DeanoI most certainly did not see it, Lincoln. I was perving over some pics on Yahoo because I saw the sister (Pippa is it?) on there. 😉
DeanoDistiller
Of the pictures I did see I asked that question, one of the pilots I was working with who was in the Navy said it’s something to do with the armed forces. I cannot remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines of – the RAF don’t allow swords (or it could have been the Army, or Navy), it’s something to do with the fact that William is part of SAR.
Dean
DeanoDistiller
Of the pictures I did see I asked that question, one of the pilots I was working with who was in the Navy said it’s something to do with the armed forces. I cannot remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines of – the RAF don’t allow swords (or it could have been the Army, or Navy), it’s something to do with the fact that William is part of SAR.
Dean
DeanoThe amount of profit made will all depend how much the passengers paid for their ticket. Most other things will be a constant, like:
Crew costs
Fuel
Airways Charges
Landing Fees
Insurance
Leasing
Airframe
Engine Time
Catering
Airport Charges (push backs etc)
etc etc etc.
Because prices of tickets are fluid there would be no real way of gleaning this information until all tickets are sold and you actually have access to that information.
DeanoLuckily I had to work a late shift yesterday so I had a Royal Wedding free zone on board all day. I’d rather eat a bucket of wasps than watch it.
DeanoLuckily I had to work a late shift yesterday so I had a Royal Wedding free zone on board all day. I’d rather eat a bucket of wasps than watch it.
DeanoDepends which side of the fence you are sat on, talltower.
If you work in the industry then ICAO seems to take president, i.e. all our paperwork on the flightdeck is issued as ICAO. If you are a passenger then IATA seems to be the norm, i.e. flight numbers etc on your ticket. That aside, I agree with Lance 😉
DeanoCloud_9
I’ve flown into Lelystad before from Staverton. It was a great trip. It is about 45 minutes by road to Schiphol from there. We basically sold an aircraft to a flight school over there and got Easyjet back. The owner of the flight school gave us a lift back to AMS. As for trains, I would imagine there are trains to AMS from near there.
What are you going over for if you don’t mind me asking?
DeanoI got into the industry at just the right time, at the height of the boom. Flying is all I wanted to do from an early age so I am “living the dream”. Here is another problem, future cadets look at flying aeroplanes as the coveted job that they’ve always wanted, they put the job on a pedestal and will stop at nothing to achieve it (even though 900pa never make it). I keep hearing it time and again on PPRuNe where people give out the advice to potential cadets, and that advice is “if you want it badly enough you’ll get it”. That is complete bo****x. You can want it all you want, but if there’s only 300 jobs for 1200 people then there’s going to be alot of disappointed people. But people don’t listen, they listen to the “if you want it badly enough” brigade and they still plough on with the training regardless of the economic conditions etc (see post above). These people are deluded and brain dead.
Then we move on to the job, when I was a PPL one would look up at airliners and go “wow, I’d love to do that one day”, again putting the job on a pedestal. If you were to jump straight from a PPL to the right hand seat of an airliner it would be a massive deal, but it doesn’t happen that way. Every step along the way progresses you up the ladder on the way to that job, from the CPL, to the IR, then the MCC, then the interview, Type Rating ground school, Type Rating sim sessions, base training, and then line training. It kind of prepares you for it along the way so when you actually get there it isn’t really a big deal any more.
Then we talk about the job itself. Well for me it was a complete culture shock. I thought the job was going to be something totally different to what it was. I thought we’d fly planes, look out the window, go to lovely destinations and then do the same on the way back. How wrong I was. The job is completely different to my expectations and I try to pass this on to potential cadets about putting it on a pedestal. There is so much paperwork to do per flight it is nonsensical, alot of the time you simply don’t get time to look out the window, period. Then you have the added pressures that flying brings. You are constantly being tested, you have to go into the sim every 6 months, you are line checked once a year, you have to do ARTs once a year, tech exams once a year, stay on top of your aircraft knowledge all the time. It is constant, when you have one thing out the way, along comes something else.
