Prospects for low hour recently trained pilots???

kkk1985

I view this forum quiet a lot and haven't seen anything about what your views are on the subject above. I'm about to take the plunge and go down the modular route but I'm still very weary of what situation i'll be in in two years time when hopefully I'll have my frozen ATPl.
Is there many people out there who have got that far and can't get work???
Is it true that there is a large turn over of staff regurlery at ryanair?
What other carriers will take a pilot with Low hours? eg 250??


Thanks guys and love this forum...

yaeger

Hey there kkk1985

Everyone who now flies commercially experienced the position you now find yourself in. Its fair to say there is as many if not more people who don't secure employment in flying in any form once they finish but that's the risk to take.
Its impossible to quantify numbers, but be assured the applicants always heavily out number the positions available in any post.

Who will take 250hr guys ?, Some will and some won't and an accurate answer is best achieved by your own research as only you know where / what / when you will fly.
Ryanair turnover is probably higher then most airlines, From flight crew point of view its usually onto bigger and better.

Congrats on Modular route. Decided where yet?

Rgds Y

xflyer

I'd echo Yaeger, nearly every pilot experienced a similar situation. There is no guarantee of work. But a lot of people sabotage their opportunities by going about it the wrong way. Others set their sights too high and hang on for the airline job ignoring other opportunities like instructing or going abroad. Some quite simply made a mistake in becoming a pilot in the first place.

There is a big turnover in Ryanair, very few of the current crop of pilots see it as a place to make a career. O'Leary doesn't care because he even makes money out of training new pilots.

But realistically most people get a job eventually even if the pay is terrible, the hours long and the benefits nil.

kkk1985

yaeger wrote: »

Hey there kkk1985


Congrats on Modular route. Decided where yet?

Rgds Y

Thanks for your replies. I'm planning on starting in cork pending my class1 which is in two wks. I'll do my ppl there for sure and possibly my ATPl theory. I want to get the best results in them as I can and Atlantic seem to have a good class based system of covering the material. Hour building I'm thinking of the states and back to cork again for cpl. I'm still open to suggestions as to what way of going about it but I'm sure when I'm up there doing my ppl I'll be talking to people with a lot more knowledge than me. Obviously I want to do it the best way possible but without being talking for a ride money wise. All these flight schools seem to tell me every thing I want to hear and paint it up to be all great but then on forums people sometimes make it so negative.
Anyway I'm not going to be turning down any of ye'r advice especially with the mountains of info ye have.
Thanks again.

nabanoba

I'm also looking into becoming a commercial pilot. But was thinking of going the integrated route instead of modular.

I am also very wary of securing a job afterwards. If I'm willing to take a job anywhere what is the chances of me getting one?

Is there a high chance of not being accepted by anyone? And what is the main reason for someone who is qualified not getting a job??

Any help with these questions would be greatly appreciated.

CharlieOscar

I'd also echo xflyer.

Like any qualification (ATPL in this case) or any job (aviatio in this case) there are always going to be jobs available, its whether you are willing to be flexible or not. If you want to get an airline job in Ireland post ATPL, think to yourself, you have literally ignored 99% of flying jobs out there. If flying an airline is what you want, then you must be willing to travel to where the job is.

Look at most trades people in Ireland. They have had to up sticks and go where the jobs are, they are all gone to Australia & New Zealand

That is why most people in my opinion get struck in a rut after completing their training, that they are limiting themselves, be that it may that circumstance prevent you from widening your possibilities, but then why did you start training in the begining at all if you were only ever going to limit yourself to Ireland.

nabanoba

Thanks very much for the reply CharlieOscar.

I am relatively young and have lived in quite a few countries so chasing a job would be no problem for me.

Xpro

HI all,

Here`s a nice blog to read about a pilot that finished his atpl and was looking for a job.

http://indopilot.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html

nabanoba

Thanks for that Xpro. An interesting read.

I'd love to do something like that. A great way to build up your hours as well I'd say!

