Do we have a rough estimate to date of the number of pilots looking for work divided by fleet ?
Just to have an idea on how complex it will be to land a job somewhere in the next couple of years and if it's worth looking for other kind of businesses.

I don't think that there's such a list. And the situation certainly varies by region, aircraft type and, last but not least, by whether the individual is keen to go for a job just about anywhere in the world instead of waiting for a local opportunity. Some places will pick up quicker than others. Some type ratings will be in greater demand than others. Some people will be willing to relocate pretty much anywhere in the world - unlike others. And then, there's the big unknown of how the situation with the virus will evolve both regionally and globally.

Honestly, this industry won't be viable or any fun for far the majority - my guess is 5+ years from now. At least. T&C's will hit rock bottom along with employment, and it takes time to improve those to a decent level - many companies won't improve.

Back in 2014 i took the decision to leave and study, as opposed to doing a TR in hope of a full-time job. Best decision ever. Today I work in a really exciting job - and fly as an instructor - for fun. Best part is, I'm actually having fun while I fly now. I didn't back then.

Don't hold back if you have the slightest chance for and desire to try another career. I was 34 when I did. Never too late and all that.

Madder what career did you venture into if you don’t mind me asking?

Law practice. Contruction law to be more precise.

The traditional advice was always to "Get a trade".
I know a chap that left school with about 1.5 GCSE's. He had no idea what he wanted to do with his life, (tbh I was a bit like that 33 years ago, and in some ways I still am...) but in order to "do something" he went to the local college to study plumbing and central heating, which is a market that will never dry up. He got the qualifications and safety certifications (he reckoned it was "difficult" but compared to an ATPL maybe not so much) , His Mum and Dad set him up with tools and a van (much cheaper than an ATPL) and he's never looked back. Now, 15 years later he has a thriving small business, revenue for his work I'd reckon £1600 a week on average with 85% of that profit. He chooses the hours that he works, and is motivated by the fact that the more he works the more money he makes (unlike a salary where people are squeezed for every drop of juice with nothing extra in return). His phone is always ringing with fresh work, to the point where his poor old Mum is now his "booking agent"! Roofers do even better apparently and can pretty much pick their jobs and name their price because so few want to do it. The traditional benefits of being an employee, i.e a known regular income, has evaporated in recent years, even before COVID, due to zero hours contracts and the end of occupational pensions.
Of course a lot of people won't want to do this kind of thing because it involves physical graft, and it's not sitting on their backside in a flightdeck looking at the clouds below (I wouldn't want to do it either, I eschew all physical exercise beyond walking, swimming and sex!) it's certainly as far from glamourous as can be and the upper middle class customers often treat you like sh!t apparently. But society will always NEED tradespeople, society doesn't "need" air travel, especially with the easy free global communications we have now. It is and in many ways always has been a discretionary purchase.
My advise these days is to provide a product or a service that people will always need and want, whatever the signs of the times, and do it for yourself, not for the enrichment of your employer. At least have it as a fallback even if you do something else too.

I always enjoy reading posts like his. I was that guy who got a trade and then went into flying later and it does make me chuckle reading just how easy I had it before. To correct a few points and add some more perspective.

-Expect a minimum of 3 years study, during which you will need to find someone to take you on for 4 days a week (1 day at college) , expect £50 a day. Don’t bother with these fast track 12 week courses for £10,000 unless you are some serious gambler or have an immediate job offer or company willing to nurse you through your first few years.
-After your minimum 3 years, expect to shell out several thousand pounds on tools, van, insurance and maintenance of your qualifications, per year, every year.
-£1600 a week self employed? Certainly achieveable, more during good times. Remember though holiday pay is £0, sick pay is £0, pension is £0
-85% profit, well even the most lenient taxation system might frown upon that.
-Do not underestimate the physical strain you will be putting your body under fixing sinks, plumbing in toilets, shower basins, squeezing into peoples lofts and under their floors. I can’t name a tradesperson I know of over 50 without some work related back/knee/shoulder serious long term impairment.

