A VERY small number of people have been through the various airline cadet schemes which offer some sort of financial assistance. Most of these came about within the last five to ten years and will now be dead in the water post COVID-19.

I self funded my initial training in 2008 and my type rating for Ryanair, my first job. I started at Ryanair on day 1 with £90,000 of debt and no salary, oh and close to £10k of student loan fees. I was self employed, paid per scheduled block hour and didn’t earn a penny for the first 2-3 months of training. Meanwhile the bank were happy to start taking my loan repayments. Once I was flying I was at the mercy of the Ryanair rostering department as to whether I got the hours in and therefore the pay.

After a number of years I moved to Thomson/TUI. At this point I had a salary and didn’t have to cover all of my own expenses. Be they hotel costs, training fees, uniform or the €30 a month that Ryanair charged in order for us to be paid. This was six years after starting my training.

I left there and took a paycut in my basic to join BA. Over 10 years later my pay is nowhere near some of the figures that are bashed around on this site and in the press, my loan repayments of close to £1000pcm have just come to an end. I’m not for one minute complaining, I made all the decisions with my eyes open. I’m simply trying to give a better impression of what it’s really like for new pilots in the industry over the last decade.