Wealth Effect Group · Aviation
You fly to a checklist. Your money should too.
Wealth strategy, superannuation, SMSF, tax and retirement modelling for Australian pilots and cabin crew. Built around rostered income, a medical you keep having to renew, and a career that can finish years before your super unlocks.
The number that matters
Your income sits behind a medical certificate. Your biggest asset sits behind preservation age. The years between the two are the part of your plan nobody has modelled.
Worked examples · illustrative, not real clients
Three conversations we have with pilots and crew. See if one sounds familiar.
Captain, 51
He had cover for part of a nine-year problem
If his medical went at 51, how many years could the household fund before super unlocked at 60? The answer was about 2.5. Here is what changed it.
Cabin manager, late 30s
Four super accounts and one exclusion she didn’t know about
A super account at every base, three insurance policies running side by side. Why we read every account before consolidating anything.
First officer, 40s
He wanted an SMSF. We said not yet.
On paper he had the balance. Then we modelled what happens to the fund if the medical goes and the contributions stop.
Illustrative examples only. These are not real clients and the figures are hypothetical. Photos are stock images. General advice only.
How we help, in plain English
Six things we do for pilots and crew. The first one changes the rest.
01 · We work out your number
If you stopped flying tomorrow, how many years could your household fund before super unlocks at 60? We add up what you could actually reach (cash, investments, property equity, what your cover would really pay) and set it against what you spend. Almost nobody knows this number. It shapes every decision that follows.
02 · We read what you already have
Super in three places, an enterprise agreement you have never read cover to cover, cover you took out years ago, an investment or two. We work out what each one does, where they overlap, what you are paying for twice and what your agreement already gives you that you are not claiming.
03 · We build the bridge
Then we change where the money goes. Stop over-contributing to super once it stops paying, build investments you can reach before 60, hold them in the right names for tax and line your debt up with the plan.
04 · We handle the aviation-specific traps
Division 293 and Division 296 for senior pilots, tax residency on offshore contracts, what you can claim for staying current, and legacy airline defined benefit funds that can lose value if they are rolled over the wrong way.
05 · We plan the whole career
The right advice for a first officer is wrong for a senior captain. We plan for each stage, from the command upgrade to the last five years, and for how you draw an income once the flying stops. The bridge and the retirement plan are one document.
06 · Cover, with the full picture
Through AV Insure, which has looked after pilots and crew since 2011, cover sits inside the same plan. We tell you what your existing cover would do before suggesting anything new. Where we arrange insurance, any commission is shown to you before you decide.
Why generic advice misses
Aviation pay doesn’t behave like a salary.
A planner who has never read an enterprise agreement or a Class 1 renewal will treat your income like a PAYG wage. That is where the money leaks.
Income that moves
Base, sector pay, overnight and international allowances, loadings. Two pilots on the same rank can land a long way apart depending on the roster they bid. A plan built on an average month fails in a thin one.
A career with a shorter runway
Your ability to earn sits behind a medical certificate, and you do not have to be unwell to lose it. CASA grounds a pilot whose assessed annual risk of a medical event crosses one percent. You can be entirely capable of full time work and never fly commercially again. That fact should shape where your money sits, not just how much of it there is.
Super set by your EBA
Airline funds, legacy defined benefit sections, industry funds, contractor arrangements with no employer contributions at all. What suits a legacy airline member is wrong for a charter pilot on an ABN.
Tax across borders
Overseas contracts, per diems, residency questions, time-based apportionment. Getting residency wrong is expensive, and it is exactly what the ATO looks at closely.
The cost of staying current
Medicals, renewals, endorsements, association fees, publications, uniform. Some of it is deductible and some isn’t, and most people who self-prepare draw the line in the wrong place.
Time off, not time free
Days between duties are a real asset. Used well they fund a second income, a property strategy or a plan for life after the flight deck. Used badly they fund nothing.
8
years. The gap between losing a medical at 52 and reaching preservation age at 60. Whatever sits outside super has to carry the household across it.
The number almost nobody has worked out
How many years could you fund before your super unlocks?
Preservation age is 60. If your medical goes at 52, you have eight years to get through before you can touch the biggest asset you own. What sits outside super is the only thing that covers them, and for most pilots it is the smallest number on the page.
Almost nobody we meet knows their number. Working it out takes one conversation and it changes what you do next.
| What you already have | What it is actually for | What it does if the medical goes at 52 |
|---|---|---|
| Superannuation | Retirement from 60 | Nothing, for eight more years, and it is usually the largest number you own. |
| Cover inside your super | Sickness or injury | Often a two year benefit period against an eight year gap, and some funds exclude aircrew altogether. Worth reading before you assume. |
| Your enterprise agreement | Pay and conditions | Frequently funds an annual allowance towards cover you may not hold. Most pilots have never claimed it. |
| Emergency cash | Three to six months of expenses | A contested medical renewal can run six to nine months, grounded and unpaid throughout, before any appeal is heard. |
| Everything outside super | The bridge | The only number that matters in this scenario, and usually the thinnest. |
Through AV Insure we can advise on and arrange cover where it is the right answer, and any commission is disclosed before you decide. But the first job is always the same: work out the number, tell you plainly what the cover you already hold would do, and build the strategy that closes the distance.
