A New Age In T’s & C’s
 

With the pandemic taking a firm grip upon the industry and with Supply and Demand having never been this far apart. How do we think the new world of T’s and C’s are going to look?

Do we think that we could start to see the age of the minimum wage pilot, working for his/her £9 an hour?

How far do we think some airlines will try to push the boundaries?

I think if you factor in training debt, we reached minimum wage for new pilots ages ago. Didn't Flybe have a bottom rung of about 18k?
For what its worth and having seen 3 major industry setbacks in my career, we ain't seen nothing yet. There are so many factors going against the resurgence of mass air travel that a huge contraction seems inevitable. Just imagine if a COVID19 vaccine is not found in spite of the global effort to make one, ther is no guarantee that this will happen. SO for an indefinite period we are left with an industry hamstrung by distancing rules and public fear. Contraction and immediate reduction to T&C's are likely. But, again if we imagine this is the new normal, the supply and demand for pilots will equalise and T&C's will improve again. Scarcity of labour is the about the only reliable thing that improves pay. Problem is, it may takes years to come to pass. Pray for a vaccine.

It’s supply and demand. In 3-5 years we may actually have a pilot shortage and they’ll improve, like everything. For the time being there could potentially be thousands of unemployed jet pilots come July. It’ll be interesting to see how training organisations fair over the new few years.

There'll be a wide variety in T's & C's across various regions, but for the most part I expect history will repeat itself.

Post COVID there will be a lot of highly experienced crew fighting over the scraps of jobs that remain, including new LCC startups offering barely above a living wage... many will walk away from flying, but others will take whatever they can get.
Fast forward a few years and millions wasted on management bonuses & Salaries, Airlines will attempt to expand again. Short memories will have forgotten the reason why there were so many cheap Pilots in 2020/21 and the Recruitment departments will be puzzled as to why they can no longer find suitable candidates to pay for an overpriced A320 rating, unable to comprehend that their treatment of today's Pilots resulted in Tomorrow's Pilot opting to take a trade instead.

Personally I doubt that this will last as long as some think it will. We're sociable animals, so 'social distancing' will come to pass... And once the news headlines latch onto something else, as they surely will, the fear factor will also fade!

Inflation
 

One thing I'm worried about is my (reduced) wage not going as far as it did before. Inflation and even hyperinflation will become a serious issue at some point, though it's unclear how exactly it will pan out.

I agree with this. If you live in parts of the world that have mosquitos, the chance of picking up malaria is a part of normal day to day life including the fact that malaria kills many more people than covid19 has/does. And malaria has an effective medication to both prevent and cure, but millions can't afford to take it. Life goes on.
The question for the airlines is, how long before the 'new normal' attitude to our mortality takes to catch on and can they survive the transition. I have the unenviable task of doing the weekly shop during this lockdown. A few weeks ago people were reasonable sensible except for the insatiable desire for toilet roll. In the last 2 weeks there is definitely a change to a more fearful population jumping out of the way of anyone coming close to them in supermarkets. The message to be afraid has been learnt , no doubt helped along by our sensationalist media, I think it will take a lot of unlearning before mass air transport happens again.

The fearful jumping out of the way is just a phase which passes after about four weeks or so. I have seen it where I live initially but by now many people are pretty relaxed about distancing. A bit too relaxed, probably. I have read an interview with a psychologist who explained that this is normal human behavior. First we over-react with fear to a new threat and then we get used to it and become complacent.

Travel will recovery but people's disposable income will dictate the rate of return to the new normal . 380/747 and even 773 could be parked for years . LCC will be the new norm. Legacy wages very very slow to recover , if ever .

Going back to the OP......minimum wage pilots?.......yes,yes,yes........(there always has been)

Just to shine a little light, economists expect that while the economy in Europe will shrink quite a lot this year, it will grow again next year.
Of course this is also just a prediction, but this crisis is not caused by economic factors, like the last one.

I can recall coming across a forecast reduction of GDP of 7,75% in 2020, to be followed by a growth of 6,25% in 2021. So, with some luck, the economy will be back to 2019 levels in 2022. As soon as the plague is more or less sorted, people will forget about their fears relatively quickly. Lack of threat and fear + disposable income = more air travel. And, if demand for air travel will be up again in 2-3 years from now, the era of substandard T&Cs will not be too long.

