CyprusScooby

I fancy going into the Aviation Industry as an Airline Pilot. I don't have a PPL or anything like that or the tens of thousands of £ it would cost to get the Air Transport Licence etc.

Whats the best way to get into this trade?

Any Airline Pilots out there with any advice?

NotoriousREV

My mate's parents remortgaged their house to give him the £50,000 required for the training with BA. He now owns a large house in Cheshire and a Porsche I'd do the same for myself, but I'm colour blind and therefore stand no chance of gaining employment (although I could get my CPL in Australia).

I think the only other way to get in is to get a scholarship if you're going to Uni, or join the RAF and get them to teach you to fly then get a job on the airlines once you've left.

Taff107

You're a crab anyway, aren't you?

Dieseldog

If you can't get 'sponsorship'* from an airline, you're looking at shelling out £60k and 15 months of hard unpaid time), then IF you can find a job (a talented friend of mine was unemployed for just short of two years whilst looking) you'll probably be on low £20's for the next few years until you've built up a couple of thousand hours where the big airlines might consider you for a jet job; once again pay will be nought special at this point. If you factor in loss of earnings during training and for an uncertain time afterwards it could be seriously expensive. You've got to really want to do it! If I look at my IT contractor mates and my pilot mates, it ain't the pilots driving the M3's.


* sponsorship used to be an airline paying for your training, then it turned into the airline paying for your training but clawing back 'x' thousand pounds every year for the next few years, and these days it seems to be you shelling out the cash and the airline 'promising' a low paid job at the end.

davyboy

I only found our recently that Pilots salaries are a lot less than you expect, would certainly take a while to pay back £50-65k training.

Easy Jet First Officer £33-40k & Captain £66k.

Ryanair First Officer £24-30k & Captain £51-75.

Virgin First Officer £41-61k & Captain £69-94k.

BA First Officer £42-95k & Captain £57-127k.

Takes a while to be a captain too......10-15 years anyone!

CyprusScooby

The RAF ain't employing anymore Pilots for years now!!!! What with cutbacks and things there are too many Jet Jockeys as it is!

Damn! I can't afford that kinda money! I'll have to rob a bank!!! At least I have the perfect getta way car!

Leslie

Unless you can get into the RAF for your training, it will cost a fortune to get qualified without some form of sponsorship.

Might be worth an enquiry of the airlines to find out their policy on training. They must have some kind of training policy for their future aircrew. Can't rely so much on ex military pitots any more.

Les

marky1

The pay you mention is wrong.

A Ryan Air pilot makes £92,000 a year.

Patt@firstime

Bit of a difference

davyboy

This information I posted is freely available on the net.

I am pretty sure a Ryanair pilot does not get that. Unless he is a captain and get some special "benefits"

Dieseldog

Agree with Davyboy, maybe a skipper after a few years will get that, but don't be fooled - you'll shell out silly money and be on Call Centre wages for the next 5-10 years. Be a doctor / accountant / IT bod / Financial Adviser instead. In a few years from now, pilots will have the same status as London Bus drivers in a few years.

GCollier

I have a good friend who's a BA captain. It's worth checking with individual airlines what their policy is on training. His training was fully paid for by BA around about 1990 after joining as a graduate in his 20's, although due to the recession in the early 90's he had to go on a waiting list before BA called him for a job.

I've known him since he started flying, and talk of call centre wages (at least for an airline like BA) is rubbish. He was on a very good salary as first officer and since making captain a few years ago is now on around £80-90k. The hours he has to actually work are considerably less than most office jobs and he gets to fly all over Europe, east coast US and northern Africa. The downside is you have to be a bit more organised with your social life and it's not necessarily very family friendly, as you can be away for several days sometimes, or up at 5am for an early flight - so that's somthing to bear in mind.

If you're interested in being a commercial pilot, I wouldn't let people in this thread put you off and suggest something like accountancy or IT instead. My mate loves the life and says he still gets a real buzz every time he throttles up the engines to take off, and that difficult landings in bad conditions always give him a real adrenalin buzz. I'm not sure I can say the same about writing Java code and Oracle queries....