Illustration only. Your preservation age and position will differ. Insurance terms vary between funds and insurers; this is general information, not a recommendation.
Stage by stage
The right advice changes as you move up the seniority list.
Aviation careers are sequential. Decisions that are right in the right-hand seat are wrong five years later, so we plan against where you are now and where you’re heading.
01 · Training and hour building. Training debt, low pay, high costs. The priority is protecting the licence you just paid for and keeping the debt from following you into your first command.
02 · First officer. Income becomes real, and so does the temptation. A cashflow system that survives a light roster, the first property or investment decision, and super invested for a thirty-year horizon.
03 · Command upgrade. The biggest single jump in your earning life. Handled well it builds a decade of wealth. Handled badly it becomes lifestyle. Salary sacrifice and debt structure need resetting here, not later.
04 · Senior command, wide body or overseas contract. Higher income brings Division 293 on your super contributions. Division 296 is now law: from 1 July 2026 an extra 15% tax applies to earnings on the portion of super balances above $3 million, and a further 10% above $10 million (thresholds indexed). Residency and per diem treatment matter if you’re based offshore. Structure starts to beat product.
05 · The last five years, or an unplanned exit. Whether you retire on schedule or lose the medical at 54, the same question decides the outcome: is there enough outside super to bridge the gap to preservation age? We model both versions so neither is a surprise.
Flight deck and cabin
Cabin crew aren’t a smaller version of pilots.
Most aviation advice is written for the pointy end. Crew face a different set of problems and get almost no specialist attention, which is exactly why we cover both.
Pilots
Work out the bridge, then build across it
- Wealth and super modelled year by year to preservation age and beyond
- Your bridge number: how many years the household could fund if the medical went tomorrow
- Super strategy matched to your fund and your enterprise agreement
- Salary sacrifice modelled against the annual contribution base, which now leaves senior pilots almost no room
- Division 293 and Division 296 worked through before they bite
- Defined benefit interests handled properly, including grandfathered contribution treatment
- SMSF advice and administration where it genuinely stacks up
- An investment portfolio structured for tax and built to be left alone
- Residency and per diem treatment planned before you sign an offshore contract
- Drawdown and pension strategy for the years after the flight deck
Cabin crew
Turn shift income into something that lasts
- Consolidating the super accounts picked up across bases and employers
- Reading what sits inside those accounts before anything is closed, because cancelling first can cost you cover you cannot get back
- Cashflow that works on variable rostered pay and allowances
- Deductions for uniform, laundry and overnight expenses, claimed to what you actually spent rather than to the published rate
- Buying a first home on income that lenders assess conservatively
- Getting super invested for the horizon you actually have, not the default option you were put in at 22
- A plan for what the money does when the flying stops
What we actually do
Most of the value is in what you already have
Pilots and crew rarely arrive with nothing. They arrive with super in three places, an agreement they have never read, an investment or two bought on a recommendation, and no picture of how any of it fits together. The work is understanding what is there and making it do more.
01 · Wealth and super modelling
Your position modelled year by year, then tested against what actually happens in aviation: a command upgrade, an offshore contract, a redundancy, a lost medical at 52.
02 · Superannuation strategy
Your fund, your agreement, your caps and your investment option. Carry-forward contributions and Division 293 and 296 exposure modelled. Defined benefit interests get specialist attention.
03 · SMSF advice and administration
Whether a self-managed fund genuinely suits you. If it does, our sister business WE. SMSF runs it. If a public fund serves you better, we’ll tell you that instead.
04 · Investment portfolio
Evidence-based, built to be left alone while you’re away, held in the right names for tax and rebalanced to a rule rather than a hunch. Reporting you can read in ten minutes on a layover.
05 · The cover you already hold
Before anything else we work out what your existing cover would actually do, because that number goes straight into the model. We will tell you where the gaps are and what your enterprise agreement already funds towards them. Where new cover makes sense, AV Insure can arrange it, with any commission disclosed up front in writing. Keeping what you already have is always on the table.
06 · Tax planning and returns
Deductions for staying current, overnight expenses and residency on offshore contracts. Returns are prepared by our referral partner Altiora Advisory, working from the same file as your adviser.
07 · Lending and debt structure
Lenders read allowances and rostered pay conservatively. WE. Mortgage Solutions packages aviation income carefully and structures debt to work with the investment plan.
