Why the Royal Flying Doctor outstrips international airlines

At a time when Qantas has been in the limelight for the wrong reasons, many pilots may be lured to US commercial airlines offering lucrative salaries that surpass US$200,000 a year, plus perks.

Fin Garside, originally from Sydney, has decided to stay put in Western Australia where he works as a senior base pilot for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS).

Fin has been a pilot for more than six years with the RFDS, a 95-year-old organisation providing much-needed emergency medical services across WA's vast landmass, the largest health jurisdiction in the world.

“I like working for the Flying Doctors because it’s a very well known, respected organisation. It’s a pretty good opportunity to get out there and work in the community. There’s a feel-good factor, it’s meaningful - that’s a large part,” he said.

“You get to go to some cool places, especially for work up here in the Kimberley, you get to go to lots of communities, stations and places where you wouldn't really be able to get to with normal travelling."

Fin almost didn't become a pilot, training as a journalist in Canberra and ending up doing rounds at the Press Gallery.

“I always wanted to be a pilot. I was able to write and I really liked photography so I thought journalism might be a good thing to do if I couldn't get into aviation later on,” he said.

Scratching his itch to travel, Fin moved to South America where he stayed for five years and started his own magazine before taking on pilot training back in Australia. “I’ve always travelled. One of the things that attracted me to aviation was the places you get to go to.”

Fin got the green light for his pilot license and started his first aviation job in Exmouth in 2013. “I got to fly over the Ningaloo Reef and look for whale sharks, which was an absolutely amazing way to get my hours up,” he said.

“After Exmouth I was down in Port Lincoln, South Australia, doing some tuna spotting. Then I moved to Dubbo, New South Wales, to work for a private company called Wingsaway which does similar work to the the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and it was there that I got the experience needed to join the RFDS.”

Based in Broome at one of the RFDS’s five aeromedical bases across WA, Fin hasn't looked back. "Broome’s great. It's got a really nice country atmosphere and a small community. At the same time, you don't really want for anything up here, it's got enough basic necessities, you don't really miss being in the city,” he said.

“The work that the RFDS does is unique and provides you with opportunities to do things that you can’t do anywhere else in any other aviation environment, except maybe in the military.

“Taking an amazingly sophisticated and expensive machine to outback communities and gravel runways, things that are a bit more out of the ordinary than your everyday airline work. There’s a lot more autonomy involved. It’s awesome."

The people Fin gets to work with - including the doctors, nurses and patients in the community - makes the work more meaningful.

"The nature of the work attracts a specific type of person, which is good because everyone’s there for very similar reasons. It's just a nice environment to work. Everyone's generally very appreciative of the work," he said.

“You compare that to Qantas at the moment; I don't think that would be the nicest place to work.”

Fin hasn’t been lured to working for commercial international airlines, where massive pay packages are on offer.

“For me, personally, there's two aspects to it. Yes, they do offer a crazy, insane amount of money and some of the figures that were getting thrown around, I think there's a US$100K sign-on bonus and things like that, which is, you know, what used to be a house deposit.

“Money is important, up to a point. Then once you've reached a certain point, it’s all those nice things that working for the RFDS gives you, some of those intangible benefits like the ability to help people at the end of the day, for me, that means a lot more."

Not knowing what each day will bring keeps the job interesting and is an aspect Fin loves about the work he does at the RFDS.

“One of the things that I love about the job and one of the nice things about the RFDS is I have absolutely no idea what my day is going to look like, which is great,” Fin said.

“So, for example, today I might be flying from Broome to Kununurra and on the way back they might send me up to the Bungle Bungles which is the World Heritage National Park landing on a tiny dirt airstrip there, and then on to Kalumburu. Every place you go to has a very unique set of challenges, which is what keeps the job really interesting,” Fin said.

“You're equipped with the skills and the training to achieve everything in a safe way. You have a framework which they train you to a very, very high standard. After that, it’s a lot more on you.

“Whereas working in an airline environment, you've sort of lost a lot of that autonomy. There are a lot more factors at play at airlines and the industry which don't really apply for us. For example, thinking about fuel costings and those types of things. For us, we’ve basically got our framework, which we’re trained in, and then after that, it's about getting the job done in the safest and quickest way,” he said.

The biggest challenge in his job are the night shifts and some weather challenges in the wet season, but Fin said there is plenty that outweighs any challenges. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. It’s a really enjoyable job. Night shifts aren’t the most fun things, but I suppose every job has to have a slight negative but if it’s just night shifts you can deal with it,” Fin said.

“Up in Broome we’re blessed with five months of the year with insanely perfect weather. It’s between 18 and 30 degrees every day, not a cloud in the sky. For the other months the weather is a big challenge up here with the storms. But we’ve got the training and the aircraft to deal with it,” he said.

“For me, that's the best part about it, you've always got that challenge, which is quite a cool thing. At the end of the day, it's a very feel-good job. It's quite nice to be able to know you made a difference in someone's life.”

Not only does Fin love his job, he also met his partner at work, a flight nurse stationed at Port Hedland with RFDS, when she moved to Broome with the service. “I transferred into her house when she moved from Port Hedland to Broome and then I met her up in Broome through work,” he said.