Of course, there's always the slim possibility of an apocalyptic scenario in which everyone going near an airplane in the foreseeable future will have to wear a full Hazmat suit and stay in a state-monitored quarantine centre for 14 days after arrival, but the consequences of this to the entire world (not just to aviation!) would be so devastating that anything and everything will be done to prevent it from happening.

Minimum wage? We have already bettered that.

Piloting was probably the only industry whereby us mugs pay 100,000 to get a licence, then pay for a type rating, then pay to sit in the seat on some pay to fly scheme.

Stay strong united
 

This is not the time to accept low pay or poor conditions. Join a union if you are not in one. You have to look at the total cost of pilots to the operation. Look at our % cost versus the safety of the operation. The unions have to negotiate hard not to let executives take advantage. It is the executives who need to take a pay cut, and work on performance pay. We are the ones out there, if we screw up, people can get hurt. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys!! If aviation wants to have professionals safely you have to pay. We have to stay strong and united.

Pilot salaries have been ripe for a "correction" for years now. From the point of view of the bean counters, it is absurd to pay such high salaries for a job that is as aspirational as airline flying. The new normal will probably look like minimum wage FO positions, and train driver-esque salaries for captains, but without any of the myriad benefits that come from being a train driver.

Hardly likely IMO. That might attract the Instagram dreamers for a few years, but no-one would stick with the career long term at significantly lower wages than we have now. The job is much more disruptive to home life than driving a train or most jobs, training is self funded to the tune of €150k, and there's a greater potential for a screw-up to cost hundreds of lives... and actually there is more natural strength for industrial action, because grounding airliners costs millions.

I can't understand why you guys keep saying that training is in the region of €130k+. I paid around a third of the sums you mention, I received some very good modular training and it did not prevent me from obtaining a job at a respectable cargo operator. It doesn't take that much to make this smart decision when deciding what path to take with regards to training.

I agree with you but the cost these airline academies charge is right around the €120k mark. A father of an easyjet graduate expressed his feelings on this board not to long ago about his son losing his contract with a £125k bill 3 days before base training.

It sounds really nice during presentation until they withdraw your contract and your family's house goes to the market as collateral. Or you realize that you'll be living slightly above poverty for the next 6 years.

Ultimately it comes down to a smart training decision but ironically young cadets are nowhere near good decisions. Can't blame them too much when you get those insta-pilots are shilling "free" training at the schools.

This terms and endearment thing might as well be locked for two years. Waste of time now

Wishful thinking. A captain salary of £60k is still be way above the national average salary. Wannabes would still be queueing out the door to pay £120k to train.

If you take a loan, after interest over 10 years which is what most are designed to be repaid over, you're looking at 120k. That was the number I came up with 10 years ago!

Have you been "out there" and actually seen all those parked up aeroplanes and empty airports? I really don't think that you have because it is a real eye-opener. (And really, if you have seen it, it is something that you would rather that you had not seen, I know, I've seen it.) Things are really, really bad. Just get off your high horse. The best way out of this is to forget what you were used to and look at ways of supporting as many pilots staying in jobs as possible. For a while that will mean lower Ts&Cs (a lot lower). But pilots accepting lower in order to keep as many other pilots in work as possible has to be the real aim of any fellow pilot. Stick together to save jobs. Ts&Cs can come later.

Sorry but I disagree. I personally will not be agreeing to any concessionary contract. Historically concessionary contracts have just continued the race to the bottom. If they are going to be making redundancies, no paycut will prevent that from happening in my opinion.

You won't.

It's a false ideal to think that we can agree to worse T&C's today to save jobs and then when things are brighter we'll have them back.

Once they are gone, they will be gone forever. We either refuse to accept them point blank (and accept that will mean management say some pilots must go) or accept them and by doing so accept that things have changed permanently.

When profits are good we'll get thrown some crumbs and it'll be marketed by management as a bonus and something surplus to what we deserve ... and we will take it and laud their generosity.

