Hah: Qatar Airways Is Trying To Poach Airberlin Pilots

@No Name,

Your first point is accurate. As I stated, the US military is fortunate to have many resources available. This starts with airspace and funding, then continues with airports, aircraft, simulators, maintenance, et al. While weather, in its own right might not be a resource, having enough landmass so that you can train where the weather is good is. For US military pilots, access to these resources doesn't stop when they graduate from pilot training, meaning years of the best training opportunities not constrained by external factors.

Regarding the Saudi training question, the following statement was from August 16th. "Today, #Laughlin hosted Royal Saudi Air Force Maj. Gen. Khalid Mohammed Al Saqally, who traveled from Saudi Arabia to visit base leadership and Saudi Arabia's future pilots!"

They do also have a BAE contract to train in Kingdom as you pointed out. Many countries have some organic training capacity. It is generally the best, or best connected, students who are selected for training in the US. Is that because it is inferior?

Again, you are correct about the weather being a significant factor in the civil aviation equation. But you failed to point out that it is also prohibitively expensive in Europe and many other parts of the world. That opens up many more opportunities to US pilots to build their experience with good continuity of effort, meaning less fits and starts or degradation of skills along the way.

@Bobby T is partially correct about the housing allowance amount for a Capt. His maths go awry when he adds Capt. housing allowance to FO salary with FO housing allowance already incorporated. Per the EK recruiting website:

FO total monthly salary: 44,450 AED tax-free (Accommodation allowance included)
Capt total monthly salary: 58,770 AED tax-free (Accommodation allowance included)

If they do have room on the compound your salary will decrease by $17k-19K per annum.

As for education, the value is highly subjective. It is free in the US, so you have to value the experience of an international school and its curriculum in order to count this as a positive. Even then the benefit is only maximized if you have three children.

If you don't live on the compounds and you get the maximum allowance, you are likely looking at a flat between 1400-2000 square feet. Admittedly, that is bigger than you could find a few years ago thanks to the steadily dropping rental prices portending the inevitable Dubai housing bubble burst (accumulating asset opportunity). But also, keep in mind that most American families are not accustomed to living in dense urban areas as many Europeans are, thus moving into something even as small as a 2000 square foot flat would be a significant shock.

As long as we are on this train of thought, in the US and with many overseas carriers you can commute to work. This allows employees to live wherever they want. That isn't possible with the ME3 at the moment. If it was, it might change the calculus for some US pilots. Especially those who aren't sure about committing to moving their family to Dubai indefinitely.

@No Name, thanks for the logical discussion. @BobbyT, I like that you ended on such a positive note. You're amazing too...at maths! JK. Good night.

@PointPilot

The reason many of those European countries send pilots to train in the US is because they either lack the space to train in their home countries or their military is simply so small that running their own training ops would be not cost effective.

Not sure about the Saudi claim, the do have a lot of BAE Hawk and Pilatus trainers. And the UAE also have a large number of Pilatus trainers plus some Italian jet trainers. Doubt they would have those bird if they didn't run their own flight training

Are you thinking about conversion training to F-15/16 when it comes to the Arab states?

When it comes to civilian flight training a big reason is that the weather in say California or Florida is in general better than in Europe, which is important for PPL training done under visual flight rules. Good luck doing that during a rainy English summer, your training would end up taking a lot longer waiting for the weather to clear up.

If @BobbyT is correct about the 190k aed a year that will definitely get you more than q broom closet, since I don't work in the aviation industry I have never bothered to see what EK offers so he could be wrong of course.

Rob - you are so completely misinformed of the EK salary and benefits. The fact you are here shouting so loudly about it says everything. Keep telling yourself how bad it is, it makes no difference to reality.

You claim a senior EK captain only makes 120k usd a year, when in reality it's 16k usd a month, or 192k usd a year.... that's before housing allowance btw for a senior line captain. Even a new starter gets 160k usd a year. How much did you make in your first year buddy?

Of course this is all tax free you understand. No income tax, no state tax, no housing tax, no sales tax.

Regarding housing allowance, I think you'll find the 190k aed a year / 52k usd gets you more than a broom closet in rent, as you boldly claim, and further you are wrong, you can use that money to buy a house, an accumulating asset.

Free private schooling for kids is also another significant benefit. The allowance for 3 kids is 270k aed a year, or 73k usd. No the schools are not double this price... is that from the same line of enquiry that claimed 52k rent gets you a broom closet?

Every ME airline pays similarly. In case you switch off at this point, let's do the maths for you: 160 + 52 + 73 = 285k usd tax free.

So before you repeatedly and randomly boast here, off topic, about how much you make at a US airline, perhaps you'd like to work out how much you'd need to earn in the US *before* any tax, to pay for all these benefits. And finally, how many years is required to get to your pay scale used to compare, versus a ME carrier? Is that why every US pilot is a geriatric?

