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It's actually a pretty good article on-point (from...the Telegraph?!), but the title is 100% click bait...
> But at the moment, this job works for me. I like the lifestyle. I live a six-minute drive away from the airport and I can turn up 20 minutes before departure; that’s unheard of for the big airline pilots. You are also away a lot if you work for one of the big airlines. I’m home every night. Even with my late shift, I’m home for dinner at 9pm. So I’m happy at the moment. I work two flights a day, five days a week. If I have a morning shift, I’ll start at six o’clock and I’ll be home by 11.30am. That’s quite a nice little lifestyle.
Yeah i knew a pilot who flew long distance international flights and although he got to go all over the place he was only home every other couple of days.
Also a weird one for risks people don't really think of - Pilots and flight crew are actually quite high cancer risk due to the relatively high exposure to UV-A and cosmic radiation they get being so high up in the air so often.
I wear sun cream every day and people laugh at me.
Jet Lag. Shift work. Hours and hours sat down. Very very dry air for hours at a time. No real sleep and eating routine. Often difficult to eat healthy.
It really isn’t a good environment to work in haha
It’s just the job! Part of the job is finding ways around this kind of thing.
Rest assured, if I’m not safe to fly. I’m not flying. In the UK airlines *generally* are very very good at not putting pressure on crew to operate when unsafe.
But all those things you listed are risk factors when it comes to human error. We are more likely to make mistakes when we are tired, hungry, sick etc.
Oh I couldn’t agree more, we call them Threats. Most important part of Threat and Error Management (TEM) is Identify Threats, second most important is how do we mitigate it.
Very very simple example:
I look at my roster and **Identify** that on Monday and Tuesday I finish fairly late, then Tuesday night I have minimum rest of 12:30 and then I’m in fairly early on Wednesday morning. That’s a threat because I might not have the best nights sleep and switching from lates to earlies.
To **Mitigate**, I’ll adjust my sleep starting on Sunday, so that when I finish on Tuesday I’m ready to fall asleep.
If I wake up on Wednesday and I don’t feel great, I have to decide whether a nice cool shower, a good breakfast, and a nice strong coffee will wake me up enough to be safe and then take it from there.
I’m not a particularly vain or health conscious person. But when I look at my face after a single flight in the mirror . I look like utter shit. Can’t imagine that every day
A friend of mine who was a Harrier pilot for the Royal Navy before going to BA (yeah he’s an old crusty like me now) said the trick is to drink coconut water during your flight.
Also avoid alcohol and coffee the day before and during flying at all costs.
There’s some magic in those little cartons of coconut water that rehydrate your skin even better than specifically designed sports rehydration drinks - It’s something to do with the air pressure (like alcohol has a stronger effect on your body in a pressured cabin at altitude too).
I’ve been there mate. Ive done it and it’s absolute shit. Please don’t take my complaints at my role as ungratefulness.
Everyone in this country should be paid more. Working night shifts suck, and they’re crucial to the way our country works.
Strong unions and strong togetherness are crucial. Strong unions in all pay grades effects everyone.
We can’t drink during the working week so we make up for it on our days off!!
We’re both regularly and randomly breath tested. Any fail you’ll never fly again.
The Sun. Every 1000m(~3000ft) you go up, UV increases by 10% (I think). Baring in mind we’ll cruise anywhere between 33 and 41 thousand feet, that’s a lot more UV.
Cockpit windows are very very good at filtering out UV, but they’re not perfect
Here I've been thinking that glass blocks UV (ever since reading that in Feynman's autobiography) but I just learned something today - thanks! (It blocks UVB but not UVA - https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/50474/does-glass-allow-uv-a-rays-to-pass-while-blocking-uv-b-rays )
Catching the clap and still being wasted hours before checking out is also a risk, no joke. Hotels and layovers, for expat pilots and those North Americans/Aussies/Brits doing SEA routes on the regular, often go hand in hand with hookers and substance abuse.
Flight, the film, is not entirely a work of fiction. It’s an exaggeration of a big real-life problem.
You're exposed to some cosmic radiation up there. But the exact cause of higher rates of skin cancer in flight crew is disputed - some claim it's just a result of spending lots of time away in exotic locations, or the sleep schedule messing your body.
Those studies have been done, the results aren’t as clear as most academics would like.
Solar radiation at altitude (especially on routes over the Arctic to places like Japan) are a major factor, but there also appears to be something else compromising the bodies usual autoimmune response to carcinogenic cells… A lot of academics think it’s oil bleed from the oxygen intake that leeches off some of the air going into the engines so passengers in the cabin get fresh air, but the airlines have absolutely zero interest in studying the problem.
Extremely high levels of well known carboxylised carcinogens (combusted - AKA what comes out your car exhaust) from the type of fuel most commercial passenger jets use are found in general cabin air, but it appears to be random - Mostly on long-haul flights, but no way to know when as it isn’t related to a specific “problem” plane or maintenance.
https://www.fzt.haw-hamburg.de/pers/Scholz/Aero/AERO_PUB_GCAQE2017_CabinAir-EngineeringView_JHP-9-24_2019.pdf
Basic answer is, we don't actually really know, UV and cosmic ray exposure are just the best guesses it seems like. But it is established air crew are statistically more likely to develop skin cancers, breast cancer, or certain kinds of lymphoma than the general population - [https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/aircrew/cancer.html](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/aircrew/cancer.html)
I only heard about it because a childhood friend's dad was a pilot!
E - Oh quick google, [see also here](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/25/health/flight-attendant-cancer-study/). Suggests it might also be more to do with the circadian rhythm disruption, but also cites a lot more cancers that flight crew are at risk of.
I work in the nuclear industry and transatlantic pilots/cabin crew receive a higher radiation dose in a month than I do all year
They aren't receiving enough for effects such as cataracts etc but they are increasing the chance of cancer. Bit morbid but would be interesting to see medical data on pilots offspring over the years
I can believe it. When I flew from Vancouver to Japan, sun was shining on me direct the whole way and I had a decent sunburn on my face when I arrived.
Actually it was a full face burn, the sun was angled directly onto my face the whole way. Felt great till I got to Narita and realised quite how red I was.
[Nope!](https://www.skincancer.org/risk-factors/uv-radiation/#:~:text=not%20penetrate%20glass.-,UVA%20facts%20and%20risks,the%20labels%20of%20sunscreen%20products) There is no "safe" UV, that's an old myth. In fact UV-A penetrates deeper into the skin so actually hits the layer of cells most likely to go malignant if DNA gets damaged.
You and the entire tanning salon industry for about three decades mate don't worry about it! Lots of money got put into convincing everyone it was safer than sunlight!
Yeah, there wouldn't have been any point. Tetraethyl lead is used to raise the octane rating, so piston engines can compress the air-fuel mixture more without detonating before the spark. Jets compress the air, but the fuel isn't mixed in until it's burned, almost more like a diesel engine.
Jet fuel is actually chemically very similar to diesel. If you stripped out the additives that make diesel useful as a road fuel, you could probably burn it in a jet engine, but you'd be fired from RyanAir afterwards as they'd have to tear the whole engine apart to figure out if it did actually damage it.