My advice is this. If you are serious about a career change getting a trade it can be a good trade off between quality of life/money/independence. If you are able to absorb a minimum of 2-3yrs with very little income with a view to the longer term then go ahead. Don’t expect the lifestyle or money that MAY come with a flying job. But do expect more time at home with the family and the occasional golf day. Don’t expect people to pay on time, or sometimes even at all. Do expect tools to be stolen, regular awkward customers, play of dirt and a dusting of asbestos.

I could go on but you get the idea. I may have to dust off the spanners if I get let go next week so best wishes to all.

He's quite right. There's a reason why the smart tradesmen are contractors by the time they are 45!
Shortage of people who can do quality lead work at the moment.

3 years of training to fix toilets. Sounds too good to be true, where can I sign up please?

Depending on the sort of flying you do, trades can also be useful second lines of work. Sure, if you work for a 900-hour-per-year LCC, you will be lucky if you have enough free time to sleep and see your family and friends. Corporate doesn't involve much flying per se, but requires a lot of standby time and availability on a short notice, making side jobs hard to schedule. But, if you work in the leisure and charter sector, for a good half of the year you will be doing hardly any flying. Between November and April, 5 flights in a month is considered an awful lot in many airlines of that kind. And the basic salary without flying is often not too impressive. So, if this is where you are likely to end up, you'd better build some strategy how to spend your winters wisely. Being an on-call home improvement professional can be a good option, especially once you have done it for a while and have a "database" of happy clients who will call you when needed and possibly refer you to their friends. The trouble is, you can't pick up the necessary skills too quickly and you also need experience in order to be trusted with working on people's homes. So, this is ideally worth thinking about BEFORE you start flying.

...and here goes a piece of advice which will never go out of style - get your second qualification before you commit yourself to flying.

Can't wait to hear people with something like "hey if You need a good plumber then You should call that guy ; he was the captain of the flight that took us on our last trip to Ibiza on an A320 worth 60 millions euros with 180 pax on board - really cool guy".

I also can't wait to hear "hey if you need that toilet fixed then call my lawyer - very reasonable prices and very smart guy : we won a court case worth 100'000 euros last year. Smart dude."

For some reasons I am under the impression I won't hear that second line. Go figure.

As so often, PilotLZ comes up with very sensible comments and yet again as so often, some tries to 'rubbish' them.

Refusing to consider all possible Alternates is not a good approach in this job.

I have done what many would look down on as a 'menial' job when between job, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I also met several others from quite high up positions, also between jobs and enjoying it.

But it all goes to show that there are those for who the glass is half empty and those for who the glass is half full.

However, please consider your Alternates and do consider additional information from others. If you don't, I would be wary about flying with you...

Refusing to understand that being an airline pilot possibly with many years of experience has nothing in common with the path of becoming a tradesman is not a good approach to our declining T&Cs either.

Yes I do look down o a "menial" job because I have spent my life working my @rse off to make it up being a captain examiner in one of the most important airlines in the world and yes I do consider myself at a higher social level.

I do consider my alternates when flying because I am trained to do it and I have been assessed by my employers as being able to do it and also teach it... go figure... so don't bring in these stupid parallelisms between flying and life's plan B, C and so on.

By the way, You don't have to fly with me ; You can go and ask Your plumber or electrician to fly You somewhere. They might work as airline pilots as a part time hobby.

You sound like a self important idiot quite frankly. I'm not sure why you'd consider yourself on a "higher social level", whatever that means, to a tradesman. Serious (i.e. broadsheet) media in the UK considers airline flying to be a trade and not a profession by the way.

Lovely.

Point 1 - You start your reply by insulting me. A clear sign that You have no arguments at all and/or you are simply a troll. The latter I believe. Maybe You were hanging out with NoelEvans earlier on ? Remember to keep social distancing in case.

Point 2 - guy_incognito states that UK media considers an airline pilot to have the same level of qualifications of a plumber ; Oh no... :-(

No need to insult one another, gentlemen. At the end of the day, everyone will be doing whatever they see fit for themselves. You're good at fixing pipework and want to make some extra money out of it in your downtime? Great. You feel that doing this sort of work is inappropriate for a pilot and sends the wrong message to the public? That's totally fine as well. It's your life, your free time, your income. You be the master of it. Nobody should be telling you what you should and shouldn't do unless they will be sharing your bills at the end of the month.