Cue next crisis ... rinse repeat.

While I absolutely hate to say this, it's the unfortunate truth... In the present situation one can only turn down new T&Cs either if they don't care about being employed or not or if they just don't realise how easily can they be replaced. While this will not last eternity, it will be a good couple of years before we're in a position to bargain again. That's just how supply and demand works. When you're in high demand, you can bargain for better T&Cs or just go elsewhere if not happy. In times like that, you either agree to whatever is thrown your way or you get kicked out and replaced by someone more agreeable. And then, when the market turns over again, you are no longer current and of limited interest to the ones who offer decent deals.

It is quite disgusting how companies are seeing this pandemic, where people are dying, as an opportunity to hedge their staff costs down, as if we are a falling oil price.

Exactly this.

This crisis is a wet dream for airline managers who have been waiting for years to take an axe to pilot Ts&Cs. We are going to see a "correction" downwards, and it will be permanent. People need to get it into their heads that this is, for some bizarre reason, still an aspirational career. Kids will sell their grannies to be able to get a perfect picture for their Instagram of themselves in the cockpit of a jet wearing their Ray Bans and Breitling. From a bean counter's point of view, it is utter madness to pay a decent salary to people who would basically do the job for free.

Exactly this.
Thomas Cook pilots agreed a T&C's cut in the face of a threat to close the UK airline down. It subsequently took an actual strike to get even a part of the package back.

Terms and conditions are going to get worse as it is a case of supply and demand.

Problem is even though some airlines have had better terms then say others all bets are now off (only have to look at the BA thread about the zero hour contract).

I got into aviation just as Ryanair started to get big. I believe what they had on offer was an over priced type rating, be based anywhere on the Ryanair network and be employed by a third party who may or may man not give you work. With these fantastic terms people jumped at it. I think not shortly afterwards Easyjet came up with their own scheme which I think was even worse, and people still jumped at it as they were desperate to get their hand on a shiny jet.

It has now come full circle with BA now having this zero hour contract looming over their heads. I don't think BA will personally be on zero hour contracts, but there are people who would jump on it to further their career at the expense of others.

I feel terms and conditions are going to get worse but I belive one way to get these terms increased in the future is to decrease the supply. One way to do this is to increase the required hours to say fly a medium size jet eg 737 and anything bigger to say 1500hrs.

Guy, I suspect your motives or role, as you are excessively negative without substantiation.

Yes, pay and terms are going to take a massive dive in the medium term, but it will NOT be permanent. As Jones mentions, it's about supply and demand - but with much poorer pay and job security on offer, no-one in their right mind is going to train up and older Captains are going to call it a day, so there will be a MASSIVE pilot supply crunch in 3-5 years, and that can only lead to a big correction in pay. Unions have a role to play, but the main driver is supply and demand, as multiple airlines all chase the same pilots (think the late 80s, with lesser examples in recent years). Most (but not all!) pilots have memories longer than 5 years, so how airlines treat their pilots now, will be remembered when the boots on the other foot - my airlines one selling point is job security in a crisis - if they sabotage that reputation, then it will avoided like the plague in future.

Over the last years I have seen more than one airline improving pay and roster significantly simply because pilots walked out en masse for better opportunities, with neither of them being easy to replace because rated and experienced individuals out of employment were virtually non-existent. That being said after all the crises of the last 20 years which drove the conditions down and years after the coming of zero-hour contracts. So, it's not all doom and gloom till the end of time. We are in for a bumpy ride until previous levels of employment return, and that will be at least 2 or 3 years from now - but improvements will inevitably come by as demand outweighs supply again. For now, everyone's task is to do whatever it takes to provide for themselves and their family, stay healthy and sane and maintain their currency, knowledge and contacts. Better days will come, that's for sure.