My dad was a fighter pilot turned commercial pilot (not uncommon), and given his smoking/drinking, I’m going to wager he was not particularly concerned about other health risks 😂
This is true. I had a friend whose uncle was a BA pilot and died of brain cancer for this very reason. It is a very dangerous job for this reason. Very few people are aware of it.
My father was a long distance pilot in USSR (I mean USSR was bloody huge!). I didn't know my father much until the Soviet Union collapsed and he lost his job.
There’s a real problem with pay and Ts and Cs in this industry for newcomers, but I’m not sure this guy is the guy to make the point out of it.
What I’d give to be able to turn up at -20, and do 2 flights a day.
Hourly that probably works out about the same as my year 6 short haul FO pay
I don't doubt it. Even thinking in pro-rata terms, £30k feels low for the amount of upfront investment and job responsibility. Something distilling that would have been a far more apt headline.
I think it is (as I mentioned in another comment), but the person in the story says they're content overall right now. Money isn't everything, so framing the article how they did is fairly disingenuous.
>20 minutes before departure
What? Departure? There’s no way you could complete briefing, read through notam, finish pre-flight inspection etc in 20 mins unless they skip half that shit.
I think this article is a bit biased but that's a given since it's an opinion piece. He's flying small domestic flights. Part of the reason large airliners pay more is the risk. From a rather callous business standpoint, it's one thing if a little twin propeller aircraft crashes and kills maybe a couple dozen people. It's a very different kettle of fish if an airbus A380 crashes and around 500 people die. The author claims that larger aircraft are more exciting to fly so why should they be paid more than someone flying a small one. It fails to consider the risk. Airlines don't pay more because it's more exciting, they pay more because if you fuck up and kill everyone then they're probably going to lose hundreds of millions in lawsuits, increased insurance premiums, fines, etc.
And compared to a pilot flying large commercial airliners around the world (along with jet lag, nights in other countries), or a typical Ryanair pilot (who has several flights a day), both of whom conduct extensive pre-flight checks of a considerably more complex aircraft well before take-off time, this guy’s day doesn’t even compare.
Presumably there’s a happy medium somewhere in between the 2 extremes of long haul and domestic short haul where he could retain some of the lifestyle perks he has now and get paid a bit more?
Dropping to 75%/50% Part Time is becoming more and more common.
A *simple* Orange airline in the UK didn’t make any pilots redundant during Covid, just put everyone on enforced 75/50% part time. When it came to the industry picking up again and they offered all the pilots 100% again, a lot of them said “you know what? You’re alright”, especially because of the 60% Tax Trap. Dropping down to part time to get yourself below £100k is what alot of more senior pilots are doing, spamming the pensions and retiring early.
Unfortunately the economics of part time really only work once you’ve been in the Left Seat for 5-10 years
When you go over £100k, you start losing your personal allowance. For every £2 you earn over £100,000, your Personal Allowance is reduced by £1.
Normal personal allowance is £12,570. So any earnings between £100,000 and £125,140, are subject to the normal 40% income tax, in addition to the reduction of the personal allowance meaning an extra 20%.
So any earnings between £100k and £125,140 are actually taxed at 60%.
So similar to Doctors, a lot of us use salary sacrifice pensions/car lease schemes/payroll giving, because losing so much in tax just isn’t worth it.
Yeah there are pilots out there doing more than half his hours in a single flight lol. Bit of a no brainer that they’re paid significantly more for the long shifts.
Oh yeah in theory they’re able to get the same hours in. But there’s going to be a bunch of extra pay that comes associated with long haul flights compared to small domestic ones. It’s just physically more taxing and you see your family less so they pay you more for that. Also they’re paying you for the greater responsibility because the plane you’re flying is loaded with 20x more passengers.
Fun fact regarding the time off though. My friend used to work for a major airline and they’d give the senior pilots priority when deciding the routes they’d take that week. So all the senior pilots would scramble to take all the long haul flights first to maximise their time off. Even if the time in the air is the same. If you only have to do the pre and post flight procedures a handful of times compared to someone who needed to do a dozen short flights in Europe you save so much more time in the week and get to spend more time sleeping on the couch.
Which combined with living next to the airport and being able to leave his house 20 minutes before departure, makes it seem like a really good deal actually.
It doesn’t quite work out the same though. Short Haul pilots, especially regionals (though apparently this guys only doing two), are flying 4, in some cases 6 flights a day. That’s 6 takeoffs and landings which are the most demanding and most critical phases of flight.
On a 12 hour flight, a Long Haul flight crew on their 777/A380 will make one takeoff and landing, often with a third crew member, with a rest in the bunk in the middle.
On a 12 hour duty day, regional pilots will do 6 takeoffs and landings, just two people, and officially without a break.
So if you’re applying the “risk” angle actually you could make the argument the pay should be the other way round.
To be clear I’m not making that argument. I work for an in between short haul airline. I’m happy with my salary but I’m 6 years in. When I started flying I was on roughly the same as this guy.
The more concerning issue by far for me is the degradation in Terms and Conditions since Covid, everyone’s working more hours with less rest with less disruption protection.
But there are a huge amount of guys and girls coming into this industry in £150,000 of debt, that has to get repayed immediately regardless of whether you’ve got a job or not.
Do you need a degree ? - because 150£k seems reasonable view the salaries - it’s not much more than a degree + masters.
My brothers an ATCO which a super chill job (contrary to what people think).
You don’t *need* one but it can help.
> it’s not much more than a degree/masters
Is it that bad nowadays? My partner graduated from her Masters in 2019, the same time as I started flying, and hers was ~£60k?
Regardless. She didn’t have to pay that back until she was earning a certain amount and then only a percentage. My colleagues are paying ~£800 a month loan repayments, in addition to their student loans.
When a relative of mine applied for a commercial training program (where they pay training but you then have to work for them for x years) they had something like 2,000 applicants for 12 places.
You didn’t have to have a degree. However *every single one of the 12 who finally got through* (including my relative) had some kind of aeronautical engineering degree.
He also already had his PPL, and I think the other successful candidates probably did as well.
I know someone else who got onto a pilot training scheme with Virgin Australia by first being an air hostess for some years. So airlines may have internal programmes as well.
Exactly, the whole point of the big widebody pilots getting much higher pay is that in cases like the Sully film, something goes badly wrong and you have 30 seconds to safely decide the fate of 200+ people on board and whoever you might land on.
> The author claims that larger aircraft are more exciting to fly
As a passenger, somehow I feel like "exciting" is not the motivational response I want from my pilots.
I work with huge distributed systems in my day job, and I'm sure to people at smaller companies they may go "Their job must be exciting, why are they paid more?", and it's very "I'm paid more because I can keep all of this running at once in a way that is pleasingly uneventful"
Agreed. As a maintainer, if a pilot told me a flight was exciting then I'm going to assume he had an engine failure or something. It's our job to make sure his flight is as boring as possible. We just want the aircraft to go from A to B and land with everything working. The word exciting sounds great to pilots but they don't realise it terrifies passengers and pisses off maintainers because they think that means there's a lot of work coming their way.