Gary.

KiwiGTI

You've never felt that surge of adrenalin after code you've been debugging for hours suddenly works?

Flatcapdriver

Yeah, well your mate joined BA as part of their cadet entry scheme which to all intents and purposes finished years ago and although they occasionally re-open it the scheme is sporadic and not a reliable route to the flight deck. He is also a fully fledged Nigel who is bonded and consequently BA's salaries are higher than normal but many of their more recent intake earn nothing like that nowadays.

Ryanair et al have taken pilots for a ride (although many wannabes only have themselves to blame) with check rides, CV submission all being paid for by the entrant and there are thousands out there with a fATPL and the neccessary turbine hours plus IFR who aren't getting jobs in the right hand seat.

The Easyjet/Ryanair rates of pay are accurate and long gone are the days of long haul with plenty of grautuities and hosties just waiting to throw their knickers at you. Nowadays, you can look forward to multi sector days on some 736 earning comparitively low salaries with the dubious pleasure of a flight deck that is infested with ex IT bods who are not the most exciting people. Although the Captain's salary bands can look attractive remember that this is unlikely to be achieved until you're into your late 30s or early 40s and you have to take a massive drop in salary first plus pay for your training which is nearer £80k if you want to be realistic so you aint in it for the money.

I've spent nearly £30k and am not even halfway there but luckily I saw the light fairly early on and now do it purely for enjoyment.

Good luck if you do decide to do it.

Brendan Hughes

craigdmcd

iTrader: (2)

The wages aren't a million miles out of what I've heard (the wife's an airstewardess for BA - one of the last on the old payscale thank god). What you would have to decide, is how much you want out of the lifestyle that you currently have, if it's pants, then it is a very special lifestyle. Also many people are comparing jobs in IT and banking for wage comparison, then look at the lifestyle that goes with it. Being a pilot or working in IT, I know what one would have me lying in a pool of my own blood with slit wrists!.
I currently earn just over 20k per annum near the top of my profession on a continental shift lifestyle, and the best I can earn is 30k with a normal shift at a garage and burning the midnight oil, putting in 60 hour weeks. Now compare that with an average of 60k per year - 20years @ 60k = £1,200,000 or 20 years @ 30k = £600,000, or 20 years @ £20 (very easy life though)= £400,000.
That £50,000 training course is starting to sound very tempting now.
Craig

GCollier

Some short lived satisfaction, yes.

A surge of adrenalin, unfortunately not

Gary.

CyprusScooby

I certainly couldn't work in an office being an IT Geek!

Tiggs

I have BA pilots as clients (captains or jumbos) and if Ryan Air are paying that then im amazed.

It took these guys a LOT of years to get over £100k pa....a LOTTTT of years!

I was earning that +++ at the age of 25 giving them advice as an IFA! (i cant crash in the sea either!)

Bakerman

Agree with most of the comments on here, I almost got into BA on their cadet scheme in 1989 but not quite, basic salaries are only part of the story as there are a host of other allowance but as most people say big 6figure salaries are earned by very senior pilots in big airlines or pilots on short term contracts - an new entrant to BA will probably only earn low 20s with all the really early/late shifts etc with probably 10-15+years before becoming captain. Certainly it ain't what it used to be but the money can still be good HOWEVER I am now happy I didn't get in as the procedures/rules etc you have to follow ain't really my thing - the technology is almost there that removes the need for a pilot and most pilots just system monitor (autopilot/autoland etc).

Incidentally, now earning around 40k in IT (but no geek) doing about 30hours a week - now that is easy

Take a look at www.pprune.org to sounds some real pilots out.

marky1

Sorry, the others mentioned may be right but I know someone who was just offered a job with Ryan Air (Captain) on £92,000 for Luton based or I think it was 135,000 or 140,000 Euros to be based in spain.