Becoming a Pilot for a European Airline
 

Hello everyone,

It is my utmost desire to become a commercial pilot (an occupation that I have yearned for since I was a young child), and I meet all of the qualifications except one. I am currently a student in the United States, studying aerospace engineering. Due to my U.S. citizenship, I do not meet the requirement of "having the unrestricted right to live and work in the EEA". I aim to be accepted for an airline program with CTC or OAA, because frankly, nothing in the US compares. However, the more I realize how many hurdles I will have to cross, the more disheartened I become. :(

I do not want to give up on my dream, and right now I am 20 years old, so I'd love to get a head start on whatever needs to be done. I hope you all can impart some valuable information to me regarding what it would take to move to Europe and pursue my lifelong goals! Thanks a lot! :)

This may be a place to start:

Pilot Training Network - Landing Page Lufthansa

good luck

You're going to find that just about all the European airlines require you to be an EU national legally able to work in the EU. The EU countries aren't taking many immigrants, legally anyway. It isn't much different for non-US pilots to come here. Some nations are taking pilots ( ME3, China, Vietnam, Africa) but you have to have heavy jet time and an ATP with airline experience.

Check out PPRUNE for discussions with EU pilots--very competitive with far too many pilots for too few jobs. I know an Air France pilot, ex-FAF, very discouraged with the future there.

GF

Yeah, European airlines are in turmoil their legacies are melting in the face of open skies, LCC startups, and "creative" use of cross-border regulatory and labor shopping.

The future in europe is Ryan Air, NAI, and the near-unbelievable shenanigans in this story (read the whole thing):

http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/re...l-airline.html



Count your lucky stars that you have right-to-work in the US, buckle down and focus on getting a legacy, SWA, or FDX/UPS job. Plenty of younger euro pilots would LOVE a US legacy job right now.

You must be an EU citizen. You must get an EASA ATPL. You will probably need to buy a type rating in an A320 or 737. And then you aren't gonna get paid much money for a while. I work with a lot of European pilots in the Middle East and few of them plan on going back because, coupled with high taxes, pay is low in most cases. As for Ryanair and a few other LCC's, their multinational basing created huge tax headaches that might make it very difficult to ever take advantage of all that "free" stuff the people in the EU get for their 40-50%+ taxes like pensions, free health care, etc.

I can't give you specific details on a specific country or airline but guys from Ryanair, Easyjet, Aegean, Czech, Wizzair, and others all tell me the same things pretty much every time I fly with them and few if any plan to ever go back to Europe. I can't say that's an enviable career path from the standpoint of an American citizen who can choose between many airlines with many possibilities of places to live, considering reasonable commutes.

If you're an US citizen and you are contemplating this, you are about to make aviation much harder, expensive, and less rewarding than you realize.

You'll find a way to do it.

I think there are some US carriers that have crews based in Europe so you could go that route. FedEx comes to mind in Cologne-Bonn (Germany) and Miami Air has had crews in Amsterdam (Netherlands) seasonally for a few years now I think. I have no idea about the details.

It does seem that the current environment for pilots is MUCH better in the US than in Europe.

A bit late in response to your post.

The US legacy carriers are going to have plenty of troubles of their own in the face of open skies.

Weren't the CEO's of the big three at the White House a few months back making a strong case against this new policy.

The US legacies have always had a boogy man to blame their problems on. They cried like babies for decades about SW, and now it is Emerites.

The US domestic market at least is reasonably secure. Unlike Europe, a company in Texas cannot operate an airline with a certificate issued by deleware using the lax air safety rules of s. Carolina which allow them to import cheap labor from eastern Europe.

That is true, but the US legacy domestic routes are largely supplemented by their respective international routes. This open sky is mostly a liberalization of the current setting where trans Atlantic routes are mostly protected.

Smizek has been very vocal about his concerns that Emirates has aircraft orders extending far beyond what is required for their existing routes. The concern of subsidies has been raised.

Aviation is the craziest most dynamic business and anything can and will happen.

I wonder what people said about the future of US legacy airlines when Singapore and Cathay Pacific put forth record orders of the time for widebody jets....

U.S. Legacies aren't without risk and vulnerability but I would be a lot more worried about the future of large European flag carriers. Gulf Airlines on one side, and a recovering U.S. economy on the other don't paint a good picture for them in the next 10 years time.