Originally posted by skycruiser
Interesting point.
In the UK the LLC such as Ryanair are charging 50 pounds to read your CV and then 150 pounds for an interview. They then charge you for a sim ride, uniform, type rating and even on board drinks. Easyjet has a lot of hidden charges as well. Quite a lot of guys I know who have gone there a spending a fortune to work for these companies.:mad:
The industry is a changing place, that’s for sure.;)
Ah, Pay For Training (PFT) is quite a heated topic here in the US. It was quite common among “entry level” airline jobs. Sure a company might be hiring but they expect the new pilot to foot the bill. In addition to paying for your training in what ever aircraft they hire you into ($7500-$12,000) you won’t get paid by the company while in training (even per diem)and you’ll have to pay for your own logging. You won’t come away with a type rating either, just enough training to make you an able body First Officer. You can also fail and go home with no return on your investment. After all that if you pass, you’ll come away with a job that pays you a little more than your training cost per year ($18,000 per year).
Once the big hiring boom of 1999-2000 got started all airlines that had PFT dropped it to draw in the required new pilots each year. Now that the industry hiring has slowed again, it’s starting back up again. Southwest is the only major that has any sort of PFT in that they require you to have a 737 type before you get hired. They will hire you before you have a 737 type but will require you to have it within a few months. Now this isn’t a pure PFT operation as you come away with a 737 type rating and that can open up doors at other airlines. We’re asking for a no-PFT clause in our new contract. Last thing any of us want to see is the return of that ugly beast.
Pilots are their own worse enemies when it comes to salaries and work rules. It only takes one pilot to say he’ll do it for less and he drags down every other pilot’s career possibilities with him.
We’re seeing it all the time here. A major airline goes to it’s feeder airlines and waves new 50-70 seat jets in front of the pilot group. Either those pilots work for less than their competitors or the major airline will take those jets to someone who will. So someone is going to get the jets and fly them for $xx/hour so why not have it be you?? If the pilot groups were strong and everyone turned it down then the major airlines couldn’t get away with such demands. There is one small regional airline that flies Dash-8’s and basically told their parent company US Airways to screw themselves when they came making 50 seat jet demands. Now the leases are up on the Dash-8’s sending them back to the company and they aren’t getting any airplanes to replace them. No airplanes = No airline. The pilots made a strong stand and put themselves right out of a job. Did they do the right thing? Well, they stood fast by their believe that they deserved not only liveable wages but an industry standard for the type of operation they were to run. But, by doing so US Airways took those jets to someone who would work for less.
Originally posted by brenmcc1
As long as i’m flying im happy
Flying doesn’t make one happy very long when you’re making less than the guys loading the bags into the cargo bin. It’s imperative that pilots demand to be paid according to the work they do, not by how much the love their job. No one ever saw a doctor admitting that he’d work for less than half of his equally qualified partner just so he could be hired at the local hospital.
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