Greener pastures

Today, Asia still offers opportunities, but it is the Middle East that provides the loudest call. Offers of friendlier tax laws, high salaries and rapid promotion are just part of the allure. Some airlines provide educational assistance for families and other generous benefits. However, it is more the prospect of growth in a dynamic company that calls to the majority of air crew. As Australian airlines stall and networks shrink, the big players across the way are flying ever-increasing route structures with a long line of aircraft on their order books. The future seems rosy.

Most pilots need to be highly motivated just to gain employment with an airline in the first place. That same character trait, which is analysed rigorously during the selection process, doesn’t generally disappear on employment. Without a new type to fly, a new port of call, or the prospect of promotion, aviators can become a fidgety bunch. And so they start to flick through the classifieds and surf the internet looking for options. And when they find a tempting offer, that’s when the soul-searching and restlessness can really kick in.

Depending on whether new job can be obtained on long term leave, or whether the umbilical chord must be cut with the Australian employer is the first big factor. Sometimes it is just too hard to leave a comfortable situation and put all of your eggs into a very distant basket. However, the major determining element is inherently family and lifestyle. The nomadic pilot may not hesitate at packing up and moving on; it is most likely an exciting new adventure. However, these same pilots may be far more resistant to uprooting their entire family and life and transplanting it into a foreign culture. At this point money and career can often drop back to a distant second place. For some, but not for all.

The ‘lifestyle’ pilots will generally baulk and find the gap just a bit too great to leap over. Others will be gone as quickly as the house keys hit the real estate agent’s table. Neither is wrong or right, it is literally to each, their own. And even then, this life-changing decision is not always made correctly. There are those who stayed and wished they’d gone and those that went expressing an equal degree of regret. These are the unfortunate by-products of the new order and the demise of jobs-for-life.

Many will succeed in their new domain rising through the ranks, new types and management. They never look back, only upwards and onwards. However, for many there is no denying the Australian way of life. Sometimes it will be family pressure and at other times a longing from within, but ultimately a good number will drift home to Australian shores. This group find the trade-off to be too great and in the end just want to live and fly in their homeland. Sadly, sometimes the realisation comes too late and career doors have closed or relationships disintegrated. Risk and return have always been demanding partners and not everyone will win.

Regardless of the outcome, the reality is that no airline career is set on rails in these modern times. The airlines themselves change tack at regular intervals, so plotting a career is virtually impossible. All that can be done is what has been practised for years on the flight deck. Gather the available information, make a decision, implement it and then evaluate the outcome. Try to keep passion, excitement and frustration on the back-burner and make cool level decisions. Pilots are a strange breed at times and I suspect that if you posted a notice with their current conditions under a different letter-head, a good number might still jump ship. Sometimes it’s just time for a change.

Today, airlines collapse and alliances change. Certainty has been wiped from the pilot’s glossary, replaced by a healthy dose of self-preservation. A career must now be dynamic and ready for change with log books, skill sets and further qualifications kept up to date. You might not want to go elsewhere, but you’d certainly better be ready to. In the end it is a decision about the balance of life, family and career and how best to maintain it. Undoubtedly tough decisions will need to be made and they may well affect the greater family far more significantly than the individual.

Consequently, the brave new world offers global opportunity when it is weighed up and enacted upon with cool resolve. But it can ultimately turn and bite if the only motivation was that the grass was just a little greener.

In his newly-launched eBook – 50 Tales of Flight – Owen Zupp takes readers aloft in everything from biplanes to Boeings. But more than the title may suggest, the book is built from the ground up – from the alarm clock buzzing to begin the airline pilot’s day to the sound of silence when the engine fails and all that lies beneath are trees and cliffs.

Zupp’s accounts are taken from his more than 30 years and 17,000 flying hours as a pilot. There are moments of tension and other of humourous relief. In some ways this book tracks an aviation life, but in others it offers insights and inspirations; just as the sky itself does.

As he says himself, “Flight is an amazing privilege”. Zupp has shared this privilege in all its colour and candour. It is a hearty read for anyone who shares the skies, dreams of doing so or is a passenger on a long overnight flight.

50 Tales of Flight is available on Amazon and iTunes.