What is the best way to become a commercial Pilot?

[Gnarly Gnu]

Want to earn good money in Aviation without decades of training and hard slog?

 

Get a job with CASA.

 

 

[Wayne T Mathews]

Want to earn good money in Aviation without decades of training and hard slog?Get a job with CASA.

Ooh wargh,,, I don't want to be with you when you get your next ramp check GG... You're naughty...

 

 

 

[FlyingVizsla]

Going through Uni is not cheap. A quick look at Swinburne's Bachelor Aviation (3 years full time) HECS fees = $24,150 + $88,720 minimum to get you to Commercial Pilot's Licence (CPL) but not the full ATPL (you get theory only). That's $118,000 (allowing for inflation & texts) and all the costs of being a student for 3 years. Then you usually have to get an instructor rating (more expense) to start building hours and then lots of traveling around looking for a start.

 

From one of those job websites that keeps statistics on job adverts and surveys on job earnings - Commercial / airline pilots earn $31 to $127K full time. Few jobs are advertised. There is an Award for pilots. Read it here https://extranet.deewr.gov.au/ccmsv8/CiLiteKnowledgeDetailsFrameset.htm?KNOWLEDGE_REF=216338&TYPE=X&ID=9697368489278942188889912894&DOCUMENT_REF=363770&DOCUMENT_TITLE=Air%20Pilots%20Award%202010&DOCUMENT_CODE=MA000046 The pay rates are at the end.

 

Although there is an Award with minimum rates - you may end up working as a casual contractor on what ever rate is negotiated.

 

My advice to young people wanting to fly - get a career and use your flying to support it - eg flying vet, mechanic, financial adviser, civil engineer (you can claim it on tax etc) or FIFO job and fly yourself. Then it won't matter if you lose your class 1 medical, you fly with a PPL and Class 2 and if the worst happens, you drive or work from an office. If the bug really bites you can do your CPL while you earn and fly and then present yourself to employers with hours and experience and another skill (your other career) and a good insurance track record - and maybe even your own plane.

 

Other "cheaper" ways to get your licence - try through air cadets, Australian Scouts, various religious groups (training missionary pilots), cadetships through various regional or domestic carriers (Rex, Qantas, JetStar). Build hours flying gliders, tugs, RAAus, etc. Find an employer like the flying engineering consultancy that is willing to get you through your PPL so you can service their remote clients.

 

There's no easy answer - some people fall on their feet - a mate of mine got his PPL, went as a Jackaroo on a property where the owner paid for his CPL and then his Helicopter CPL and let him build hours in both until he left to set up his own charter business. Another mate did everything right, knocked on endless doors, worked his tail off, borrowed off his family, did every job no matter how lowly and still ended up broke with a huge HECS debt and jobless.

 

My humble opinion is that our airlines are going to, increasingly, source their pilots and cabin crew from overseas on much lesser conditions and Australians on the Award will be a minority. It is happening now - see the Qantas pilots for Qantas planes campaign responding to lower paid New Zealand pilots being kitted out in Qantas uniforms. For lots more discussion go to Pprune.

 

Sue

 

 

[Guest extralite]

Any young hopefull would benefit a lot by reading the pprune forums australian section for a good run down on current pay, conditions and morale of airline flying. The way most people see things playing out, it would be unrealistic to be using Qantas as a pay benchmark anymore, unlikely that more will be hired under that pay scale again, or even many remain there. Jetstar/Virgin is what a new player should be looking at. Not trying to be negative for the young chap, but best to go into things with eyes wide open and listen to what those that are there doing it already say. I enjoy flying a lot more now i don't do it for a living. This filters back into RAAF too. The RAAF system is built as a sausage factory (that is not a negative, just the way it has developed...agree with the great training comment above)...it needs the experienced people to leave for the airlines so the young ones can get a guernsey being captains of complex aircraft at a young age. Now airline flying is less attractive the whole system can choke up as who wants a pay cut to work horrific hours and conditions for Jetstar. Not the same as tootling off to work for Qantas (and before that Ansett which was even better)

 

Where does this leave someone who loves flying and only wants to do that for a living? Can't answer that other than to realize the airline pilot conditions and status is not the same as it was. Flying for a hobby is a way to keep the love of flying alive.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Going through Uni is not cheap. A quick look at Swinburne's Bachelor Aviation (3 years full time) HECS fees = $24,150 + $88,720 minimum to get you to Commercial Pilot's Licence (CPL) but not the full ATPL (you get theory only). That's $118,000 (allowing for inflation & texts) and all the costs of being a student for 3 years.