Wow, and they wonder why people think airline pilots are a bit full of themselves, now I know. Since many of the UAE crews have been given their marching orders, one wonders what they are going to do to pay the bills after they land back in their home countries. Because there sure isn't much work for airline pilots, even highly qualified trainers, right now.
Recent genuine comment on a rejection letter to an experienced TRE from Air Uganda. " We had many other more suitably qualified candidates for the role"

Thanks pilotLZ

I believe it is very true that pilots are their own worst enemies.

Pilot's are constantly bitchin' about their terms and conditions because we want to be paid more and have a higher degree of respect in the decision making process of our contracts within the company we do work for but in the end we compare ourselves to tradesmen...

Well I guess O'Leary was right when, a few years back, he told in an interview that pilots were glorified taxi drivers.

Anyway I do appreciate Your very sensible comment. Thanks again.

macdo

You should just be ashamed of Your comment.

"Since many of the UAE crews have been given their marching orders" - just sign in with Your real name and surname and go tell that to the several hundreds of people that have lost their jobs in the past few weeks. Grow a pair big boy.

Im genuinely curious, which airline do you work for?

LoL, I think you must have been hitting the homebrew too hard. You just repeated my comment using different words! Sadly I know several of the people let go personally, there is no shame or secret to the plight they find themselves in now they are back home. Coincidentally, one of them is seriously considering retraining in a building trade to tide him over.
I won't bother growing a pair thanks, you clearly have enough testosterone for both of us.

Can I say.. after I got out of flying ( after 36 years and 22000 hours).. I am now a train driver. I love the conditions ( that include 9 weeks annual leave).. sure the money is not the same as I earned as a 777 Captain.. but I am so much happier. No jet lag.. lovely place to work, home at night. Wish I had done it 10 years ago.

There is no such thing as a 'menial job' to the person who needs that job and is prepared to roll up his/her sleeves to get on and do it. If anyone does 'decry' a tradesman's job, I just hope that they think very carefully about that when they need that tradesman to do some important work for them.

If O'Leary did say that airline pilots are "glorified taxi drivers", he was wrong. bizjet pilots are more like "glorified taxi drivers"; airline pilots are more like "glorified bus/train drivers". (My daughter calls me a "glorified postie", which I find amusing, not 'degrading'!)

An interesting comparison: I know someone who was an accountant and is now an electrician and is doing very well out of it. Quite some time ago he moved countries and to 'convert' qualifications from his old trade of electrician or later profession of accountant would have been months compared with years. Being an electrician was his first choice and that is where he is. (Would that be the accountants' equivalent of PilotLZ's advice about getting your 'second qualification' first?) Now does it take months or years to convert a pilot's qualification from one country to another? (Having done so myself, I can tell you that it is not years!) I will say again, there is no such thing as a 'menial' job to the person who needs that job and is prepared to do it, just as that it in not a 'menial' job to the person who urgently needs it done (like unblocking that drain that was blocked with too much cr*p?).

So please do not decry anyone on here asking for or giving advice to anyone wanting to put effort into to finding other ways of making ends meet when this industry, or the circumstances surrounding it, bowls one of those nasty spin balls their way.

Good luck everyone. If you put the right efforts in now with a good 'frame of mind' whatever you do, you will be able to look back in ten years time at these really extreme conditions and think "yes, I got through that". Do whatever it needs (as long as it is legal!) and don't be put off by someone 'looking down his nose' at you. You could end up a lot happier with life than they are.

Well said, Noel.

@ nickler, I see you are new here. Your post #222 and some others come across as being pompous and arrogant. You are also insulting to other posters and other professions; I don't know if you intended that?

SWR are opening a drivers' depot at Feltham which may be of interest to current/former Heathrow-based people if they start recruiting trainees given that it's pretty much next door to the airport.

GWR have also expanded services a lot, they're recruiting for a lot of qualified drivers at the moment though it's worth keeping an eye out to see if they want to recruit trainees at any point. Nearby depots are Reading, Oxford and Paddington.