08 · Estate planning
Binding nominations, who owns which policy, cross-border assets and what happens to an SMSF. Large insured sums and offshore assets make this matter more in aviation than most professions.
09 · Retirement and drawdown strategy
Flying stops long before life does, and how you draw an income afterwards decides how long it lasts. We model the order you spend from, how much stays invested, what the transfer balance cap allows and what the tax looks like each year. If you have a defined benefit interest from an airline fund, that gets specialist attention before anything is moved, because rolling out of one can destroy value you cannot get back.
Worked example · illustrative, not a real client
He had cover for part of a nine-year problem.
A captain at 51, flying domestic, two kids still at school. Good income, good super, sensible with money. He came in about insurance premiums going up. The premiums weren’t the problem.
51
Captain, domestic
$135k
Household spending a year, after tax
$780k
Super, combined, locked to 60
$275k
Outside super: cash and property equity
What the modelling found
- A nine year bridge he could not cross. If the medical went at 51, super was locked until 60. Almost everything had been built inside super, where he could not reach it in the one scenario that ends a flying career.
- Cover he had never read. Held for eleven years, with a benefit period that ran out less than a third of the way across the gap. He had assumed it went to 65.
- An entitlement he had never claimed. His agreement provided an annual allowance towards cover he did not hold, so he had never drawn it. Eleven years of it.
- Salary sacrifice that had stopped working. Employer contributions alone were close to consuming his concessional cap, so the extra he was putting in was earning him very little and locking away money he might need at 52.
What we changed
- Capped salary sacrifice at the point it stopped being efficient, and redirected the surplus into investments he can actually reach before 60.
- Reviewed the investment structure so the portfolio is held in the right names for tax, and rebalanced to a rule rather than whenever he happens to look at it.
- Told him exactly what his existing cover would pay and for how long, and pointed him to a specialist for the piece we do not advise on. He took the allowance his agreement had been offering him since 2015.
- Built the drawdown plan for 60 onwards at the same time, so the bridge and the retirement plan are one document rather than two.
Illustrative example only. Not a real client; the figures are hypothetical. It shows how the modelling works and is not a prediction or promise of any result. Enterprise agreements differ between employers. Any reference to insurance is general information only, not a recommendation.
Illustrative case · Cabin crew
Four super accounts. Three policies. One exclusion she didn’t know about.
A cabin manager in her late thirties had picked up a super account at every base and employer. We read what was inside each account before touching anything, because consolidating first can close cover you will not be offered again. One of the older accounts carried a condition she had never been told about. We kept the fund with the cleanest terms, moved the rest, put her in an investment option suited to a twenty five year horizon, and turned three sets of duplicate fees into a deposit plan.
Illustrative case · SMSF
He wanted an SMSF. The modelling said not yet, so we said not yet.
A first officer wanted an SMSF to buy property inside super. We modelled the borrowing and running costs, the concentration risk, and what happens to the fund if he lost his medical and contributions stopped. It didn’t stack up, so we told him and built the exposure a simpler way.
The law has since answered the question. New SMSF borrowing for real property is now limited to business real property, so a geared residential investment like the one he wanted can no longer be set up. Arrangements already in place before the change are not affected. Borrowing to buy the premises your own business trades from is still allowed, and for business owners that is often the better idea anyway.
Illustrative scenarios, not real clients. Outcomes depend on individual circumstances and the rules in force at the time.
Life after the flight deck
Flying stops long before life does.
Every pilot and crew member eventually walks off an aircraft for the last time. Some choose the day. Some don’t. Either way, the next thirty years still need paying for, and the plan should already know how.
We plan the career and the retirement as one piece of work: what you build while you’re flying, what bridges you to 60 if the flying stops early, and how you draw it down afterwards so it lasts as long as you do.
- Plain-English modelling you can read on a layover
- Reviews scheduled around your roster, not ours
- Advice by video from anywhere in Australia or offshore
Why us
We learned this industry from the inside
AV Insure, which has specialised in aviation insurance since 2011, is joining Wealth Effect Group. AV Insure principal Trudy Kattwinkel stays on as a consultant to the business and is personally introducing her clients to our team, so that experience comes with it, now inside a full advice business. That is the combination aviation clients have been missing. Plenty of people understand a Class 1 renewal. Very few of them can also model what it does to a household budget, a super strategy and a retirement plan.
We work across Australia and offshore, from offices in Melbourne and on the Gold Coast, and almost entirely by video. Time zones and layovers are not a problem for us.
| Practice | Wealth Effect Group |
| Focus | Pilots and cabin crew |
| Aviation arm | AV Insure, est. 2011 |
| Principal adviser | Andre Dirckze |
| Experience | More than two decades in advice |
| How we are paid | Advice fee agreed in writing; any insurance commission disclosed |
| Meetings | Australia-wide and offshore, by video |
Your aviation team
Two specialists. One plan.