I was under the impression that the uni degree path was not necessarily highly regarded by the airlines over a non-uni CPL route, but I may be wrong on that? People are starting to wake up about young folk taking on massive higher education debt, it doesn't always pan out well (sorry we sound such a negative bunch Solomon):

 

 

- I so much wish I could draw like that!

 

 

[boingk]

Hey Sol good to hear you're keen on the commercial licence. I am currently getting my CPL and thought I'd share how its going for me.

 

I live at home after living at university for three years. I have a degree in Criminal Justice and work nights as a bar manager, leaving my days free for flying. It is draining but very rewarding.

 

I have an agreement with the local training centre for my flying, and have obtained my GFPT and RAA licence so far. I am flying the 200hr CPL course and have recently bought my own plane to build hours in. Being able to maintain it myself is the only way I can afford it but I'd do the same regardless.

 

I have been offered a position as RAA instructor locally, providing I get the endorsement on my own first. This would most likely be my first job and would build hours towards something better.

 

At the moment I'm just working and flying... love it. Work hard and you'll get what you want eventually.

 

Cheers - Enoch

 

 

[Wayne T Mathews]

I was under the impression that the uni degree path was not necessarily highly regarded by the airlines over a non-uni CPL route, but I may be wrong on that? People are starting to wake up about young folk taking on massive higher education debt, it doesn't always pan out well (sorry we sound such a negative bunch Solomon):

Wow! That video sums up and explains in less than 5 minutes, what John Naisbitt was predicting in the '80s in his megatrend books.

 

It would appear that if having a ticket to fix toilets isn't already worth more than having a phd in underwater left handed basket weaving, it will be in the not too distant future...

 

I find it interesting to note, there are three millionaires in my family. Two of them are plumbers, and the third was an engineer. I like to quote the youngest of them, Steve, a master plumber. He said, "Just 'cause I talk slow, doesn't mean I think slow." And he also says when asked why he became a plumber, "There's money in $h!t." To the best of my knowledge by the way, Steve hasn't touched a toilet that isn't his own, in over twenty years. He employs other men to do that now.

 

 

[Sapphire]

It would appear that if having a ticket to fix toilets isn't already worth more than having a phd in underwater left handed basket weaving, it will be in the not to distant future...

 

I like these one liners

 

 

[Guest Howard Hughes]

I have 4 sons, all of whom I trained, and only 1 of them is flying professionally, (with RFDS in Sydney), and he arrived there after a 6 year stint in airlines which he hated!

Just trying to work out which one of our two WA boys, is your son!

 

 

[68volksy]

Hi Solomon,

 

There are a few paths to making money out of flying as you can see above. It comes down to the type of flying you'd like to do and the type of money you'd like to make. If you're after an airline job and decent money then the only real path in my view is a cadetship through someone like Qantas or REX in Australia. If you're happy to travel then airlines all over the world run very similar cadetships and some of them are really quite cheap. To get one of these though you do have to be up to a certain standard - these things don't just fall in your lap. Any RA-Aus flying you do will be useless in this arena and any GA stuff also won't count for much. These guys (and the Air Force generally) like to get students as fresh as possible so they don't have to spend time "unteaching" them.

 

If you're interested in training or charter flying as a career then it's simply a matter of getting out there where the jobs are. It's also a very competitive market out there for this stuff and even getting award wages can be very hard. This is the path for two kinds of people - the ones who truly love flying and the ones who were never quite good enough or willing to work hard enough to get the job they dream of. If you're the first kind of person and can make do with what money you can make (or better yet find a non-aviation job you can stand to pay the bills) then I personally think this path provides the most enjoyment.

 

Keep in mind the only job that hours in RA-Aus aircraft or single-engine GA aircraft will get you is flying training which is great only if this is what you want to do. Problem is that the training will only get you more hours in the same aircraft so your future is set. If you want to fly twins however or earn the big bucks then you'll need to make sacrifices such as moving to where the work is or signing your life away on a cadetship.