Forget weekends off, forget a social life, forget going out with your mates, forget saying yes to your daughters when they say “daddy can you come to my school play next week?” Forget having a constant work pattern. If you arrange something in an evening and you are on earlies you’ll go tech down route and will have to nightstop, or get delayed. If you want a random day off you can only book it 2 months in advance (so forget spur of the moment BBQs etc). You’ll spend your life positioning to other bases sat in aircraft departure lounges. You’ll constantly be worried about your job in bad economic times, you’ll get to sit next to a couple of right knobends who are out to make your working day hell, the list goes on. How many times have you got to fly past the Swiss Alps before they just become “The Swiss Alps”? Twice, that’s it.
The job is not what people expect it to be, and there is always a novelty factor. The difference is how long does your novelty factor last before it wears off? Because it will wear off, it’s just when, not if.
All that said, I still wouldn’t want to do anything else, but if it all came to an end tomorrow would it matter? Naaaa, life goes on.
DeanoThe problems today in the way airlines recruit is born out of a few problems within the industry. Firstly, the recession. Nobody is moving seats, jobs aren’t being created and retiring pilots are not being replaced. This all leads to a stagnant job market, and this leads to airlines being very picky and choosy in the mannerism in which it recruits. There is not one airline in the UK that I can think of that is over crewed, quite the opposite infact. Airlines are running on so few crew that the ones they do have are working up to FTLs at alot of bases.
Now whilst a stagnant job market should lead to a reduction in T&Cs (and it has), it shouldn’t have a big impact (& probably doesn’t). The single most reason for a reduction in T&Cs and wages is all down to cadets. This is where my hatred of ryanair comes from. As soon as the first person ever offered to pay for their type rating came about (a couple of decades ago) airlines and their bean counters latched on to this and started coming up with hair brained schemes on how to “exploit” money out of cadets and thus the era of SSTR & P2F was born.
The reasons why these schemes work is twofold, firstly you have people who will give their right arm to fly aeroplanes, and secondly there’s never been enough jobs created per annum to cater for everyone leaving flight school. This leaves cadets with a few options. Spend money on training, but then can’t find a job, thus sign up for a SSTR or P2F scheme, don’t train in the first place, or waste the money they have spent on training and let their licenses lapse.
Every year approximately 1200 fATPLs (no such license by the way) are issued in the UK by the CAA. In good recruiting times there’s only ever between 250-300 jobs per year. Now my maths is good, but is yours? I make that to be 900 cadets will never get a job, ever. Along comes ryanair, it’s expansion and it’s beloved contract scheme. All of a sudden you have 900 cadets that have a wee light at the end of the tunnel, maybe there is a chance of a job afterall, and so it escalates. They are recruited onto crappy contracts, with low pay and conditions, and most certainly no employment rights at all (because they are self employed basically).
The P2F & contract cadet schemes are now fully charged and alot of airlines are jumping on the bandwagon. Easyjet for instance, is worse than ryanair if you ask me. They offer cadets the “chance” to buy a type rating through CTC and go onto a 6 month flexi contract. Once the 6 months is up they could potentially be out the door with an Airbus type rating and 250hrs on type. As much use as a chocolate teapot.
So why do these schemes exist? Well, we’ve already deciphered that they exist because there are desperate people out there. Who do we blame? Well lets look at that.
We are on the “good” side of the worst recession in living memory. I am no economist but even I can see that we are not out the woods yet. We have 250,000 public sector workers that will be out of a job, that has to hit the economy, there is no way it can’t. We have high unemployment as a whole, we have high inflation being driven by high commodity prices, we have poor high street performance, we have rising costs in the every day cost of living etc etc. We also have a terrible job market for the airline industry. Taking all that into the mix we still have full, yes full flight schools. Even at the start of the recession cadets are being pumped out left, right and centre. What I want to know is, who the hell is advising these people? Who the hell is doing their research for them? Why are they even training knowing there will be no jobs out there? I just don’t get it.