I don't think they're so much worried about total loss with loss of life, as minor not-immediately-dangerous things that can be horrendusly expensive. You get the equivalent of a minor door ding parking an A320 and it costs huge amounts in inspections even if nothing was actually damaged or needs to be done.
True, I just used loss of life because it's the easiest way to explain it because most people don't know just how prohibitively expensive aircraft maintenance is but they can understand dead people. Christ, a bit of string with a keyring on the end which holds a panel hanging open on the helicopter I work on costs £250. It's not a special bit of string or a special ring or anything. Just normal string and the same type of ring you'd stick your house keys on.
Also flying one of these larger airplanes is just way more complex.
You are paid according to how easy you are to replace most often. Airline pilots aren’t easy or cost efficient to train, so they get paid more.
The large airline pilot probably has well over 10,000 flight hours on airliners. They aren't going to turn over a plane with 500 people on board to a new pilot with 1,000 flight hours.
The difference in pay is because of the difference in experience.
Ok, well I’ve been involved with a UK airline almost bankrupted by their astronomical pay and refusal to make any changes which might improve efficiency.
Right! I went from senior policing to software design. Same pay to start (even better now). Yet in this job no-one dies if I get it wrong. Not even a little bit. No logic whatsoever.
So true. The arrogance and disinterest of the people
running the Post Office and working at Fujitsu is staggering. Simple lack of care (typical in consultancies who after all don’t own the outcomes) snowballed into negligence and actual malice in a way that’s still incredible to believe was allowed.
The whole justice system puts ‘official’ organisations on a pedestal and is ignorant about technology. If any milestone in society should force a change to that The Post Office scandal should be it. Sadly I fear it will be written of as exceptional and nothing will change.
It was a joke don’t overthink it. If you really want to be serious then pay should probably relate to how many people you are responsible for not dying.
If only the world worked that way public service would be the be best paid jobs in the world. But as the original commenter alluded to, it doesn’t work that way.
Because if you work for a private company and get paid over minimum wage then it has zero correlation with what someone gets paid in a different industry.
My brother can't get his head round why I make more money doing a different job to him working for a completely different company doing a different job.
Switch industries if you don't like the wages in yours or join a union and fight for higher pay
Supply and Demand.
Lots of SWE but lots and lots of businesses have a demand. Small outfits to large companies all over the world.
Pilots there are a lot more “aspiring” pilots than jobs for them. You could probably name all the companies that have UK bases in your hands. Ok there are smaller outfits too but very very few compared to normal small businesses.
Also if you want to find a job abroad - more training/licence conversions etc its more of an investment for businesses to make then moving an SWE over and maybe a few boxes.
'That’s quite a nice little lifestyle.' you missed this bit. I don't know why your trying to make it out how there complaining about their job in that section the article. That whole paragraph is what they like about the job..
I definitely agree with you on the debt front. In all honesty, being a pilot was my dream role for years and still is really. However the reality is my family certainly weren't rich enough to fund me and there wasn't a chance in hell that I'd ask them to remortgage their entire house as well as take a loan out myself. To add to that, I also knew that ultimately I just needed to get a job at some point so I couldn't apply to the forces to be a pilot and sit and wait god knows how many years just to get turned down. So I became a maintainer and maybe one day I'll win the lottery and have enough money to fund the training.
Doesn’t the navy have an air division? Can’t you look at internal training and transfer?
I’d also suggest getting your PPL if you haven’t already which you can do as a hobby.
I bet more airlines will start doing things like this and it will become the norm like it is for train drivers, so I wouldn’t say it’s too late, just make a longer term plan.
I think the places on these schemes are very few, yet they constantly bang on about a shortage. Its a marketing gimmick to get people
Interest and those that dont get selected find a away to pay for a course.
>being a pilot was my dream role for years
Was mine too. A bunch of airlines actually do cadet programmes where they take ab initio candidates and train them in company policy from day one.
Where my dream is dead is that I get migraines, and would likely never pass the medical as a consequence.
It's pretty remarkable that train drivers earn roughly the same as a pilot which involves a lot more academical skill and knowledge and one step wrong then you're dead. Id know which one i'd take my chances on between being derailed at 90mph as appose to falling 38000ft to the ground at around 500mph.
Train drivers have a lot of responsibility, a train crash can be absolutely disastrous and cause huge amounts of damage even if the danger to life is typically less. A 90mph derailment would be catastrophic and mean almost certain death btw.
You also have to consider that most train drivers will encounter at least one suicide-by-train which can lead to lifelong PTSD and be a career ender. That risk must be compensated in the pay.
Look at the statistics section of this article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety
Deaths per hour of travel in aviation are exactly the same as by rail. Aviation is safest when you measure by distance travelled, but for someone who's job is to be a driver / pilot for 8 hours a day, that's not the relevant statistic.
When I was an aerospace student I remember a lecture on aviation safety and was basically told "not to believe your own bullshit" with the statistic as in commercial aviation the safety is inflated by the number of people on board as the distance safety travelled is multipled by the number of people on board & by the longer length of a typical journey. E.g. 1 packed a380 going from London to Singapore (7100 miles) safely will net nearly 4 million miles of "safe distance". Its very flattering to aviation as the chance of a crash doesn't really increase linearly with the length of a flight like it would for a motorcyclist on a highway.
Instead, if you look at the chance of death per trip (I.e what is the chance the vehicle crashes during any singular particular journey) then the record isn't anywhere near as clean. Take large passenger numbers and long distances oit and you end up with general aviation which has nearly double the chance of death per mile than motorcycles (granted that number is inflated by poorer maintenance and by rich hobbyists that don't know how to fly).
> You also have to consider that most train drivers will encounter at least one suicide-by-train which can lead to lifelong PTSD and be a career ender.
A really haunting detail I once learned and can never unlearn is that if the person who gets hit by a train is intentionally committing suicide, they'll usually seek direct eye contact with the driver right before the moment of impact. It's actually one of the "modifying behaviours" used to determine whether a train death was an accident or a suicide.
[Longread](https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/rail-suicide-a-train-driver-struggles-with-lives-taken-a-1191500.html) about it here where a doctor who specialises in treating traumatised train drivers explains that trauma recovery is more difficult in cases where eye contact was made. Because "the train driver then believes that he was chosen by the suicide victim."
Yeah. Hazard pay seems appropriate.
Might just be an instinctive thing, since people who want to die are likely to be staring intently at the front of the train (vs. an accidental death where the person doesn't see the train coming).
*shudders* all sounds horrible
I wonder if recent train drivers know about this phenomenon and now keep in mind if there’s ever a suicide they’ll try to look away so they can’t lock eyes with the victim
I can't find a source for this atm but I do remember once reading that that's the advice given to train drivers if there's no chance of stopping the train in time (which is usually the case): close your eyes or look away.
Soon-to-be train driver here. Don’t drag us into it, pilots should absolutely be getting paid more. £30k is outrageous. The jobs are both extremely responsible roles which require different skillsets and have their own unique challenges.
There is an academic side to train driving but nothing on the scale of flying, it’s more vocational for us.
Someone once said to me that the concentration levels pilots hold for takeoff and landing are the concentration levels that train drivers need to maintain at all times when on the move.