Stovepipe

Hi there
Whilst most wannabes want to fly jets for the mainline airlines, they should also give consideration for the UK third-level market, which is much,much bigger than ours. If you don't get into an airline first time around, then you have to consider other options such as instructing, parachute flying, tugging gliders and other types of basic CPL operations such as carrying out joyrides or intro flights (much more common in the UK than here). Third-level multiengine operators tend to require 500-700 hours TT, including 100 multi before they'd employ a guy to fly a Chieftain or a Seneca and it's usually more. Glider schools usually want to tug pilot to have at least a Silver C and live on beans for six months. Parachute ops in the UK do use basic CPLs but often only for SEP aircraft such as 182s or 206s.They also pay buttons but do sometimes give Type ratings on turbine aircraft to those who show stamina and promise. Warning: a lot of yer standard CPLs cannot cope with parachute flying, as it involves getting dirty and is tiring and thankless, but still great fun. Same goes for tugging.Also, to get a break into parachute flying, you have to wait a lot, hang around with parachutists (!) and make a lot of effort for scant reward, but you can build up hours quickly over a summer or two. Instructing,depending on whether it's with a club or school, doesn't pay well, to say the least, but you build hours and valuable contacts and may even get renewals for free, which is important.
Whatever you do, don't give up and keep your eyes and ears open and keep a CV handy and be prepared to travel for work and work hard when you get there.

regards
Stovepipe

xflyer

That job in Indonesia sounds like fun but you have to wary of third world outfits that hire low time pilots. He doesn't mention the name of the company he works for but I suspect it's a certain well known company who haved gained a bad reputation. They are on certain blacklists, there are issues with work permits for the pilots, poor maintenance, bribery and corruption to keep the airline operating. Add to that the obviously difficult environment out there and you would have to think seriously about working for them especially in relation to the risks. Fatal accidents in that kind of flying is fact of life even in the good companies.

McNulty737

Be warned, there is absolutely no guarantee that you will ever find employment as a pilot....many people that i trained with still have no flying job several years later and most have given up/gone back to their old jobs.

Ryanair are always taking on cadets, however if they do stop expansion later this year as they are planning, there is no guarantee that they will continue to hire. There are alot of experienced first officers (2500 hours) leaving Ryanair now to go to Emirates, aswell as captains. Unfortunately due to the attitudes of management towards staff, it isnt a career airline for most.

basill

As xflyer says a number of people scupper their "potential" career as a commercial pilot by going about it the wrong way.

Rather than I am going to go to Cork to learn to fly.....how about coming at it from another angle. Why not find out:-

- who is likely to hire me with 250 hours
- where do they hire from
- when do they hire

Get a list of every operator in the UK and Ireland (or further afield if you are willing to travel) and start scratching off the ones that will never hire you as a newbie (which is most). The UK CAA and IAA websites will be a good place to start.

Also spend about a week reading pprune and in particular the terms and endearment forums so you are under no illusion of what the industry is like that you are trying to get into.

As a hint I heard recently that whereas Ryanair were targeting Oxford for low hour cadets it now seems to have shifted to CAE. No idea why but again this highlights (if it is true) how you could have gone and spent 100k at Oxford to then find out that the MAIN hirer of low time pilots is now closed off to you.

funhouse18

As somebody that has PPL and aiming for ATPLs at the moment I have to say I find what you are saying both frustrating (that the system is the way it is) and useful (in that it's good to know). What you say confirms what I was thinking recently anyways from reading pprune and from what I know of club instructors and other pilots I know: basically it's all about the school.

What I'm thinking of doing is maybe doing ATPLs here at distance and building hours as I go (keep current and spread the cost) and then hit somewhere like Jerez, Oxford or CAE and do CPL/IR. That way I keep the cost affordable and get a decent school's name on my C.V.

Any thoughts/advice on that?

basill

There are some other golden rules to bear in mind as well. The first one is that most instructors are just like you....a low time pilot trying for their shot at the big job at the airport. Although they wander around the flying school with their 4 stripe epaulets gleaming and you guys all in awe of them, by far most of them know very little about getting a job. Some become very bitter and twisted having been instructing for yonks and you have to be very careful that you don't catch any of this.

The other thing to bear in mind is the power of contacts and networking. If you look at many flying schools "where are they now" pages it is easy to be absorbed into how successful they may appear at getting you a job. I once "appeared" on one of these pages and wrote to the school to have my name taken off. The school did nothing for me other than giving me the training I had paid for. Apart from those joining FR just about every other job was from a contact or a referral from the school itself. There are very few jobs ever gotten by sending in your CV or cold calling. Bear that in mind when you speak to people at your flying school and they tell you have they have a job lined up and the market is booming. It may well be for them but it might not be for you.

xflyer

The other thing to bear in mind is the power of contacts and networking.