But as I said, don't let reality hit you on the way out. You're amazing. Your job is amazing. Let's makes America great again!

Regards

The difference is lots of people are wanting to work in GCC countries, especially UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain. Nobody wants to work in China. The GCC can get away with "lowballing" Why else does China need to pay $350k? If China has to pay $350K for a 1$20K job, what does that tell you about living in China? And besides, Rob living in Asia? Hahaha, most amusing!
And why would a true, red-blooded patriotic American ever work in another country? Why, that is TREASON!! Do your patriotic duty and never leave the USA!

@James "And why would you think any airlines outside US would like to attract pilots from US?"

I didn't say that. I was merely responding to Rob's point regarding remuneration package comparison between US carriers and the ME3. It is a topic divergence anyway as the article was about German pilots and a Qatari carrier.

But since you brought it up, the UAE and Qatar have a huge demand for pilots relative to the size of their population which necessitates hiring foreigners. All normal businesses perform cost benefit analyses when considering what level of quality of employees, components, supplies, etc. that they are willing to pay for. Maybe hiring less than the best makes sense to the CFO if the cost is right. One could make the argument however, that ME3 carriers are not Normal Businesses. Either way, the US has the largest pool of the best trained, most experienced pilots. Cue hysterics!...But consider this; you have to get your training somewhere. The US military is the gold standard for flight training because of the resources at their disposal. That is why countries like Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Singapore, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and many others send student pilots to US military flight training. Then, after initial flight training US military pilots will continue to get more hours of actual stick and rudder flying per year than military pilots of any other country that I am aware of.

For those who don’t go the military route, no country is more accommodating to General Aviation than the US. This leads to people from all over the world coming to the US to earn their various certifications. Invariably, the US pilots that rise through the ranks of civil aviation gain many of their flight hours as instructors because of the large demand foreign and US students create. Here they will learn significantly more than the minimum requisite material as they anticipate and correct infinite iterations of student pilot mistakes and poorly executed maneuvers. When the time comes and you need the pilots of your airline, or the airplane you happen to be sitting on, to perform more demanding tasks, do you want someone who has 2900 hours in the jump seat as a second officer and 100 hours of actual aircraft piloting many years ago, or would you rather have someone with a wealth of stick and rudder experience and aviation insight gained over a lengthy pre-commercial airline career?

English is the international language of aviation. There are probably many foreign pilots around the world, and even readers on this blog, that speak more technically correct English than the average US pilot. But when the stress level rises in a challenging situation or colloquialisms come out, having a native English speaker (even an American) is going to give a better chance of quickly and accurately evaluating that information.

Americans are brash and opinionated. This post could be an example of that. But while a culture of deference to age, rank, or strangers might be appealing in some sectors, aviation is not one of those. That is why many airlines actively seek out US pilots to instill and reinforce a Crew Resource Management culture that may be at odds with certain societal norms.

Does this mean that pilots from other countries aren't good? Of course not. Are there excellent pilots from South Africa, Eastern Europe, the Sub-continent, and many other unmentioned countries? Absolutely.

Arguably, I am biased, but if your business model requires a large number of pilots and you want the best, you should look to the US. That is why I think all airlines would like to attract pilots from the US. Even if it costs a little bit more. Aren't those 489 A-380 passengers worth it?

As @PP Said so well, the so-called free house EK pilots get is just free rent. The pilot is not accumulating an asset and better be putting money away for when they go home/retire. Also you might want to check you tax laws, US citizens are still taxed at the full tax rate on any thing over (I think the number is) 86k. Finally the so-called education allowance is about half the cost of the good schools in Dubai.

@james I totally agree, any port in a storm.

I was just saying would you rather make 120k as a senior 777/380 captain or 350k as a 777 senior delta/AA/UAL captain or 350k doing contact work for Chinese carriers. Fewer qualified pilots are going to be going to the ME unless they start to pay a lot more.

None of the ME3 pay that well. That is a reputation left over from when the US airlines were in free fall after 9/11. Things have changed dramatically over the last few years. My friend is a senior 777 captain at Emirates and he make about half what I do as a US A320 captain. I think the ME3 will have a very hard time finding and retaining pilots in the next few years between the US carriers who are facing a huge number of retirements, and the Asian carriers with very large pay contracts that pay almost 3 times what ME carriers offer. The EM3 will have to see there pilot costs rise dramatically in the near future if they are to support the growth they have planned.

Well this is normal in many industries when there is merger or insolvency or pretty much any major change (threat) coming. Most likely pilots of the Air Berlin are also receiving calls. As this is the point where many Air Berlin pilots must think about other options in case they loose their jobs. I've experienced few mergers in IT industry and in both cases when information has gone public my phone have started ringing next day if I would like to come and talk about job opportunities at a company.