 

You can't steer a stationery plane so start moving down a path and see how it feels. If you like it then knuckle down and get stuck into it.

 

 

[68volksy]

I also wanted to say that there still seems to be a popular view out there that the only career in aviation is a lineal progression. ie PPL>CPL>Instructor>Twin time>Charter>Twin charter etc. all the way to $500,000 A380 Captain. This is a very old-fashioned view which probably dates back to between the wars and is entirely focussed on "getting your hours up" rather than "getting the right hours up". The path to A380 captain has to start with a cadetship from what I can figure. Basically get in on the ground floor and work your way up. Getting there the old-fashioned way would probably take 150 years...

 

 

[solomon]

Thanks guys this is a big help, I was just wondering can you change from an air force officer say after you finished your 12 years, to a commercial pilot captain? Or do you have to go back to the start and become a co-pilot first, when you change over from the air force despite having a large amount of flying experience with jets?

 

 

[ayavner]

Just a note on perspective here, since I don't really have much to add to the already excellent wisdom being shared on the various paths to your goal... if I remember from the magazine articles, you are - 18?? Correct me if I am wrong. So sure, 12 years seems like a long time.. .its 2/3 of your life!! 12 years to some folks here is but a tiny fraction. I thought the same way back in 1991 when I got out of the Air Force... wasn't how I wanted to spend all that time, yadda yadda... so fast forward to now.. had I stayed in, I would have retired 5 years ago, would still be the same age I am now, and probably would have had a whole bunch of interesting experiences.

 

But whatever you do, do something to move the ball down the field... in 12 years you are going to be 30 (?)... whether you are 30 with time spent towards your goal or just 30 with a desk job and a drawer full of half-forgotten dreams is entirely up to you!

 

 

[Wayne T Mathews]

Thanks guys this is a big help, I was just wondering can you change from an air force officer say after you finished your 12 years, to a commercial pilot captain? Or do you have to go back to the start and become a co-pilot first, when you change over from the air force despite having a large amount of flying experience with jets?

It does happen Solomon, but it's as rare as. When I joined Ryan International Airlines on the DC10 startup, there were a half dozen "Instant Captains" employed. Two of them were ex US Airforce KC10 Captains. One wound up being the DC10 operations manager, the other was advised to leave. So the answer is, yes it does happen, but it's pretty well got to be a start-up operation. And by the way, the fellow who was asked to leave, truly believed he was God's gift to aviation. He had a total of 2600 hours and his juniority shone through when from 3 miles out, he went round because the preceding traffic hadn't cleared the runway yet. He may well have been God's gift in the USAF (somehow I doubt it though) but he sure as hell wasn't in the commercial world. The man was a legend in his own lunchtime.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Can I suggest not limiting your defence force attention just to the Airforce - the Army & Navy also employ pilots although to a lesser extent of course. A good friend of mine is currently in a non-flying Airforce career & wanted to learn to fly Helos, he found out that for him it was going to be quicker and easier to jump across to the Army for this. Met a couple of ex USAF pilots (highly skilled middle east veterans BTW) who now fly B747 freighters internationally for FedEx and UPS respectively, these are contract jobs; not as fancy as Qantas by any stretch but still rather nice.

 

 

[solomon]

Just a note on perspective here, since I don't really have much to add to the already excellent wisdom being shared on the various paths to your goal... if I remember from the magazine articles, you are - 18?? Correct me if I am wrong. So sure, 12 years seems like a long time.. .its 2/3 of your life!! 12 years to some folks here is but a tiny fraction. I thought the same way back in 1991 when I got out of the Air Force... wasn't how I wanted to spend all that time, yadda yadda... so fast forward to now.. had I stayed in, I would have retired 5 years ago, would still be the same age I am now, and probably would have had a whole bunch of interesting experiences.But whatever you do, do something to move the ball down the field... in 12 years you are going to be 30 (?)... whether you are 30 with time spent towards your goal or just 30 with a desk job and a drawer full of half-forgotten dreams is entirely up to you!

I'm 17, and thank's for that i'm giving it a second thought.

 

 

[Blueadventures]

Ooh wargh,,, I don't want to be with you when you get your next ramp check GG... You're naughty...

It might be what is termed a targeted ramp check, Ha ha.