There are very few jobs ever gotten by sending in your CV or cold calling.

Everything Basill wrote and the two above in particular. To those I can add being in right place at the right time even if it's only reading something on a website or forum and being prepared to do almost anything to reach your goal. If you've ever seen 'Ice Pilots' and their 'rampies' you'll know what I mean.

When I say being in the right place at the right time, what I actually mean is being there quite a lot. After all if you want to catch a bus, you don't sit at home sending emails to the bus company suggesting they open a route past your door. You go to the bus stop and wait for one that isn't full.

Irish Steve

All the points made are relevant.

Look very carefully at the long term aspects. Things have improved a little in Ireland now, but a few years ago, they were very difficult, the biggest hassle being the shortage of twins on which to do a flight test, which bit me very hard, due to the changeover from IAA to JAA, right at the time I was due to do a flight test here, having just done the same in the States, I came back with a nice new shiny ME CPL IR and a month's worth of current flying to find that the only aircraft suitable for doing a flight test at the time had made a gear up landing and was unservicable. Such is life, and at that time I just didn't have the capability to go through the entire exam loop again to do the JAA exams which were then required to replace the IAA exams, and they were bad enough.

Instructors. As has been mentioned, some instructors can be low hours, or low experience, or plain BAD! It was only that I'd done a mountain of reading, and knew a lot more than I was supposed to that I didn't get killed by one instructor who was supposedly instrument capable, and when it came down to it, as a student pilot with less than 25 hours total time, I ended up doing a better job of flying genuine IFR on a type I'd never flown before than the instructor did. I won't list the number of things he did wrong that day, the list was endless, including breaching a major UK active approach path in class A airspace, and crossing the active approach less than a mile from the outer marker at 1500 Ft, without making any radio contact with them. Yeah, I knew where we were, and was sh1tting myself at the number of people being vectored around us, but as the student, there wasn't much I could do about it at the time, I was already close to my workload limit keeping the aircraft stable. The CFI got a full (at his request written) report from me the following day, and 3 months later, after a more formal procedure involving (I suspect) the CAA and others, the instructor concerned was "invited to find employment outside of the aviation sector". I had already made it clear to the CFI that there was no way I would ever get into an airplane again with that instructor, which he respected.

I never will forget that day, it was a very vital lesson in just how easy it is to get into a situation where urgent and definitive action is essential to survival! And to anyone that thinks I'm exaggerating, 3 times in one day I was forced to make the decision of what to do when faced with rapidly rising terrain in front of me and cloud very close above me, knowing that effectively, there was going to be cumulo granite in front of me before long. Climbing IFR in cloud in a touring aircraft that was marginal performance wise due to the load was no joke.

The other aspect is when you come to do the twin training, which is important for the CPL in the long term. Again, I was very lucky, I did things very much in a non standard way, at the time I was doing my training, the work I was doing meant a lot of European travel, with company expenses, so my own aircraft was an option, and I managed to find a good full IFR equipped and deiced twin for not much more than the cost of an expensive high end car. I was also very lucky to find an instructor that was extremely good, with a lot of twin time, and as it was my own aircraft, and I wanted the hours anyway, I didn't care how long it took to do what in theory was a low hours requirement. In theory, 20 hours should have covered a ME and IMC rating (did'nt have enough total time for an IR at that stage), but the instructor I had point blank refused to do an IMC on the twin, his attitude, which I didn't argue with, he was 110% correct, was that to be safe flying what was a high performance twin (PA39 Twin comanche) the only thing he was prepared to do was train me to fly it to IR standard, even if I was only in theory initially flying it on an IMC. We spent the summer flying weekends, and by the time I'd finished, we'd effectively done the entire PPL syllabus again in the twin, and also done all the flying for the ME, IR, and night ratings, and when it came to flying solo, I was comfortable with the aircraft and it's performance.

That factor became very clear later on, when I went over to the States to do a ME CPL/IR that wasn't tied to my UK licence, and got put with a low hours instructor on a Seneca, which I'd already done time on previously elsewhere, and at that stage, I had close on 300 Hours ME time, and a load of additional time in various simulators at all levels, as that was the work I was involved with. When we got back after the first flight with the instructor, I had a quick chat with one of the senior instructors, and it confirmed my concern, the instructor that I'd been paired with had less than 25 hours total ME time, and me getting into the Seneca and flying it in a safe, and comfortable manner, to me, had frightened him almost sh1tless, as I was doing things in a way he's never seen before, and they were way outside of his comfort zone, which made for problems big time.

