Yes, the charge of 'vested interest' is easy to level, but my end of the business is historically not affected much by short and medium term fluctuations. The ATPL is the first step on the professional licensing road and most of my customers are looking at a job market 2 years away when they start with me. Although I do supply material to integrated schools as well, in a downturn people tend to switch to modular so that tends to even out our sales. I'm totally in agreement with WWW, and presumably you, that now is not a good time to start integrated training or to splash on an IR. Whether its a good time to start modular or not depends on your view of the job market in two years time.
Yes, I do seriously mean to suggest that airline recruiters have a notoriously short term view and for the reasons I stated. It would take a very courageous and visionary recruiter to continue blithely through the barrage of warnings about recesssion and, if he did, the gain would be small. People are the same the world over.
The latest data shows passenger numbers up, load factors up and share prices up (yes, I know not as high as last summer) and oil prices down. It strikes me that this extraordinarily gloomy thread has lost touch with reality. All the evidence says the airline industry is OK, in fact more than OK. The rest is speculation.
Edited to add: I should qualify that before the state of the US carriers is raised in objection. I mean most of the UK industry is OK, the American and possibly the Spanish carriers have their own problems. Some of the weaker small UK carriers have, of course, already failed - in line with MOL's predictions - but their failure will have had little effect on the jobs market and, I guess, some of their routes will have been take up by the big boys.
Last edited by Alex Whittingham; 6th September 2008 at 17:05.