I used to think…”gee pilots get paid a lot for little hours worked”…
‘Paid a lot’ is a popular misconception. I really wish some good investigative journalists would lift the lid on that one! Aviation is growing rapidly at present, and there is much talk about a pilot shortage, you may instead think of it as a wage shortage….
(I hope this post does not seem like a hijack of the thread, at first, but if you think about it is all relevant)
Sure some pilots do get paid heaps, however others flying the same aircraft on the same routes get less than bugger all. Wages are extraordinarily un-standardized in aviation. This is because there are high paying jobs, and pilots will work for less than nothing in order to gain the experience necessary to get those higher paying jobs.
Just as curiously, pilot licensing requirements vary greatly from one place to the other; strange considering aviation is global industry. It amazes me the BBC/CNN or similar has not produce a show on the whole thing. I think the general public would be fascinated!
-An Australian friend of mine who is a 747 Second Officer with Philippine Airlines won’t tell me how much he earns, only to say it is less than the unemployment benefit in Australia – and that is after he paid thousands for a jet rating to get the job, and was a seasoned pilot in Australia! He flies Philippines to USA. Other pilots working for other airlines on the same route and same aircraft type get vast amounts more…
- it is common practice for airlines to only hire pilots currently rated on the aircraft in their fleet (you may have a 747 rating, but it is useless if you want to fly a 737, A320 or whatever). Some one has to pay for that rating, and often it is the pilot, and that is after they have already forked out tens of thousands of dollars for their commercial pilots license. ( ie, A320 rating, 16,500 euro
JAA Airbus type rating A320 )
-Next time you are on Air Asia, consider that some of the boys and girls at the pointy end of the plane have paid for their rating and in return are earning the vast sum of $500US a month. Big dollars hey! (I am trying to find the link to this)
- next time you are on Bangkok Airways, consider the Captain may be pulling in a massive 70,000bt a month! (A Thai 717 Captain told me that is what he earnt anyhow…Okay, that may be 10 times the average Thai wage, but heak, a good gogo honey is probably doing as well…In the Phuket MD80 crash I believe the Captain was Indonesian? An expatriate Indonesian pilot may even more cost effective to the airline than a Thai one?)
- next time you are on a non-major carrier, consider the pilots (captain included) may be paying the airline (yes paying them!) tens of thousand of dollars to be there. Consider HE/SHE may be paying far more than YOU to be on the flight! If you have a Commercial pilots license, and can’t get a job with an airline due to lack of experience, or if you are a first officer and cant get upgraded to Captain, don’t worry, just go buy a job!
Eagle Jet Flight Training and Sales, Piston Flight Training and Jet Sales, Airplane Sales. will organize it for you. It is very popular way to gain airline experience, only costs up to 50 thousand dollars…. (Curiously eaglejet seem reluctant to say which airlines they are affiliated with, but included are airlines in the USA, Asia, and Europe)
- It is interesting to note airport baggage handlers earn more money than many pilots, even in Australia.
- Consider until very recently if you wanted to work for Virgin Australia, you had to pay for your own 737 type rating (twenty grand or so). Good old Richard Branson! If his airline couldn’t afford, or was too greedy to pay to train the pilots they employed, then fcuk him!
- So you want to work for Qantas instead? Well fu*k them too! You got an interview! Great! Now you start paying them! With no guarantee of a job!….Okay, its only in the hundreds of dollars, but why should I have to pay Qantas anything if they want to consider me for employment? And it is not just them, other major airlines do the same…
About Qantas - Employment - Pilots - Direct Entry Briefing Sheet
- Qantas also run a cadet program, but who can afford that!?
- Sierradelta, as you live in tassie, you probably fly with REX now and then. Last I heard, a Rex Dash-8 First Officer was getting $32,000 Aust a year before tax. That pilot is not there because it is a good job. He/she is there only to get experience to get another job – and remember to get that other job he may have to fork out twenty thousand dollars or more for a type rating (on a 737, A320 or whatever) just to be eligible to apply, and remember he has already paid far more than his annual salary to get a license that enables him to fly for REX in the first place. So now he somehow scrapes more money together (maybe his girlfriend is fcuking a bank manager because he wont save it on his wage) and he goes out and buys a 737 rating to apply to Virgin, and at the interview he says he supports the Melbourne Storm rather than the Bronocs, they don’t like that, so he is back to REX with brand new 737 rating and a huge debt…So now what to do? Well he can fork out a few more tens of thousands of dollars (if his girlfriend is still fcuking the bank manager) and buy an airline job (with the likes of eaglejet) or if he is a little more fortunate, he can go work for some carrier in Asia for less money than the dole back home, but hey! At least now he is logging some jet hours – in a year or two maybe Qantas will even invite him for assessment – which they will make him pay for! If he is lucky, after another decade or more as a first officer, and just before he retires, he will get the big Captain salary everyone thinks all pilots get. (sure many people have a better run than that, but many don’t. By the way, I never managed to earn $32,000 flying in Australia, even when in command of a few-million dollar aeroplane…
Note: REX salary may have recently gone up as they are finding it hard to get/keep pilots…there is a global pilot shortage after all! Still, financially you would be better off to quit flying and go drive a truck, which is what one of my friends in Australia has just done)
- Next time you are on Ryan Air, consider the pilots may have paid 5,000 Euro to the airline for a multi-crew assessment course in order to be considered for a job. This, Ryan Air advertises in employment sights is “recommended for pilots lacking jet experience. Successful candidates will be invited to join the Ryan air B737 Type rating program” . Then you pay for the Type Rating Course: € 28,350. unsuccessful pilots will be invited to cry to their bank manager!!
Ryanair Recruitment
I could go on and on, but you get the picture….None of this is to say an inexpensive pilot is less competent than an expensive pilot, but merely to point out budget airlines offer budget wages (and possibly budget training in comparison to other carriers? I don’t know) and as a pilot if you want to get the big airline wages then you may have to part with a lot of money to buy the experience required, with no guarantee of a high paying job. Fcuk that! Airlines will be my last resort…remember a happy crew is safer crew than one who is Pis_ed off and disgruntled with their employer.