TCX were a reasonably amenable bunch and though far from perfect, like most outfits you could point to a whole raft of annoying issues however generally speaking the culture of the company was reasonably laid back compared to the more hardnosed styles out there. macdo states correctly the battle royal that ensued which led ultimately to the first strike action in decades taken after a number of years waiting professionally and patiently for return of some proportion of the benefit package and renumeration to be returned after several years of the company commenced posting profits again

The key in this is the "relatively" easy going culture at TCX compared to some of the airlines out there. Id suggest with a resonably balanced view that you dont need a crystal ball to anticipate how easy cuts and reductions will be to retrieve in the future once they are given up. Director bomus and shareholder considerations will always create reasons enough to make you fight tooth and nail for every lost millimeter ov employee value

Survival is one thing we all get that, Power grabs and scything terms and conditions with a view of increasing market share post recovery cloaked under the camoflage of COVID survival are another.

We are entering the first real opportunity since the 1940s to take stock and revisit how we do many things. its hard to see any better opportunity to look at options outside the current practices, companies trying to outstupid and devalue what should be valuable members of their operational teams to cuts costs to the absolute bone to keep tabs and apace with the most ridiculous thinkers in the industry whom see nothing but the current success criteria for airlines presently look less than ideal across the spectrum.

Safe and fulfilling flying careers are possible - but not how the airlines have been run during the recent past

Good luck. Keep your 2m apart.

There will be no pilot shortage in the next decade or more. Market is supersaturated with pilots and even if half of us leave the industry to work as delivery boys it doesn't mean we quit forever. As soon as opportunity arise we'r ready to jump back in. Rating won't permanently expire unless u keep it expired for more than 3 years and many of us will pay to keep it alive.
It's gonna be a tough year with little flying and little money and even though i believe that covid trend will become obsolete and forgotten by next summer , aviation is still facing a real 'great depression' scale crisis that will come in about 10-15 years from now.
I am still employed but willing to fly for food and mortgage just to keep me and my company alive.

Dr Jones
 

Here here. If i’de been in a coma for 20 years and just woken up this opinion would be the “normal”
Flying is too cheap and has been for too long, see capitalism the rest is inevitable.......

Rant mode on:



It really is sad reading this thread, with what appears being mainly European pilots, saying how they are willing to, what seems, happily help the airlines erode our own T&C’s even further. I have previously lived in the US and most of my aviation network is over there, and I also frequent one of the better aviation web forums over there daily. I can tell you guys, despite the massive layoffs being forecasted there too, the absolute majority of them are NOT prepared to “assist” in bringing their compensation they have fought so hard for over the last several years down. And as many may know, their compensation packages have been double or triple over what has been on offer in Europe (bar a few remaining national carriers maybe) for the last several years. Most of them are saying they would rather leave aviation and do something else for a while and then return when pay is where it should be than work for sub par pay.

Despite being European and having an EASA license (on top of an FAA one) I have never worked in Europe during my more than 20 years as a commercial pilot due to the, generally speaking, crappy terms being offered in Europe mainly due to way too many selling themselves way too short just so they can put on their shiny white pilot shirt while proudly walking through the terminal. I’m actually seriously considering letting my EASA ATPL lapse next year and solely rely on my FAA license for the second half of my career. Much easier and cheaper to keep alive and current anyways.

The US may have its share of problems (which country doesn’t) but at this point I am so thankful I decided to renew my green card just a couple of months ago giving me the option to go back there at some point to make a decent wage. I’d rather live and work there for fair and reasonable wages in an effort to one day being able to retire somewhat comfortably, versus being under compensated due to surrounding myself with a pilot group who appears to generally lack any kind of self respect and accept whatever is being thrown at them. The lack of unity amongst European pilots is absolutely sickening, a case of truly being their own worst enemies.

Until the virus struck I had a contract to fly through a US ACMI carrier for a European airline over the summer. I was recruited by one of the major crewing agencies in Europe and it was actually a pretty good contract being in Europe, so I accepted it. Today I received a questionnaire from the recruiter and below is one of the questions I was being asked. I have, sadly, no doubt that there would be no shortage of pilots in Europe signing up for one of the several ridiculous options (full pay not included) below, in a way basically subsidizing the airlines.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....9e4f5f986.jpeg

My bills did not stop coming in just because of the virus showing up, so tell me why I should work for free then? And this is coming from someone who is already on month ten of unemployment due to my last job ending when the plan I was on sold. Luckily I have always managed my personal finances in a way that I can easily take a bump/crater in the road like this one. And I am not saying this to brag, but I have read and heard so many stories over the years from people/pilots who were spending their money as fast (or faster) as they were making them and then ending up in a bind as soon as their job went away, for whatever reason. Hence I have promised myself to never put myself in such a situation. The reason why I have been able to do this is because I refused to accept a job with sub par compensation.

