They say that recruitment is cyclic, well we are currently on the upside of this as recruitment is the best I have ever seen.
While I can only talk about this from a UK licence holder point of view, as that is the licence I hold and the market I spend most of my time looking at. I can only imagine it is a similar story across Europe. Larger airlines have all hired massive amounts of pilots leaving opportunities at all levels of aviation.
Many pilots have left regional airlines to head to these bigger companies, meaning that all these airlines need to recruit to fill these gaps. The benefit of this for low-hour pilots is that the experienced pilots are being taken by the bigger airlines, meaning that the regionals need to start lowering their requirements and accepting fresh FATPL holders.
On top of this, many of the big airlines in the UK have taken low-hour pilots including TUI, British Airways (Newly qualified pilot pathway), BA Cityfler, Jet2 (Pilot apprentice scheme), DHL and Wizz. Ryanair is also accepting low-hour pilots but the type rating will set you back 30,000€, the others all offer a bonding arrangement.
Regional airlines that have taken low-hour pilots include, Loganair, Aurigny, Blue Islands, and Emerald.
Most of the recruitment is likely to finish in the next month or two for this summer but things will likely start again later this year for 2025 recruitment. It would seem prudent for the students currently in training to aim to be fully qualified for this so you can get your applications in.
After the difficult times of COVID, it seems like things are finally starting to swing in our favour and hopefully in 2024 you can secure that first airline job!
Always nice to get an update for you mate🔥
Great to see the post Covid pessimism put to bed. I was surprised to see the likes of BA fully sponsor its own program. Recruitment is indeed cyclical. Thanks for update.