‘I spent £100,000 to be a pilot but only got £30,000 a year’

‘I spent £100k to be a pilot but I only get paid £30k a year’

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Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a pilot. When I was three years old my grandmother took me to the airport to look at the planes and I was transfixed, sitting on a fence, watching them. Apparently, I said: “I’m going to fly airplanes one day.”

I never wanted to do anything else; being a pilot was always at the top of my list. All the way through elementary school, airplanes were the only thing I was interested in. My family was very supportive. Training to be a pilot is very expensive and puts people off entering the profession but I have always been told: “You have to work for it and, if you work hard, you will achieve”.

At the age of 14, I started flying. I had a paper round and saved all my earnings, plus my pocket money and cash from every Christmas and birthday, to put towards the flight. I showed a lot of willingness to my parents to pay for the share of the training. When I did it, a private pilot’s license set you back around £7,000. I got my license about a week after my 17th birthday. I could fly a plane before I could drive a car.

I thought: “I will travel the world, fly airplanes, stay in amazing places, meet new people, and look great in uniform.” Leonardo DiCaprio was the image as a Pan Am pilot in the movie Catch Me If You Can. Many pilots have that reference.

Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You CanLeonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can

‘He’s not Leonardo DiCaprio walking through an airport with six cabin crew on his arm’ – Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy

I started my real pilot training when I was 18. There are several different ways to become a pilot. If you have enough money, you can do the integrated route where one fee – around £130,000 – covers the whole thing, and two years later you come out with your commercial pilot’s licence. The lucky few receive sponsorship from an airline that covers all training costs and guarantees you a job at the end. I went down the modular route where you pay for each part of your training individually.

I chose that way because it was cheaper. My family couldn’t give me £130,000. Pilots fall into two different categories. They are very determined and from day one it is what they want to do (I would put myself in that category), or they are rich kids who are after Mummy and Daddy’s money.

My training took me around five years and cost me around £100,000. I have worked since I was 16 years old to pay for it. My parents helped me and I had an inheritance, but I did odd jobs on the side and worked as a flight instructor to pay for it too. I lived frugally and had no holidays for five years so I could put every last penny towards my training.

It was tough. You learn how to fly in zero visibility, using GPS, tracking and navigation aids. Eventually you move from a propeller aircraft to a commercial aircraft, such as Airbus or Boeing. The theory exams were the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. For five months, I had no social life. I would live in a four hour slot: four hours sleeping, four hours studying. I would never do that again.

Sometimes I wonder if the training was worth it. For me, at the moment, it probably wasn’t worth it financially. I am a pilot for a regional airline and earn just over £30,000 a year.

That’s a pretty low salary for a pilot job – especially when you consider how trained pilots are and how much work we’ve put in to get to this point. The annual salary does not cover a third of the cost of the training. The big airlines offer more money: British Airways pays pilots a salary of around £90,000, Ryanair has around £70,000 and EasyJet even offers £65,000. It’s insulting to know that you spent so much money and worked so hard to get paid so poorly.

At first I just accepted the pay. I wanted an airline job – it’s really hard to get your first one straight from flight training. I worked so hard and I just wanted to fly. I look at other airlines and think: why are those pilots paid so much more money? They have bigger and more modern aircraft that are more fun to fly, so why am I getting paid so badly? Money is why many people leave smaller airlines to work for the big boys.

But for now, this job works for me. I like the lifestyle. I live six minutes drive from the airport and I can turn up 20 minutes before departure; that’s unheard of for the big airline pilots. You are also far away if you work for one of the major airlines. I go home every night. Even with my late shift, I’m home for dinner at 9pm. So I’m happy right now. I work two flights a day, five days a week. If I have a morning shift, I’ll start at six o’clock and be home by 11.30am That’s a nice little lifestyle.

The best part of the job is flying. I enjoy the challenging conditions and because our aircraft are older, there is a lot more manual flying involved, as opposed to autopilot. A really good landing or a really good approach is always a great day’s work. You feel that you have achieved something. I know everyone I work with well and I love my colleagues. Our passengers are mainly traveling for business so you will get to know the regulars who go down to London on a Monday morning and come back on a Friday evening. It’s like a bus service.

PilotsPilots

‘Achieving a great landing is always a great day’s work’ – Michael Dunning/The Image Bank RF

I only had a disturbed passenger once. The crew said it was getting worse so I put my jacket on and walked out the back and he saw someone in uniform he just took it. It was good as gold for the rest of the flight. I’m not flying kids to Ibiza, luckily, because that would be terrible.

Probably the worst parts of the job are the pay and the distraction. If something is wrong with an aircraft or someone is called in sick, you get a phone call from operations and you have to go to Bristol or Manchester or Cornwall to cover.

The most challenging flight I’ve ever had was when we hit a bird and the windshield cracked. The crack got worse and worse during the flight and we had to fly another route and go lower and slower.

I always make an effort when I go up to work – pressed shirt, ironed trousers, shiny shoes, clean jacket. It’s always nice to walk through the terminal with your uniform on. You get a lot of looks, and the kids go “look, he’s a pilot!”. But then you get ahead, your jacket comes off, your tie comes off, your shirt doesn’t come off, you sit there eating a hot sandwich, drinking lukewarm coffee, gliding through the skies, chatting. He’s not Leonardo DiCaprio walking through an airport with six cabin crew on his arm, as much as we’d like him to be.

The job has good days and bad days but most are good days. It’s not what I thought it was when I was a three-year-old child. But I have grown to accept that. I still love flying.

There is a joke that you can tell someone is a pilot because they will tell you within five seconds. That’s 100 real computers. Everyone thinks it’s a great job and you don’t mind telling them because you know you could spend hours talking about it. Everyone always wants to know what I do.

As told to Isolde Walters

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