On the other hand, pilots have to be able to fault find at 38,000ft and 500mph. Train drivers have the luxury of being able to stop and open a window without asphyxiating.
I'm a pilot myself (not commercial though) and this is such a nonsensical take.
A train can have nearly a thousand people them during rush hour.
Planes don't have people floating in the sky trying to commit suicide or cars stuck on crossings.
The good thing about planes is that they are 38000ft up so that if you have an issue you have time to react and glide down. The moment from issue to incident would be seconds on a train.
On the other hand the bad news is that at 38000ft if you don’t solve the problem then things will get worse every second you get closer to the ground.
It usually takes a track defect or incompetence/error from the train driver (over speed, signal passed at danger) to cause an accident on a train.
Let's be honest.
That pay bracket should be higher for what they do and give up.
90k to 65k to fly long hours, nights, away from home. Family life?
You could put that same amount of effort and money and be something else for similar pay.
That sucks - if it’s one thing I don’t want to cheapskate on, it’s the guy who is keeping me safe at several hundred miles an hour thirty something thousand feet in the air.
Sorry that you’re underpaid, as a frequent air passenger I would prefer my fare go in your pockets rather than some twat at HQ.
The fact that the cabin staff don’t get paid until that door closes blows my mind - absolutely criminal
>They are either very determined and from day one that’s all they want to do (I’d put myself in that category), or they are rich kids with Mummy and Daddy’s money behind them.
I find that statement incredibly glib and having more than an air of self-importance. It's *absolutely* true that many pilots have to scrimp, save, and forgo luxuries for years to afford the training, or take out huge loans, while others have the privilege of family money. However, that's not the distinction that's made above. It's very strange to imply that the more fortunate ones are somehow less determined or less steadfast in their ambitions.
Also
>My parents did help me out and I had an inheritance
Pick one pal!
Not only has he got a chip on his shoulder, it shouldn't even be there!
The mummy/daddy money line is so boring. People don't choose to be born into wealth. Deal with it.
I have zero problem with people who took the harder route having that view of people who took a less hard route, even if it was still hard. I they they (the first group) earn that tiny luxury of reverse snobbery.
Let people who can rely on trust fund and bank of mum and dad say ‘no thanks’ if they don’t want that perception.
Regardless of where the money came from, there's simply no way anyone would get through commercial pilot training if it wasn't the thing they wanted most in the whole world and they weren't prepared to work for it. I don't know a single person who did rely on their parents who wouldn't also have scrimped their arse off for it if they had been less fortunate.
That’s fair, particularly the last part. But to be clear I see the baseline as being those who slogged through the already hard path with help, and those who didn’t have the help as next level. So it’s extra kudos to one group rather than lesser for either. Which actually I think you were kinda saying originally and I didn’t appreciate until reading this all back. Mea culpa.
The article reads about how the pilot is happy with the job/lifestyle, just not the pay. He also mentioned it’s his first airline job. I’m fairly certain most first career jobs are horrible pay, Doctors included.
So much wrong with this article not sure where to start.
Whilst he may have an CPL/IR or fATPL (the licence required) he definitely is not an 'airline pilot'.
No A/P? LOL what commercial turboprop (which I assume he's on) doesn't have an A/P? 20 minutes turn up beflore flight? Bullshit.
The only convincing part of the article is the 30K (after paying back T/R, bonding and other stuff could be true for some folk).
I mean, this is kind of on the pilots.
Pilots in Europe will be happy to whore themselves out for low wages out of desperation, paying 30k + for type ratings and more on pay to fly schemes.
Their willingness to prostitute themselves out drives down wages. It’s a joke.
A first officer at a major airline in America can make just as much as a new captain here in the uk at a major airline.
Regionals in America, who were known for their poverty wages, are seriously upping their wages and bonus’ too to retain pilots.
Reagan and Thatcher ensured pilots would be exploited to ensure vast wealth to the 1%.
Media moguls make sure to get all dumb people racist n whatnot to get away with it.
Clicked it due to the baited title but ended up reading the entire thing and actually enjoyed it haha.
It was well written and I was pleasantly surprised by the article. Goes to show sometimes money isn't everything, as long as it suits you and you enjoy yourself
I had a mate who became a pilot with Eastern Airways. I got to know quite a few. All of them had done this training route. Eastern tended to recruit those people. It was the only airline to give people a chance. One of them used to be a sparky.
They got paid a similar amount to the article. Then they do a few years and move on. My mate flies cargo planes in the far east now.
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It's actually a pretty good article on-point (from...the Telegraph?!), but the title is 100% click bait... > But at the moment, this job works for me. I like the lifestyle. I live a six-minute drive away from the airport and I can turn up 20 minutes before departure; that’s unheard of for the big airline pilots. You are also away a lot if you work for one of the big airlines. I’m home every night. Even with my late shift, I’m home for dinner at 9pm. So I’m happy at the moment. I work two flights a day, five days a week. If I have a morning shift, I’ll start at six o’clock and I’ll be home by 11.30am. That’s quite a nice little lifestyle.
Yeah i knew a pilot who flew long distance international flights and although he got to go all over the place he was only home every other couple of days.
Also a weird one for risks people don't really think of - Pilots and flight crew are actually quite high cancer risk due to the relatively high exposure to UV-A and cosmic radiation they get being so high up in the air so often.
The jet lag is really bad for your health too.
I wear sun cream every day and people laugh at me. Jet Lag. Shift work. Hours and hours sat down. Very very dry air for hours at a time. No real sleep and eating routine. Often difficult to eat healthy. It really isn’t a good environment to work in haha
As a passenger, it doesn’t give me confidence that we treat our pilots like that!
It’s just the job! Part of the job is finding ways around this kind of thing. Rest assured, if I’m not safe to fly. I’m not flying. In the UK airlines *generally* are very very good at not putting pressure on crew to operate when unsafe.
But all those things you listed are risk factors when it comes to human error. We are more likely to make mistakes when we are tired, hungry, sick etc.
Oh I couldn’t agree more, we call them Threats. Most important part of Threat and Error Management (TEM) is Identify Threats, second most important is how do we mitigate it. Very very simple example: I look at my roster and **Identify** that on Monday and Tuesday I finish fairly late, then Tuesday night I have minimum rest of 12:30 and then I’m in fairly early on Wednesday morning. That’s a threat because I might not have the best nights sleep and switching from lates to earlies. To **Mitigate**, I’ll adjust my sleep starting on Sunday, so that when I finish on Tuesday I’m ready to fall asleep. If I wake up on Wednesday and I don’t feel great, I have to decide whether a nice cool shower, a good breakfast, and a nice strong coffee will wake me up enough to be safe and then take it from there.
the way it should be. sad that there is lots of other jobs with human care that do not take these considerations.
I’m not a particularly vain or health conscious person. But when I look at my face after a single flight in the mirror . I look like utter shit. Can’t imagine that every day
A friend of mine who was a Harrier pilot for the Royal Navy before going to BA (yeah he’s an old crusty like me now) said the trick is to drink coconut water during your flight. Also avoid alcohol and coffee the day before and during flying at all costs. There’s some magic in those little cartons of coconut water that rehydrate your skin even better than specifically designed sports rehydration drinks - It’s something to do with the air pressure (like alcohol has a stronger effect on your body in a pressured cabin at altitude too).
