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1. PERSONALIA

  • Age: 28
  • Education: Airline Pilot License + MSc (irrelevant to my job)
  • Work experience : 8 years at the company
  • Civil status: single
  • Dependent people/children: none

2. EMPLOYER PROFILE

  • Sector/Industry: Airline
  • Amount of employees: 3000+ in BE, 100k+ groupwide
  • Multinational? I guess?

3. CONTRACT & CONDITIONS

  • Current job title: Captain
  • Seniority: 0 years in function, 8 in company
  • Official hours/month: +-70 flying, +- 70 other duty hours on top, highly seasonal. Can be up to 30 hours of flying in 6 consecutive days + flight prep/groundtime/… one day can be anywhere between 5 hours of work to 13-14.
  • Shiftwork or 9 to 5 (flexible?): 95% between 5am and midnight, sometimes at night.
  • On-call duty: 4 times a year, 4 days
  • Vacation days/year: 40 or therabouts

4. SALARY

  • Gross salary/month: 6900€ gross + 2500€ in a cafeteria plan
  • Average net salary/month (incl. net fees): 5000€ + depending on the optimization 1200€ cash or 2300€ in options after a year (stable market)
  • Netto compensation: 1000€ per month (average) for time away from home and when flying (included in the above figure). *Optimum optimization means it’s roughly 7000€ a month net provided the stock market doesn’t tank while you are waiting for your options.
  • 13th month (full? partial?): equivalent when certain goals are reached
  • Meal vouchers: None
  • Ecocheques: €250/year
  • Salary car/bike and/or fuel card: None, but possible through the cafetaria plan.
  • Group insurance (% employer): I don’t know
  • Other insurances: Hospitalisation is offered
  • Other benefits (bonuses, stocks options, ... ): great traveldeals, standard benefits at work program.

5. MOBILITY

  • City/region of work: Brussels (outside)
  • Distance home-work (km's/time): +-45km
  • How do you commute? Public transport or car when the duty commences or ends outside of 5am-11pm window.
  • How is the travel home-work compensated: 100% by employer, upfront.
  • Telework days/week: tele-what?

6. OTHER

  • How easy can you plan a day off: near impossible, depending on the perior and seniority, requests need to be made months in advance, holidays are planned in SEPT-NOV for the next year.
  • Is your job stressful? Sometimes, depends on the day.
  • Education possibilities: except for trainer status none.
  • Responsible for personnel (reports): in a way, leading the crew.

I love my job, colleagues and the company. It earns relatively well (compared to competitors) or excellent (compared to a more general job), but it comes with major downsides on the private and personal life. By far the hardest thing is the work life balance and the company is not exactly good at managing that. Also career opportunities are rather limited although I have no reasons to complain personally. You do see a lot of colleagues either leaving or getting bored-out after a while.

Edit: Do keep in mind that initial pilot training will set you back between 90k-130k when comparing the wage to other industries. Most of us pay it off in a 10 year loan.

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