I hope my post didn't come across as being at all denigrating of train driving as a job. There's obviously no comparison between train driving and being a pilot. One involves a secure job with an extremely powerful union protecting everyone's pay and conditions, a stable roster, a sustainable work/life balance, an excellent pension, a fair rate for overtime etc. whereas the other...

nickler: you have a vastly inflated and totally unwarranted sense of your own importance.

Agreed! Well said Guy.

guy_incognit

No offence taken. I moved into an industry ( by sheer good luck) that is ful of history .. unions and a employer who actually looks after your welfare.

I enjoy going to work every day.,

The hard truth is you enjoy it only because you have been an airline pilot for long enough. Forget the unions, this is why it’s not comparable

Wow. Deriving your "social level" or your sense of self worth from a job? And the importance of airlines, especially the transport of passengers, can be debated, as this crisis has shown us all.

Back on the topic: There is some great advice and creative options being thrown around here by those willing to open their minds. I'm currently in offshore wind, and HSE is a huge topic. I always think a pilot with a keen understanding of CRM would make a great addition to any HSE department. Yes, would require some additional training, but much of that is available online. With a healthy attitude to picking up some hands-on jobs to build experience, one could relatively quickly develop into an HSE consultant or client rep. The guys / girls we employ in those roles make decent money, travel to interesting places and seem to have a good work/life balance.

Furthermore, I think people are generally freaked out about trying new things, but pilots especially as they have always done the same trick. Maybe at different employers, but fundamentally the same job. Many of my peers and myself had much more variety in their careers. So should get laid off, we have been trained to have an agile mindset to doing new stuff. I myself went from Aerospace Engineering into R&D, then a brief stint in Manufacturing - spent some time in operations, moved to sales, and recently jumped back into project management. Fundamentally different roles in different companies, that just came onto my path and I figured I give them a try.

Important thing is to pay the bills , somehow.

I feel lucky that I had the experience of being a pilot, then a jet pilot, then an airline captain - I’m proud of that.

I feel sorry for those who didn’t and due this latest disaster may never get to the flightdeck, promoted or whatever, will not be able to realise their dream.

It is better to love and to have lost than never loved at all...

Very indicative of a certain cultural system. Not top caste? An Indian perhaps?

I have been a U.K flag carrier Captain with 9000 hours and an electrician, plumber. I can personally attest you will find far more challenges running a company, whilst earning far better money... but most importantly control yours and your families destiny.

100% retain, look at trades and other professions...decouple from the narrow mindedness

There's one more thing which is absolutely fantastic about being your own boss while waiting for your next flying job. Not having to convince anyone (often by being rather dishonest) that you won't run off the very moment a flying job is thrown your way. It's your private party, you needn't explain to anyone why you are doing more, less or no work at any given time. And this is just one perk which adds up to making your own timetable, deciding how much to work, always having something useful and profitable to do whenever there aren't any flights and so on. So, those tradesman skills will only benefit you and enhance your financial security. And, even if you are fortunate enough to never really need them for a living, doing something with your hands is a good way to take your mind off the flight deck every now and again. Not to mention that being able to maintain stuff in your own home without relying on anyone else is nice in itself and can save you quite a bit of money over the years.

I'm not (immediately) at risk of losing my job, as a reasonably well established captain in what should be a safe base in a safe airline (all of that is of course very much subject to change).

However, I have today made the decision to actively look for another career at the earliest possible opportunity. There are a number of reasons for it. Put simply, I don't like flying and I despise the industry in general. I can't see any realistic chance of anything improving. I don't see there being any significant recruitment for pilots for the next decade or more. The fabled "pilot shortage" has never existed, but now the exact opposite of that myth is true. Pilots will be falling over themselves to feast on any meagre scraps the industry throws at them. I said earlier in the thread that captain salaries would fall to the level of train drivers, but without any of the associated benefits of working for a train company. I now think that assessment may prove somewhat optimistic.