When the owner looked more closely at my logbook, and saw where I was coming from, he apologised profusely, and allocated me to a different instructor, who had a lot more experience, and that solved the problem nicely, we had a great month and I got what I wanted from the experience. Well, almost what I wanted, the plan was a European CPL as well, but as mentioned above, that didn't happen at the time, for reasons I couldn't control.

Commercial flying has changed massively over the nearly 25 years I've been involved. Pre 9-11, jump seats on most airlines were not a problem, for at least some of the trip, and if you were "known", the entire trip wasn't an issue for some captains, I did a massive number of hours on the jump seat of Shorts 360's with Aer Lingus when they used them on commuter routes, and it was possible to learn a lot by careful observation in that environment.

You will need deep pockets, the right experience, determination and a bit of luck along the way to make it into today's airline market, and depending on what you're expecting, you may be dissapointed, modern flying is very regulated, has very little room for options, and no longer has the "glamour" that was in theory attached to the job, partly because the "glamour" is an invention of the media anyway.

Modern jets are very automatic, and flying them is very much a case of telling it where it's going, before it does it, and then watching what it's doing to make sure that it's doing it in the way that you expect. If for some reason it's not doing what's required, working out why, and doing it safely and in the time available can sometimes be very challenging, there are times when the computer programmers not being pilots can make for incomplete or even wrong analysis of the issue, and the pilot is the one that ends up sorting out the mess before it becomes a tangled mess. Most of the time, sorting it out is successful, which is just as well, but not always.

I could go into those areas a lot more, as computers is where I was before the flying bug bit, and it ended up with computers still being where I am, with some aviation connections, which wasn't what I wanted, but that's the way life sometimes goes, and things like Saddam Hussein, 9-11 and other events have had significant effects on aviation.

Others have already said to look outside Ireland at other options. That's almost essential these days, aviation in Ireland is very small, and can be parochial. In certain areas, your choices will be very limited, if there even are any choices. That was brought home to me very clearly on one of the long cross country trips I did in the States, we flew into Centennial airport in Denver. Looking around, it became clear that there were more aircraft (of all sizes) on that one airfield than on the entire Irish Register!

Depending on what TV channels you have, you may have seen some of the Alaskan and Canadian programmes, like Ice Pilots. The money is bad, but the experience in places like that is invaluable, in the early days, you ideally want relatively short sectors, a lot of hand flying, and varying weather to hone the skills that will be needed over time. Long haul flying a large modern jet for 12 or more hours at a time, with maybe 1 or 2 landings a week if you are lucky won't do much for your raw flying skills, in that for over 90% of the time, the automation is flying the aircraft, and you are monitoring it, to make sure it does what it's been told. You don't learn much about flying when monitoring long sectors like that. Even on a small twin, like the PA39 I had, it had an autopilot, and using it too much when in the cruise can do bad things to the accuracy of your flying, it might still be within limits, but the sharp edge is dulled by lack of practise. The trick is knowing when to use the automation to reduce the workload so that the flight remains safe.

OK, there's a lot here, and making sense of it all may not be easy, but it's experience, not all of it good, and learning from it for me was priceless, and if it helps others, then that's good.

Make of it what you will

Stovepipe

A couple of points: keep current. Circulate the smaller airfields and you'd be surprised how often you can get even a short flight in a Group A type for nothing or even for a hand in getting it out of the hangar. You have to make the effort, even when cash is tight. Also, try and make contacts in the local airlines' flight ops offices or try for a summer job there. This is one of the better routes into an airline job, as you get to meet a lot of the flight crew, so your face gets known. Your Class 1 does not need to be renewed annually, and your ME-IR need only be renewed in the sim every two years. Join a flying club. Lots of them have current and retired airline staff on their books, who will advise and be able to pass CVs to the right hands and make positive references for you. Also, if you can beg or borrow the funds, buy a share in a light aircraft, such as a Cub or Jodel. It'll keep you current, improve your flying and will build your network of contacts. apart from that, get some sim time in.

regards
Stovepipe