Steve6443 wrote:
And there is a pilot shortage on the horizon – see here.
There is no pilot shortage, never has been, and never will be. The source you cite is a company selling training, and the ‘upcoming pilot shortage’ is the oldest trick in the book to get starry-eyed young men to spend their parents’ cash.
A pilot shortage is when a job flying an aircraft is advertised with all necessary training, licences and ratings paid for by the employer and they still cannot get people to apply.
10 applicants per vacancy rather than 100 is not a shortage. In my line of work, when we hire someone they are generally the only serious applicant. That is a shortage.
Peter wrote:
24 month IMCR validity
I was told on my IR revalidation Dec 2022 that the IMCR went from 25 to 24. Surprised me too!
I imagine the CAA finds 24/12 easier maths than 25/12.
Peter wrote:
Same with say American Airlines flying to Paris; they don’t need EU papers or work permits.
The converse is not true though. If you are airline crew flying to the USA, you need a visa.
This is probably complicated in the detail.
For example the US DPE examiners who used to come to Europe were stopped from coming > 10 years ago by “certain interests” reporting them to the Home Office (UK) for not having a working visa!! I checked the UK visa regs at the time and found this was BS; there are clear exemptions for training and such like. But this was enough to spook the DPEs and they stopped coming over. My CPL checkride was done with one of the last ones.
OTOH the DPEs could have come to other European countries – unless the EU visa regs could also be enforced. I have not heard of any changes to the DPE situation post-brexit.
So maybe cabin crew and not pilots?
Steve6443 wrote:
If you want to move abroad, you still can. Yes, it can be a bit of a faff but it’s not impossible.
A “bit of a faff” doesn’t begin to even describe it, and in the case of piloting (which Graham correctly points out – there is no pilot shortage, a pilot shortage seems to mean “20 qualified candidates for each job” instead of 200 – a friend of mine, who was ultimately successful, when he did the British Airways cadet scheme there were apparently 1,000 applicants for each place!) – you’re not going to have an employer sponsor you to do it because it is considerably more than “a bit of a faff”.
As an example, getting UK indefinite leave to remain (a process we are going through right at this moment, well, Isle of Man ILR which works the same way) is a 5 year process, during which your life is on hold, and will put you around £10,000 in the hole once all the very expensive fees have been paid – and you’ve also paid an immigration lawyer (which is highly recommended, as even a minor clerical error on a form will have your application rejected and all fees lost for that stage of the process, and possible deportation). The process is brutally unforgiving and Kafkaesque, and the UK is one of the easier ones (and the Isle of Man in particular is a little easier still as when something goes wrong – as it very often does – it is very easy to get your elected representitive to go into bat for you). Ours went wrong – we had to delay our wedding twice because the UKVI (which processes the initial application for the Isle of Man) lost our paperwork after the IOM Immigration had approved it. It is impossible to actually contact anyone in the UKVI – they shield themselves with a private company that gives you only canned responses (which are also wrong), and charges you £5 for each canned response. We were lucky enough that my MHK (=member of parliament) who is a personal friend and was at the time a neighbour, was a government minister and had personal contacts with the Chief Executive of the UK home office, and could personally get the case escalated where within 30 minutes, the UKVI managed to discover our paperwork! Other people who are not fortunate enough to have these kinds of friends are shafted, and often have to reapply and pay the fees all over again, even for UKVI errors.
Don’t get me started on the pub quiz that is the “Life in the UK” test!
Citizenship on top of that is another couple of years (but at least your lives are no longer on hold while waiting for that one) and another couple of grand. Calling it a “bit of a faff” is beyond laughable and doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the colossal ballache it is to get permanent residence anywhere you don’t have freedom of movement (or at least, anywhere you’d want to live).
The United States is much worse than the UK for this process. I’ve no personal experience of European country visas, but most of them will be on a par with the UK’s process. I have a number of very bad personal experiences with the US immigration system even though we had a massive multinational company, with a veritable army of lawyers, doing the work.
Steve6443 wrote:
Even working for (eg) EasyJet would allow a UK employee to be based out of Switzerland or Austria for a limited period of time, if necessary.
No, they couldn’t because :
- To fly for Easyjet Switzerland (separate AOC) you need a Swiss licence AND the right to work in Switzerland
- To fly for Easyjet Europe (separate AOC covering all the other non-UK bases) you need an Austrian licence AND the right to work in wherever country your base is.
The brand is “Easyjet” but each is a separate entity.
Saying “yes you can still apply to work elsewhere” is akin to saying “yes, you’ve lost a leg, but you can still hop!”
The purpose of my video was simply to illustrate the very real barriers that have been created.
Someone further up in the thread said that those living “in the EU” before Brexit could stay there.
This is not entirely accurate. Nobody “lives in the EU”, they live in individual countries which are members of the EU.
As the holder of a passport from an EU member state, you are exempt from needing a visa as part of the reciprocal right of free movement.
As a British passport holder, you are now a “third country national” with a resident permit issued by an individual country. This entitles you to work in that country only. As soon as you set foot outside your country of residence, you need a work permit and visa for each individual country. This is the case even for those covered under the withdrawal agreement.
alioth wrote:
A “bit of a faff” doesn’t begin to even describe it
@alioth, not surprised, it is really bad – you have to remember to read CAREFULLY the documents, the ILR itself and ensure that they haven’t misspelled the name (I get it with some interesting ones, but misspelling ALEXANDER is as ridiculous as taking almost twice much time to correct it) and they have given you the correct type of the entry clearance document (like ensuring that this is a general one and not the student one, while the letter names the correct one).
Or you can have the officials not following the mandated guidelines and manuals…
Seen that, been there.
Yes, it is all “bit of a faff” until you in that “small percentage of customers experiencing clerical error”.
you need an Austrian licence AND the right to work in wherever country your base is
I would bet that Easyjet