I still have a reasonable amount of time to go before I can retire. If it were just me, or even just me and my other half, then I could possibly try to stick it out. However, I can't in good conscience take the serious risk that I'll end up unemployed just at the time when I'll be paying secondary school or university fees for my kids. I genuinely don't see how anybody embarking on a pilot career could ever take the risk of taking on a mortgage, spending money on a car, going on holiday etc. I don't see how anybody embarking on a pilot career could start a family, knowing that there's a very good chance they'll be in a position in the future where their family will end up on the street when they lose their job.

There is no other career that I can think of off hand which is so limiting in terms of transferrable skills; that requires you to be prepared to drop everything and potentially move to the other side of the world just to "stay current"; that has an all pervading narrative from management that you should think yourself bloody lucky to have a job. Anybody who has the means (financial and otherwise) to find another career would be absolutely mad not to pursue another path.

That is a very good decision to make but maybe when you see what options are out there (depending on past work experience) you may think twice before rushing out of aviation! I was made redundant several months ago but I always had a gnawing idea at the back of my mind that I should be doing some training to have something to fall back on, I had a good engineering degree but no work experience. Basically any graduate scheme will see you get at the very most 30k. Admittedly advancement may be fast with the soft skills learned in aviation to help speed things along but outside financial services the peak salary probably won't come close to even the reduced captains salary. I can also only assume that reaching that level will result in long hours and lots of work to take home. You'll get weekends off and more control over your leave etc so that may suit some.

If there is anyone out there reading this who is still employed but doesn't have and previous work experience in another field then start looking at contingency career training now, that is certainly a very good idea. After all it doesnt even take a pandemic to force unemployment, something medical could have the same outcome for an individual. Having to retrain once unemployed is not recommended! I always toyed with the idea of leaving aviation at some point, then it happened and looking at the options I realised I really really didn't know what I had till it was gone.

Looks like you are an Emirates A380 skipper ?
you should first hand know about redundancies and slave labour ?
or are you a local who is immune ?
Your attitude is frankly pathetic and an embarrassment to our fellow professionals

I remain a firm advocate of the concept that you should get your backup qualification before you start flying. In an ideal world, you should also get a year or two of experience in the field. And one of the purposes this serves is that thus you will have a working knowledge of what a "real" job is like and you will have a more realistic view on the pros and cons of commercial flying. Many of those who have done nothing else other than flying have a very marginal understanding of what working life outside of the flight deck is like. And this often fills them with frustration with their "low salaries", "long hours" and "modern slavery". While, if you actually have something to compare flying to, it won't take you long to understand that, even after the COVID-19 salary reductions, it's quite well paid and, in addition, you get to work with many quality people and enjoy a decent amount of time off.

Of course, this still doesn't mean that it has to be appealing for everyone. Just as any other career. So, if you want to walk away simply because it's not your cup of tea - by all means do. But, if you think that by changing careers you will significantly improve your income and lifestyle, this might not be the case. At least not for many years from now, until you become the experienced and established professional who can expect anything close to the dreaded, "poverty-range" 70K Captain salary.

Riskybis

Looks like You do not have much in common with Sherlock Holmes, do You ?

Anyway, yes, former 380 skipper, decided to leave end of 2019 when everything was still roses and butterflies (well more or less) to join a well established European LCC as DEC based home.
I did decide at that time that I wanted to take a few months off to re-establish my life back home after 20 years of palms and dunes and join beginning of April. All setup, all ready. Got screwed.
Guys that joined with an OCC 2 months before me got in, initially furloughed but flying now. Next job ? Who knows.

PilotLZ

Agree 50/50.

There are not many jobs You can compare ours with. We do take a sheet-load of responsibilities every time we are out there and face HUGE liabilities towards the Law. In certain countries if you screw up, be it your fault or not, you end up in jail before they figure out what to do with you.
As pilots we do need to be on top of our game every single time we go out flying, especially as captains ; you're the last line of defence. If the FO's grumpy because of partying or because he's been dumped by his moroccan girlfriend then you still need to fly 2/3/4/5/600+ people safely from A to B.
In many office jobs you can ****-up with no big outcomes ; in ours if you do clip the wing tip of your ride on somebody's else's tail even by a few inches you make the news. and thousands of pax are affected immediately.

So basically I am not (yet) ready to be a plumber.