Almost every beginning airman faces the problem of not accumulating enough flying hours. One time all direct members of your family and friends already joined you for a flight (perhaps more than once) and paying for flying hours by yourself is far too expensive. Particularly this is a fact for most private airmen. However, also starting commercial airmen are facing this problem: to get a chance at all for a flying job you have to accumulate a lot of flying hours as this is the most important selection criterion. And this is very hard to get in a market in which employability is bad. There are too much pilots and too little jobs thus very high demands. Even for experienced pilots times are getting harder and harder. E.g. because of bankruptcies of major U.S. carriers senior pilots are afraid of losing their jobs and most of their pensions. And if fired, they hope to be hired back elsewhere, even at reduced pay levels. This is a new world to most senior pilots; welcome to reality! But leaving no chance for relatively inexperienced commercial pilots.
See the article "Nothing but gray skies do top pilots see" published in the International Herald Tribune of 7 March 2006. This is a .pdf file.
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Up until now there are mainly two possibilities for starting commercial pilots who are on the free market:
Again bring a lot of money to buy flying hours, hope for a flying job and have an enourmous financial risk. Even getting type rated is for your own expenses properly, according the employers to have any chance getting a job. This behaviour is absurd! Banks and airline companies really want to believe you that this is normal, but it isn’t! However, this is merely a matter of supply and demand; as said before, there are too many pilots and too few jobs. Personal bankruptcy and/or family quarrels lie in wait if you don’t succeed finding a flying job after these investments and the odds are against you in these times of economic downfall especially for the airlines.
Companies want to stave off their financial risk onto enthousiastic pilots who see their dream fall apart in this way.
