AIRLINES MIKE GOUGH
STAYING THE COURSE In my accidental role of career advisor, I regularly wax lyrical about the subliminal joys of piloting aircraft for the rest of one’s days.
should put to rest there Once this virus is ies. of job opportunit be an explosion
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HESE are conversations I frequently have at Lanseria with prospective pilots-to-be and their parents. Are we, globally, a happy bunch of airline pilots? With all these massive shortages we must be positively walking on sunshine in anticipation of the world’s love for us being shown in those showers of money that must surely be about to happen. I do believe the current uncertainty of some routes and fleet plans to park some aircraft for a while is pretty much temporary while we shake off this latest flu bug,
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FlightCom Magazine
although it does show what a fragile industry we are. If I think back to when I set out on the lengthy journey of acquiring experience without running out of luck, I wonder now if I would have the energy to do it all again. That’s something I also declare during those career counselling sessions, that I definitely do. Apparently, 71% of surveyed airline pilots feel the same. If we could go back to our student pilot days, we’d do it all again and forego any other career option. Recently, Goose Recruitment conducted a survey of airline pilots’ state of mind, in an
attempt to look a little more scientifically at what makes us tick, and what our plans and expectations are. They surveyed around 1300 active airline pilots from around the globe. The results were published by Flight Global recently and makes for interesting reading. The survey kicked off with attempting to establish what our priorities are. This is obviously in line with what a recruiting agency would like to establish, as tailoring opportunities in line with what we would like to see would result in being more effective in terms of job matchings and placements. Overall, work-life balance came first for all respondents. One definition of workbalance goes along the lines of: ‘the lack of opposition between work and other life roles. It is the state of equilibrium in which the demands of personal life, professional life and family life are equal.’ This was followed next by salary, company culture, training and lastly, career development. Interestingly, broken down into gender demographics, female pilots placed training third after salary, while males placed training as their absolute last priority. One could read into this that the ladies are aware of the expectations to perform well in this ‘male workplace’, and thus consider quality training a higher priority than males and would thus assess job opportunities differently. The next category that was assessed was stress. What is our biggest source of stress in this career? Unsurprisingly, (for me, anyway, as it resonates significantly) the biggest issue we have is with management. 41% of us consider