Then what happens is, after they have just spent £100,000 on an integrated course, they then have to spend another £30,000 on a type rating (yes, ryanair charge £30k for a £21k TR). They will never pay that money off in a million years, never ever ever. They face a lifetime of debt, a lifetime of no money and hardship. Hell, they are even sleeping in their cars in the car parks around the airports because they cannot afford accommodation. I don’t get it, no job is worth that, no job, not even flying.
Then we have the other side of the coin. Mr & Mrs Middle Class want their children to sit in a coveted job, and here comes the rich daddy scenario. What I don’t get is that there is a never ending gravy train of people with £130k to spend on flight training. It isn’t even drying up. What I don’t get is where the hell is all the money coming from? It is complete and utter madness.
I have absolutely zero respect for pilots (first officers in particular) who effectively buy their jobs. I hear them in the airways all the time and it makes me cringe. How the hell as a parent can you be proud of, and congratulate your son/daughter on their new “job” if they have bought it? I don’t get that either.
One thing I do get though (wait for it), is that the only people to blame for these schemes existing are the cadets themselves. Nobody else is to blame, not even ryanair and their sh!tty brookfield contracts, but the cadets. If they didn’t pay the money, the schemes would not exist – fact. It’s like on Valentine’s Day, why do your flowers cost you 3 x as much? Because you are prepared to pay it, it is as simple as that.
So until these little parasites of the industry stop paying for everything, the schemes will continue and airlines will be in the driving seat.
I was offered a job last November on the 757 based out of EMA. The deal was, I paid for my type rating (£19k), I took a 70% contract, I didn’t get paid until I got online (2½ months without pay). You can guess what the answer was.
Look at everyone who has recruited lately. BA – Virgin – GSS – Thomas Cook – Monarch – EasyJet – Ryanair etc. They all require a type rating as a pre-requisite. This is all born out of the SSTR debacle that is the cancer of the airline industry. This will be changing in the very near future though, just as airlines realise they cannot run their schedules on depleted crew – watch this space.
Dean
DeanoThanks JayLink
I’ll give it a crack later 🙂
DeanoYou’re right PeeDee, it doesn’t. I am not sure of the dimensions of the Q400 overhead lockers without digging out the manuals.
That said, the Q400 has small overhead lockers, you can get a “normal” sized holdall in them though, and I can always fit my laptop in them. What normally happens though is that customers will try and get away with paying for their bag to go into the hold so they bring it on as hand luggage. Invariably security do not want the hassle, so they send them through and let us deal with it on board, which is totally wrong. You would never believe what some people bring onto the aeroplane, or the size of it. Gatwick can be the worst culprits, especially in the summer.
DeanoJust the same as nobody is forced to read threads on here about Ryanair and not be happy with it’s content 😉
DeanoHi mate
It’s quite simple. Basically join up via the website, you get placed on a roster. You then have to report 1 flight per month to stay active, this can range from a 20 minute Dash 8 flight to a 14hr 747 flight (dependant on your Pilot Category).
There is a route section where you can look at all routes within your category, just select the flight you want, go to the bid page, bid for it, fly it online or offline (that’s up to you), and report what you fly.
Pilots normally start off in CAT 1 and have to sit a Check Ride to progress to the next CAT (they are not hard), but with your real world experience I am sure we can insert you into a higher CAT straight away (just tell Bill you know me when you first apply and I’ll sort it out).
That’s about it really, we have a good download section, historical flights and downloads (historical downloads are being added by me as and when I find them), we have weekly online fly-ins, a good active forum, great charters to fly, some great routes (basically Qantas Routes) etc etc.
It’s easy, it’s good fun (if you’re not sick of flying during the day), and a good focus to use flight sim rather than just bimbling around the skies doing nothing and flying under bridges.
Let me know if you submit an application, and I’ll see to it that you get placed higher up the CAT system.
Rgds
Dean
DeanoCulpano
Don’t come on here whinging your t!ts off if your flight gets cancelled and you are left stranded. Remember you can’t have it both ways. You can’t pay peanuts for your ticket and then expect royal service. 
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