I can confirm similar situations for other EU IT projects. Currently, I am a contractor working on the IT side for the Galileo Satellite System. Although the IT consulting company that I work for pays significantly better then the 18K mentioned (25K-30K range) the quality of the work that is delivered is terrible. The mentioned salary is for graduate engineers.
The attrition rate is terrible and its impossible to keep people who have knowledge of the program on board.
I would guess that 30-50% of our team are inexperienced java software engineers with less then 5 years of working experience. Around 100 people work on our project but there are probably 3-5 people who still have a clear picture of how everything is working / supposed to work.
In America such things are more often done by DoD contractors and they are paid well and space systems are more tightly controlled than civil aviation.
I was not speculating. I've been working in one of the contractors. The same situation applies to Railway Control Systems and other Telecommunication Infrastructures.