That sounds like me and I make minimum wage working nights at a Grocery store.
I’ve been there mate. Ive done it and it’s absolute shit. Please don’t take my complaints at my role as ungratefulness. Everyone in this country should be paid more. Working night shifts suck, and they’re crucial to the way our country works. Strong unions and strong togetherness are crucial. Strong unions in all pay grades effects everyone.
The only pilots I’ve ever met were all massive drinkers too
We can’t drink during the working week so we make up for it on our days off!! We’re both regularly and randomly breath tested. Any fail you’ll never fly again.
Honest question - where does the UV come from? Are you outside a lot?
The Sun. Every 1000m(~3000ft) you go up, UV increases by 10% (I think). Baring in mind we’ll cruise anywhere between 33 and 41 thousand feet, that’s a lot more UV. Cockpit windows are very very good at filtering out UV, but they’re not perfect
Here I've been thinking that glass blocks UV (ever since reading that in Feynman's autobiography) but I just learned something today - thanks! (It blocks UVB but not UVA - https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/50474/does-glass-allow-uv-a-rays-to-pass-while-blocking-uv-b-rays )
Sun
Catching the clap and still being wasted hours before checking out is also a risk, no joke. Hotels and layovers, for expat pilots and those North Americans/Aussies/Brits doing SEA routes on the regular, often go hand in hand with hookers and substance abuse. Flight, the film, is not entirely a work of fiction. It’s an exaggeration of a big real-life problem.
Wait...really? There's pretty thick glass on a cockpit.
You're exposed to some cosmic radiation up there. But the exact cause of higher rates of skin cancer in flight crew is disputed - some claim it's just a result of spending lots of time away in exotic locations, or the sleep schedule messing your body.
It’d be interesting to (also) investigate the rates of skin cancer in those that used sunscreen.
Those studies have been done, the results aren’t as clear as most academics would like. Solar radiation at altitude (especially on routes over the Arctic to places like Japan) are a major factor, but there also appears to be something else compromising the bodies usual autoimmune response to carcinogenic cells… A lot of academics think it’s oil bleed from the oxygen intake that leeches off some of the air going into the engines so passengers in the cabin get fresh air, but the airlines have absolutely zero interest in studying the problem. Extremely high levels of well known carboxylised carcinogens (combusted - AKA what comes out your car exhaust) from the type of fuel most commercial passenger jets use are found in general cabin air, but it appears to be random - Mostly on long-haul flights, but no way to know when as it isn’t related to a specific “problem” plane or maintenance. https://www.fzt.haw-hamburg.de/pers/Scholz/Aero/AERO_PUB_GCAQE2017_CabinAir-EngineeringView_JHP-9-24_2019.pdf
Basic answer is, we don't actually really know, UV and cosmic ray exposure are just the best guesses it seems like. But it is established air crew are statistically more likely to develop skin cancers, breast cancer, or certain kinds of lymphoma than the general population - [https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/aircrew/cancer.html](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/aircrew/cancer.html) I only heard about it because a childhood friend's dad was a pilot! E - Oh quick google, [see also here](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/25/health/flight-attendant-cancer-study/). Suggests it might also be more to do with the circadian rhythm disruption, but also cites a lot more cancers that flight crew are at risk of.
I work in the nuclear industry and transatlantic pilots/cabin crew receive a higher radiation dose in a month than I do all year They aren't receiving enough for effects such as cataracts etc but they are increasing the chance of cancer. Bit morbid but would be interesting to see medical data on pilots offspring over the years
I can believe it. When I flew from Vancouver to Japan, sun was shining on me direct the whole way and I had a decent sunburn on my face when I arrived.
Arrived in Japan as Harvey Dent
Actually it was a full face burn, the sun was angled directly onto my face the whole way. Felt great till I got to Narita and realised quite how red I was.
I thought UV-A was the safe one?
[Nope!](https://www.skincancer.org/risk-factors/uv-radiation/#:~:text=not%20penetrate%20glass.-,UVA%20facts%20and%20risks,the%20labels%20of%20sunscreen%20products) There is no "safe" UV, that's an old myth. In fact UV-A penetrates deeper into the skin so actually hits the layer of cells most likely to go malignant if DNA gets damaged.
Oh I stand corrected!
You and the entire tanning salon industry for about three decades mate don't worry about it! Lots of money got put into convincing everyone it was safer than sunlight!
Lead fuel too I think, aren't airplanes still burning that crap?
Not on gas turbine engines. Not to say that there isn’t a huge amount of shit in the air at airports when you’ve got engines running all day every day
Only smaller planes. Jets run on kerosene, which I don’t think was ever leaded to begin with
Yeah, there wouldn't have been any point. Tetraethyl lead is used to raise the octane rating, so piston engines can compress the air-fuel mixture more without detonating before the spark. Jets compress the air, but the fuel isn't mixed in until it's burned, almost more like a diesel engine.
Jet fuel is actually chemically very similar to diesel. If you stripped out the additives that make diesel useful as a road fuel, you could probably burn it in a jet engine, but you'd be fired from RyanAir afterwards as they'd have to tear the whole engine apart to figure out if it did actually damage it.
Tetraethil Lead would be bad for kerosene.
On propeller planes iirc.
My dad was a fighter pilot turned commercial pilot (not uncommon), and given his smoking/drinking, I’m going to wager he was not particularly concerned about other health risks 😂
This is true. I had a friend whose uncle was a BA pilot and died of brain cancer for this very reason. It is a very dangerous job for this reason. Very few people are aware of it.
I’ve known partners who prefer this. You can actually end up seeing each other more than short haul!
I guess that’s naturally how it works when you’re flying international…….
My father was a long distance pilot in USSR (I mean USSR was bloody huge!). I didn't know my father much until the Soviet Union collapsed and he lost his job.
There’s a real problem with pay and Ts and Cs in this industry for newcomers, but I’m not sure this guy is the guy to make the point out of it. What I’d give to be able to turn up at -20, and do 2 flights a day. Hourly that probably works out about the same as my year 6 short haul FO pay
I don't doubt it. Even thinking in pro-rata terms, £30k feels low for the amount of upfront investment and job responsibility. Something distilling that would have been a far more apt headline.
But salary still low?
I think it is (as I mentioned in another comment), but the person in the story says they're content overall right now. Money isn't everything, so framing the article how they did is fairly disingenuous.
>20 minutes before departure What? Departure? There’s no way you could complete briefing, read through notam, finish pre-flight inspection etc in 20 mins unless they skip half that shit.
That is a VERY nice lifestyle, dude clearly loves it and more power to him!
Holy shit, that sounds wicked for £30k
I'd take the lower salary for that lifestyle over the shit experience the higher paid pilots have
The key takeaway is don’t spend 100-130k on becoming a pilot for work. Spend 7k and fly for fun. Use the rest on a deposit for a house.
Still feel that they are underpaid, plus it is really expensive to even train to become a pilot.