Most pilots deal with an insurance adviser and a financial planner who never speak. Here they sit side by side, so the cover question gets answered inside the whole plan rather than on its own.
Andre Dirckze
Andre leads the wealth side of the work: your bridge number, super and contribution strategy, investments outside super, tax structure and the retirement plan that follows the last sector. More than two decades in advice, and a strong view that most of the value sits in what you already have.
Trudy Kattwinkel
As principal of AV Insure, Trudy has looked after the life insurance and income protection of Australian pilots and cabin crew since 2011. She knows the loss of licence arrangements that come with the major airline agreements, and how they sit alongside the cover held inside super. Trudy works with Andre so your cover is set against the real gap in your plan, not a guess.
How it works
Four steps, and you know the cost before the second one.
A 15-minute call
Your rank, your fund, your roster and what’s on your mind. We tell you whether we can add enough value to be worth paying for. No cost, no obligation.
A scoped proposal
A written scope and a fixed fee before any work starts. Nothing begins until you say yes.
Your bridge and your plan
The modelling, the strategy and the paperwork, coordinated with your accountant and lender where needed.
Follow-through
We implement it and stay with it as your rank, roster and the rules change. Reviews fit around your roster, not ours.
Work out your bridge
Send us three things. We’ll do the maths.
Your last payslip, your latest super statement and the name of your enterprise agreement. Tell us a little about where you are, and we’ll come back to book a call and walk you through how many years you could fund if the flying stopped.
Please don’t attach documents here. We’ll send a secure link once we’ve spoken.
Questions we get
Straight answers.
Do you sell insurance?
Yes, through AV Insure, which has looked after aviation insurance for Australian pilots and crew since 2011 and is joining Wealth Effect Group. Our wealth and super advice is paid for by a fee you agree in writing. Where we arrange insurance, the insurer may pay us a commission, and we will show you exactly how much before you commit. We always start by telling you what your current cover does, and if keeping it is the better answer, we will say so.
What does the modelling actually show me?
How many years your household could fund if the flying stopped, set against the years until your super becomes accessible. Then what happens to that number if you change what you are doing. It is one page, it is built on your figures, and most people have never seen it before.
Do you understand airline enterprise agreements and super funds?
Yes. Contribution rates, allowances and insurance arrangements vary between employers, and legacy defined benefit interests need specialist advice before anything is rolled over. We read your agreement and fund documents rather than assuming a standard arrangement.
I’m based overseas. Can you still advise me?
In most cases, yes. Residency, per diem treatment and where your assets are held are exactly where aviation clients lose money without noticing. We work by video and around your time zone.
What does advice cost, and is it deductible?
We’re fee for service and take no commissions on investments. You get a written scope and a fixed fee before any work begins. Some advice fees may be deductible depending on what the advice relates to; we’ll flag which parts are likely to be, and your accountant can confirm.
Do you only work with airline pilots?
No. We work with airline, regional, charter and offshore pilots, and with cabin crew at every level. The bridge question applies to all of them.
Featured insight · Andre Dirckze
Pilots have two retirement ages. Most only plan for one.
Super unlocks at 60. A flying career can end on a medical examiner’s assessment years earlier. With the super rules reset on 1 July and the capital gains overhaul now law, the gap between the two has become the most expensive number in a pilot’s plan.
WE. Insights
Super and SMSF insights.
Your next step
Fifteen minutes now, or a guess for the next twenty years.
Bring your last payslip, your super statement and your enterprise agreement. We will tell you in one call how many years you could fund if the flying stopped, and what your agreement already entitles you to that you may not be claiming.
Case studies on this page are illustrative and hypothetical, not real clients. CASA medical requirements are summarised in general terms; check current rules with CASA.
Any reference to insurance on this page is general information about products that may be available. It is not a recommendation and it does not take your circumstances into account. Availability, definitions, terms, exclusions and premiums vary between insurers and are subject to underwriting. Taxation commentary is general and depends on your individual circumstances.
General advice only. This page does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs, so consider whether it is appropriate for you and read our Financial Services Guide before acting. Wealth Effect Group (CAR 424768) and Andre Dirckze (AR 395157) are Authorised Representatives of Boston Reed Pty Ltd, ABN 89 091 004 885, AFSL 225738. Accounting and tax services are provided by our referral partner Altiora Advisory, not by Wealth Effect Group; we may receive a referral fee. WE. Mortgage Solutions is a trading name of Wealth Effect Pty Ltd ATF Wealth Effect Unit Trust, ABN 78 766 858 328, Authorised Credit Representative 480612 of BLSSA Pty Ltd, Australian Credit Licence 391237. See our important information.