Yes, it has required me to be a bit flexible on where I have worked/lived, but to me it has been well worth it versus constantly feeling the financial stress of not making enough to put away money for a rainy day or two, or even worse, stressing over not even being able to pay my bills. In the end it has allowed me to live anywhere in the world (I returned to Europe) while making a fair/good salary and basically having as many days off in a month as I worked.

End of rant and putting my flame suit on...

You are right on the whole fying is too cheap. But putting prices up does not mean as a pilot you will get better terms and conditions, as the greedy airlines might want to keep the money for themselves.

​​​​​In order to improve terms, we need times to be good (which they are not at the moment) and you need to some how cut down the supply of pilots.

Now how you cut the supply of pilots is anyones guess, I just went with a minimum number of hours. You could alternatively do it on age ie min age to fly on an AOC operation is say 25.

The numbers involved are irrelevant and even my suggestions are too, but in order for terms to improve in the future when times start to become good the supply of pilots need to be reduced.

FlyTCI, part of me is gobsmacked about that questionnaire, but part of it just solidifies what I’ve been thinking would happen for the last couple of weeks.

My airline has furloughed most of it’s pilots, but no redundancies planned yet.

The trouble is that so many people in my airline (including the crew council) love the mantra of “You should be grateful to have a job”. The top management also love to say it too. So every time the management try to get more for less, it’s met with a “Well, if it keeps me in a job, then it’s fine by me”. In addition to “I’m sure there’d be people from Thomas Cook or flyBe who would kill for my job, so we’re lucky!”.

I don’t want to argue the semantics of this, because I’ve been made redundant in the past and know how it is. But, when people have the “I’m just grateful to have a job” mentality, T&Cs are only ever going to go one way.

And this mentality gets stronger in times of struggle. So it’s a vicious cycle. The more unemployed pilots on the market, the more the employed ones desperately cling to their jobs, and the bigger cuts they’re willing to take.

In the coming weeks, I’m expecting my company to implement either long-term unpaid leave (6-12 months), forced part-time, or even zero-hour hourly-paid contracts. We’ve already had a pay cut, which people believe to be temporary. My opinion is that we’re never getting that back. Ever. But, whatever gets implemented I know that a vast majority of my colleagues will just accept, shrug, and say “At least I’m still in a job”.

'You should be grateful to have a job' is a mindf#@k that management regularly have used to undermine an employee groups confidence in their job security. Mostly, it is left unsaid but implied in the way management negotiates with its workforce. Management and BoD's need reminding they should also be grateful to have a job and that job relies on the folks they employ doing their job properly.

Too many of you here really, really do not understand the true situation out there. Do not try to compare with the Thomas Cook situation, the financial crash, 9/11 or even the first Gulf War. This is nothing like any of those. This graph was in Flight a month ago:https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....13cfcb60d3.jpg
Please try to find "the Thomas Cook situation, the financial crash, 9/11 or even the first Gulf War." on that graph and compare it with now. I have seen parked and sealed aeroplanes and deserted airport terminals. This is bad. All past ways of doing things are going to need to change to be able to survive. Concepts likebelong to the past.

Pilots should be doing everything that they can to keep as many pilots as possible in jobs, regardless of 'Ts&Cs'. Anyone digging their heels in to "Defend their 'Ts&Cs'" without any thought about how this will affect other pilots' jobs should probably justifiably be seen as just selfish. Just get on with the real world about you right now and keeping pilots in jobs must be the top priority. PilotLZ has got it spot on: Things will improve and when the shortage 'bites' eventually there will be an improvement in conditions. In the mean time survival is the most important and pilots should be working together to ensure the survival of as many jobs as possible.

But for anyone wanting to dig their heels in and "stand up for their Ts&Cs", I hope that's what you tell them at your first interview in the Jobcentre.