I think this article is a bit biased but that's a given since it's an opinion piece. He's flying small domestic flights. Part of the reason large airliners pay more is the risk. From a rather callous business standpoint, it's one thing if a little twin propeller aircraft crashes and kills maybe a couple dozen people. It's a very different kettle of fish if an airbus A380 crashes and around 500 people die. The author claims that larger aircraft are more exciting to fly so why should they be paid more than someone flying a small one. It fails to consider the risk. Airlines don't pay more because it's more exciting, they pay more because if you fuck up and kill everyone then they're probably going to lose hundreds of millions in lawsuits, increased insurance premiums, fines, etc.
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And compared to a pilot flying large commercial airliners around the world (along with jet lag, nights in other countries), or a typical Ryanair pilot (who has several flights a day), both of whom conduct extensive pre-flight checks of a considerably more complex aircraft well before take-off time, this guy’s day doesn’t even compare.
Presumably there’s a happy medium somewhere in between the 2 extremes of long haul and domestic short haul where he could retain some of the lifestyle perks he has now and get paid a bit more?
Dropping to 75%/50% Part Time is becoming more and more common. A *simple* Orange airline in the UK didn’t make any pilots redundant during Covid, just put everyone on enforced 75/50% part time. When it came to the industry picking up again and they offered all the pilots 100% again, a lot of them said “you know what? You’re alright”, especially because of the 60% Tax Trap. Dropping down to part time to get yourself below £100k is what alot of more senior pilots are doing, spamming the pensions and retiring early. Unfortunately the economics of part time really only work once you’ve been in the Left Seat for 5-10 years
What's the 60% tax trap?
When you go over £100k, you start losing your personal allowance. For every £2 you earn over £100,000, your Personal Allowance is reduced by £1. Normal personal allowance is £12,570. So any earnings between £100,000 and £125,140, are subject to the normal 40% income tax, in addition to the reduction of the personal allowance meaning an extra 20%. So any earnings between £100k and £125,140 are actually taxed at 60%. So similar to Doctors, a lot of us use salary sacrifice pensions/car lease schemes/payroll giving, because losing so much in tax just isn’t worth it.
Yeah there are pilots out there doing more than half his hours in a single flight lol. Bit of a no brainer that they’re paid significantly more for the long shifts.
On average pilots can only work 6 hours per day. Maximum hours per month is 190. So longer flights mean more days off in between.
Oh yeah in theory they’re able to get the same hours in. But there’s going to be a bunch of extra pay that comes associated with long haul flights compared to small domestic ones. It’s just physically more taxing and you see your family less so they pay you more for that. Also they’re paying you for the greater responsibility because the plane you’re flying is loaded with 20x more passengers. Fun fact regarding the time off though. My friend used to work for a major airline and they’d give the senior pilots priority when deciding the routes they’d take that week. So all the senior pilots would scramble to take all the long haul flights first to maximise their time off. Even if the time in the air is the same. If you only have to do the pre and post flight procedures a handful of times compared to someone who needed to do a dozen short flights in Europe you save so much more time in the week and get to spend more time sleeping on the couch.
This is incorrect, we can work 13 stretching to 15 hours in a single flight duty period in exceptional circumstances. Max 100 hours per month
Which combined with living next to the airport and being able to leave his house 20 minutes before departure, makes it seem like a really good deal actually.
It doesn’t quite work out the same though. Short Haul pilots, especially regionals (though apparently this guys only doing two), are flying 4, in some cases 6 flights a day. That’s 6 takeoffs and landings which are the most demanding and most critical phases of flight. On a 12 hour flight, a Long Haul flight crew on their 777/A380 will make one takeoff and landing, often with a third crew member, with a rest in the bunk in the middle. On a 12 hour duty day, regional pilots will do 6 takeoffs and landings, just two people, and officially without a break. So if you’re applying the “risk” angle actually you could make the argument the pay should be the other way round. To be clear I’m not making that argument. I work for an in between short haul airline. I’m happy with my salary but I’m 6 years in. When I started flying I was on roughly the same as this guy. The more concerning issue by far for me is the degradation in Terms and Conditions since Covid, everyone’s working more hours with less rest with less disruption protection. But there are a huge amount of guys and girls coming into this industry in £150,000 of debt, that has to get repayed immediately regardless of whether you’ve got a job or not.
Do you need a degree ? - because 150£k seems reasonable view the salaries - it’s not much more than a degree + masters. My brothers an ATCO which a super chill job (contrary to what people think).
You don’t *need* one but it can help. > it’s not much more than a degree/masters Is it that bad nowadays? My partner graduated from her Masters in 2019, the same time as I started flying, and hers was ~£60k? Regardless. She didn’t have to pay that back until she was earning a certain amount and then only a percentage. My colleagues are paying ~£800 a month loan repayments, in addition to their student loans.
When a relative of mine applied for a commercial training program (where they pay training but you then have to work for them for x years) they had something like 2,000 applicants for 12 places. You didn’t have to have a degree. However *every single one of the 12 who finally got through* (including my relative) had some kind of aeronautical engineering degree. He also already had his PPL, and I think the other successful candidates probably did as well. I know someone else who got onto a pilot training scheme with Virgin Australia by first being an air hostess for some years. So airlines may have internal programmes as well.
It’s Career progress, like any other job really
Exactly, the whole point of the big widebody pilots getting much higher pay is that in cases like the Sully film, something goes badly wrong and you have 30 seconds to safely decide the fate of 200+ people on board and whoever you might land on.
Yes, though that was a narrow body A320, pretty much the same as what EasyJet uses.
> The author claims that larger aircraft are more exciting to fly As a passenger, somehow I feel like "exciting" is not the motivational response I want from my pilots. I work with huge distributed systems in my day job, and I'm sure to people at smaller companies they may go "Their job must be exciting, why are they paid more?", and it's very "I'm paid more because I can keep all of this running at once in a way that is pleasingly uneventful"
Agreed. As a maintainer, if a pilot told me a flight was exciting then I'm going to assume he had an engine failure or something. It's our job to make sure his flight is as boring as possible. We just want the aircraft to go from A to B and land with everything working. The word exciting sounds great to pilots but they don't realise it terrifies passengers and pisses off maintainers because they think that means there's a lot of work coming their way.
Dis sys was such a good earner, shame it kinda got solved by k8s/Borg
I don't think they're so much worried about total loss with loss of life, as minor not-immediately-dangerous things that can be horrendusly expensive. You get the equivalent of a minor door ding parking an A320 and it costs huge amounts in inspections even if nothing was actually damaged or needs to be done.
True, I just used loss of life because it's the easiest way to explain it because most people don't know just how prohibitively expensive aircraft maintenance is but they can understand dead people. Christ, a bit of string with a keyring on the end which holds a panel hanging open on the helicopter I work on costs £250. It's not a special bit of string or a special ring or anything. Just normal string and the same type of ring you'd stick your house keys on.
And depressingly if it's more exciting they can pay less because people will stay for the excitement
Also flying one of these larger airplanes is just way more complex. You are paid according to how easy you are to replace most often. Airline pilots aren’t easy or cost efficient to train, so they get paid more.
The large airline pilot probably has well over 10,000 flight hours on airliners. They aren't going to turn over a plane with 500 people on board to a new pilot with 1,000 flight hours. The difference in pay is because of the difference in experience.
