entrants? Let them be! Because why bother when it's only a concern to the youngsters? And that was the case right until it crept upon everyone, young and old.

Nobody other than you can (or will) defend your own interests. Forget about anyone campaigning to make your life any better, nobody will bother and nobody will take the associated risks. Even in the best of times, everyone's priority is their own welfare. Also, nobody other than you can judge what's in your best interests right now. For someone, not working for 2 years in hopes of returning to the same package as in January afterwards might be the way to go. For many, it's not. Those many simply can't survive those 2 years without work - and their alternatives on the ground will not bring them any sizable fraction of the reduced package.

Some might call it trolling or whatever. I really, really wish it was... As much as we try to deny it, that's the reality of life.

Nothing wrong with that - and it's absolutely understandable in the light of how many carriers treated their personnel in the past months. As long as you are happy with your choice, it's all well and good. And you certainly won't be alone as in the past weeks many colleagues have made a similar choice simply because of being totally demoralised by the obnoxious treatment they received.

Best of luck in your new career!

I'm reaching similar conclusions. Doing this fulltime in a low cost company now at reduced salary, what's the point? I'm just hoping they won't be able to max us out for a few years because of this virus.
It's an utter absurdity how on the one hand you'll have thousands of unemployed pilots doing nothing and on the other hand a layer of us "lucky ones" who can be exploited even more, on random rosters doing close to 900 hours a year.

Indeed.

Most airlines would obviously rather not hire two people on part time due to training overheads but those of us who genuinely benefit from such arrangements, and I know this will be controversial, would gladly cover those costs. I know many will wheep at hearing this and it is a slippery road (possibly, unless enshrined in union agreement) but for me at least, it's more important I'm regularly practicing my other trade than it is to lose a couple of grand on training expenses.

Incoming! :\

TBH,
the chances of doing this again , full time, part time or at all are fairly slim.

The competition for any posts worldwide will be enormous , and not only that, so will competition for jobs across all other sectors including McJobs.

I awake everyday to a desolate wasteland !

That's the thing, there's a day after today and a day after tomorrow. Right now, there's a shortage of ANY good jobs in ANY industry. Even IT guys who were first thought to be recession-proof are being made redundant en masse.

But what do we do when things pick up? Skilled personnel will be needed again. And in large numbers. In the context of aviation, even if we assume that recovery to 2019 levels and further growth will not happen until 2024, there will still be a lot of retirements in that period, hence a need for someone to replace those people. Not to mention that some pilots who are still far from retirement age are walking away voluntarily - and someone will have to replace them as well. There might be loads of wannabes out there, but you can't run an airline on 200-hour cadets only.

I do know some pilots who have decided to leave the industry now... early retirement and hopefully some other part time work... they have simply had enough and would like to return to a more normal life with their friends and families. For those of us who do stick around, I suspect that the job market will start to pick up again next year. One interesting point to consider is the long term impact of less people starting their training in 2020 and possibly even in 2021. The state of the industry will put many off from starting their training and others may be forced to delay for financial reasons.