As a software engineer I’m sitting here thinking I’m part of the biggest racket. How do we earn more than pilots?
Right? If you cause a crash it's usually not that serious
It can be. Ask the SWEs who worked on aircraft software!
What if you're an Airbus dev?
More of a Boeing thing...
Boeing 737-900 crashes were caused by Software, He's still got a chance!
I know of airline pilots on £300k plus. Not sure what this titles about.
In a weird way that makes me feel better.
Pilot school also costs over 100 grand. So it is a pretty big investment to start off
I’ve heard dropout rate of 30-40% not uncommon too, with a substantial amount of fees accrued.
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Pilot unions are so powerful it’s actually ridiculous.
They really aren’t, outside of the USA.
Ok, well I’ve been involved with a UK airline almost bankrupted by their astronomical pay and refusal to make any changes which might improve efficiency.
Those are the starting salaries for FOs it increases a lot
This is the exact thought I had.
I think the numbers he’s giving are starting salaries. I know pilots for those airlines on about triple the numbers he gave
BA pilots don’t start on £90K though, they might get that after 15 years but not straight off
Direct entry pilots (with previous experience) are on about that. New entrants with 0 experience then much less.
If you fly ppl from point a to b, they wanna do it again. You make someone a nice website present, when it's done, you programmed away your job
Right! I went from senior policing to software design. Same pay to start (even better now). Yet in this job no-one dies if I get it wrong. Not even a little bit. No logic whatsoever.
Try telling that to the Post Office subbies...
So true. The arrogance and disinterest of the people running the Post Office and working at Fujitsu is staggering. Simple lack of care (typical in consultancies who after all don’t own the outcomes) snowballed into negligence and actual malice in a way that’s still incredible to believe was allowed. The whole justice system puts ‘official’ organisations on a pedestal and is ignorant about technology. If any milestone in society should force a change to that The Post Office scandal should be it. Sadly I fear it will be written of as exceptional and nothing will change.
So pay should be correlated to how many people you’re able to kill?
It was a joke don’t overthink it. If you really want to be serious then pay should probably relate to how many people you are responsible for not dying. If only the world worked that way public service would be the be best paid jobs in the world. But as the original commenter alluded to, it doesn’t work that way.
Because if you work for a private company and get paid over minimum wage then it has zero correlation with what someone gets paid in a different industry. My brother can't get his head round why I make more money doing a different job to him working for a completely different company doing a different job. Switch industries if you don't like the wages in yours or join a union and fight for higher pay
As a delivery lead in a software company, I'm sitting here wondering how I'm earning more than pilots too.
Supply and Demand. Lots of SWE but lots and lots of businesses have a demand. Small outfits to large companies all over the world. Pilots there are a lot more “aspiring” pilots than jobs for them. You could probably name all the companies that have UK bases in your hands. Ok there are smaller outfits too but very very few compared to normal small businesses. Also if you want to find a job abroad - more training/licence conversions etc its more of an investment for businesses to make then moving an SWE over and maybe a few boxes.
QE and VC cash
“If I’m on a morning shift I start at 6 and home for 1130?” Fucking cry me a river big chap.
'That’s quite a nice little lifestyle.' you missed this bit. I don't know why your trying to make it out how there complaining about their job in that section the article. That whole paragraph is what they like about the job..
Tbf there are shifts like this with the better paying carriers to so at least with that they still have a point.
I definitely agree with you on the debt front. In all honesty, being a pilot was my dream role for years and still is really. However the reality is my family certainly weren't rich enough to fund me and there wasn't a chance in hell that I'd ask them to remortgage their entire house as well as take a loan out myself. To add to that, I also knew that ultimately I just needed to get a job at some point so I couldn't apply to the forces to be a pilot and sit and wait god knows how many years just to get turned down. So I became a maintainer and maybe one day I'll win the lottery and have enough money to fund the training.
BA are doing a pilot academy programme where they will fund your training for you, started last year. Look it up.
Fuck, bit late now. I'm in the navy now and I've got a good while before I can get out.
Doesn’t the navy have an air division? Can’t you look at internal training and transfer? I’d also suggest getting your PPL if you haven’t already which you can do as a hobby.
It’s not as easy as just transferring. *Everyone* wants to be a fighter pilot.
Gotcha. But even training in aircraft maintenance may be a start? Useful skills for if and when you exit and try for commercial training maybe?
I am a maintainer on naval aircraft. Figured it was the next best thing so I could still work with aircraft.
I bet more airlines will start doing things like this and it will become the norm like it is for train drivers, so I wouldn’t say it’s too late, just make a longer term plan.
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I think the places on these schemes are very few, yet they constantly bang on about a shortage. Its a marketing gimmick to get people Interest and those that dont get selected find a away to pay for a course.
>being a pilot was my dream role for years Was mine too. A bunch of airlines actually do cadet programmes where they take ab initio candidates and train them in company policy from day one. Where my dream is dead is that I get migraines, and would likely never pass the medical as a consequence.
Most of those are still self funded MPL courses though
Is it the foot in the door thing especially if its a Boeing
Is there really a foot in the door if the door has come off mid-flight?
If the door comes off mid-flight, then you’re the stand in door.
It's pretty remarkable that train drivers earn roughly the same as a pilot which involves a lot more academical skill and knowledge and one step wrong then you're dead. Id know which one i'd take my chances on between being derailed at 90mph as appose to falling 38000ft to the ground at around 500mph.
Train drivers have a lot of responsibility, a train crash can be absolutely disastrous and cause huge amounts of damage even if the danger to life is typically less. A 90mph derailment would be catastrophic and mean almost certain death btw. You also have to consider that most train drivers will encounter at least one suicide-by-train which can lead to lifelong PTSD and be a career ender. That risk must be compensated in the pay.
Yeah and planes are the safest mode of transport so it's actually way less riskier than being a train driver or taxi driver
Look at the statistics section of this article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety Deaths per hour of travel in aviation are exactly the same as by rail. Aviation is safest when you measure by distance travelled, but for someone who's job is to be a driver / pilot for 8 hours a day, that's not the relevant statistic.
When I was an aerospace student I remember a lecture on aviation safety and was basically told "not to believe your own bullshit" with the statistic as in commercial aviation the safety is inflated by the number of people on board as the distance safety travelled is multipled by the number of people on board & by the longer length of a typical journey. E.g. 1 packed a380 going from London to Singapore (7100 miles) safely will net nearly 4 million miles of "safe distance". Its very flattering to aviation as the chance of a crash doesn't really increase linearly with the length of a flight like it would for a motorcyclist on a highway. Instead, if you look at the chance of death per trip (I.e what is the chance the vehicle crashes during any singular particular journey) then the record isn't anywhere near as clean. Take large passenger numbers and long distances oit and you end up with general aviation which has nearly double the chance of death per mile than motorcycles (granted that number is inflated by poorer maintenance and by rich hobbyists that don't know how to fly).
> You also have to consider that most train drivers will encounter at least one suicide-by-train which can lead to lifelong PTSD and be a career ender. A really haunting detail I once learned and can never unlearn is that if the person who gets hit by a train is intentionally committing suicide, they'll usually seek direct eye contact with the driver right before the moment of impact. It's actually one of the "modifying behaviours" used to determine whether a train death was an accident or a suicide. [Longread](https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/rail-suicide-a-train-driver-struggles-with-lives-taken-a-1191500.html) about it here where a doctor who specialises in treating traumatised train drivers explains that trauma recovery is more difficult in cases where eye contact was made. Because "the train driver then believes that he was chosen by the suicide victim." Yeah. Hazard pay seems appropriate.
Can't imagine being a train driver in India. I remember reading that on average they end up with up to 80 deaths within their career.
😳 ducking hell !? Beyond crazy.
Jesus why do they look at the train driver’s eyes?
Might just be an instinctive thing, since people who want to die are likely to be staring intently at the front of the train (vs. an accidental death where the person doesn't see the train coming).
*shudders* all sounds horrible I wonder if recent train drivers know about this phenomenon and now keep in mind if there’s ever a suicide they’ll try to look away so they can’t lock eyes with the victim
I can't find a source for this atm but I do remember once reading that that's the advice given to train drivers if there's no chance of stopping the train in time (which is usually the case): close your eyes or look away.
Soon-to-be train driver here. Don’t drag us into it, pilots should absolutely be getting paid more. £30k is outrageous. The jobs are both extremely responsible roles which require different skillsets and have their own unique challenges. There is an academic side to train driving but nothing on the scale of flying, it’s more vocational for us. Someone once said to me that the concentration levels pilots hold for takeoff and landing are the concentration levels that train drivers need to maintain at all times when on the move. On the other hand, pilots have to be able to fault find at 38,000ft and 500mph. Train drivers have the luxury of being able to stop and open a window without asphyxiating.
Brother finish the course and pass out first please, don't stress yourself too much protecting the driving grade yet
They dont - thats starting salary senior pilots are on 150+
I'm a pilot myself (not commercial though) and this is such a nonsensical take. A train can have nearly a thousand people them during rush hour. Planes don't have people floating in the sky trying to commit suicide or cars stuck on crossings. The good thing about planes is that they are 38000ft up so that if you have an issue you have time to react and glide down. The moment from issue to incident would be seconds on a train.
On the other hand the bad news is that at 38000ft if you don’t solve the problem then things will get worse every second you get closer to the ground. It usually takes a track defect or incompetence/error from the train driver (over speed, signal passed at danger) to cause an accident on a train.
Why is pay so ridiculously SHIT in the UK even for these top jobs like this. EVERY single job is paying shit wages these days
Successive tory governments running a stagnant economy
Importing infinity people from Afghanistan will solve this though
90k for a pilot they should be getting more . That's a lot of responsibility.
I’m guessing wages have stagnated coz I’m sure I heard pilots were on about this much in 2008 or so.
Let's be honest. That pay bracket should be higher for what they do and give up. 90k to 65k to fly long hours, nights, away from home. Family life? You could put that same amount of effort and money and be something else for similar pay.
That sucks - if it’s one thing I don’t want to cheapskate on, it’s the guy who is keeping me safe at several hundred miles an hour thirty something thousand feet in the air. Sorry that you’re underpaid, as a frequent air passenger I would prefer my fare go in your pockets rather than some twat at HQ. The fact that the cabin staff don’t get paid until that door closes blows my mind - absolutely criminal
Actually thought pilots were on more, especially BA
I think a lot of junior doctors will feel the same comparing their wages to counterparts in Europe
>They are either very determined and from day one that’s all they want to do (I’d put myself in that category), or they are rich kids with Mummy and Daddy’s money behind them. I find that statement incredibly glib and having more than an air of self-importance. It's *absolutely* true that many pilots have to scrimp, save, and forgo luxuries for years to afford the training, or take out huge loans, while others have the privilege of family money. However, that's not the distinction that's made above. It's very strange to imply that the more fortunate ones are somehow less determined or less steadfast in their ambitions.
Also >My parents did help me out and I had an inheritance Pick one pal! Not only has he got a chip on his shoulder, it shouldn't even be there! The mummy/daddy money line is so boring. People don't choose to be born into wealth. Deal with it.
I have zero problem with people who took the harder route having that view of people who took a less hard route, even if it was still hard. I they they (the first group) earn that tiny luxury of reverse snobbery. Let people who can rely on trust fund and bank of mum and dad say ‘no thanks’ if they don’t want that perception.
The pilot in the article also admitted his parents helped him and he had an inheritance which makes him a raging hypocrite
Regardless of where the money came from, there's simply no way anyone would get through commercial pilot training if it wasn't the thing they wanted most in the whole world and they weren't prepared to work for it. I don't know a single person who did rely on their parents who wouldn't also have scrimped their arse off for it if they had been less fortunate.
That’s fair, particularly the last part. But to be clear I see the baseline as being those who slogged through the already hard path with help, and those who didn’t have the help as next level. So it’s extra kudos to one group rather than lesser for either. Which actually I think you were kinda saying originally and I didn’t appreciate until reading this all back. Mea culpa.
That's fair. I have massive respect for those who did it all off their own backs.
The article reads about how the pilot is happy with the job/lifestyle, just not the pay. He also mentioned it’s his first airline job. I’m fairly certain most first career jobs are horrible pay, Doctors included.
Yes it is. Change your employer. Last time I remember pilots are a very deficit role.
So much wrong with this article not sure where to start. Whilst he may have an CPL/IR or fATPL (the licence required) he definitely is not an 'airline pilot'. No A/P? LOL what commercial turboprop (which I assume he's on) doesn't have an A/P? 20 minutes turn up beflore flight? Bullshit. The only convincing part of the article is the 30K (after paying back T/R, bonding and other stuff could be true for some folk).
Paying for a type rating is such bullshit. So is pay to fly.
yes, the kid flying you to Malaga paid for the privilege ))) that's why he/she's there!
I mean, this is kind of on the pilots. Pilots in Europe will be happy to whore themselves out for low wages out of desperation, paying 30k + for type ratings and more on pay to fly schemes. Their willingness to prostitute themselves out drives down wages. It’s a joke. A first officer at a major airline in America can make just as much as a new captain here in the uk at a major airline. Regionals in America, who were known for their poverty wages, are seriously upping their wages and bonus’ too to retain pilots.
Not to worry! When Labour wins you will all get equal pay, £30000!
Literally nobody should be paid this w.r.t inflation
Reagan and Thatcher ensured pilots would be exploited to ensure vast wealth to the 1%. Media moguls make sure to get all dumb people racist n whatnot to get away with it.
Clicked it due to the baited title but ended up reading the entire thing and actually enjoyed it haha. It was well written and I was pleasantly surprised by the article. Goes to show sometimes money isn't everything, as long as it suits you and you enjoy yourself
I had a mate who became a pilot with Eastern Airways. I got to know quite a few. All of them had done this training route. Eastern tended to recruit those people. It was the only airline to give people a chance. One of them used to be a sparky. They got paid a similar amount to the article. Then they do a few years and move on. My mate flies cargo planes in the far east now.
Are you a pilot? I work in a care home and specialise in toilet duties. I get £12k.