bazzaman96
21st Apr 2004, 04:09
Forgive me if this sounds wrong, silly or impossible. It's a long post, but please read:
As an interested beginner, and someone new-ish to the site, I can see clearly some of the major problems facing people here trying to get jobs in the aviation industry.
Some of the site visitors are wannabes, looking to get a foot in the door.
Others are fully qualified pilots looking to get a foot BACK in the door.
It amazes me how ridiculously expensive some of the training schemes are, and how much people question their true worth. People also complain about the lack of a regulator in the training industry, suggesting that students and training pilots are cut a raw deal.
My question is this:
This site is clearly one of the more authoritative and popular sites among pilots/trainees/wannabes in the UK.
There is a huge potential for strength in numbers here. Real strength.
Couldn't you, as a body, use some of the pprune funds to push towards and indeed make inroads towards a regulatory body to overlook and oversea flight training?
Organisations such as CTC McAlpine can, at present, do whatever they want, because no-one is powerful enough to say otherwise. Having a regulatory body would stop them - rather like OFSTED is to education.
At the same time, training providers wouldn't simply give up their freedom, at least not lightly. But to have thousands of members of this site, and a financed campaign backed by industry professionals from all levels, taken to the airlines with demonstrable evidence of the inefficiencies and inequalities of the present system, backed by similar sites and organisations (GAPAN, Air League, as well as other websites), it would be a huge voice calling for regulation of what, it is generally (it seems) agreed, is a slightly flawed system.
This post ISN'T a rose-tinted call for a petition, with a naive suggestion to push for changes. Changes will be immensely difficult to make and I wouldn't imagine leaders in the aviation industry would listen to a handful of people alone.
However, if some of the thousands of pounds allocated in the pprune fund could be used to set up a taskforce, based upon highly qualified pprune members and trainers, it could set about conducting an audit into the training industry and documenting the well-known problems facing unqualified or semi-qualified pilots. This, I suggest, would be more valuable than simple donations or subsidies.
It is all very well and good sharing ideas on these forums, and calling for change, but if nothing is ever done about it it's pointless. Bashing CTC or BA or whoever won't change things. What's needed it logical, methodical and rational action.
Some will say this post is pointless - we can't change anything. I would disagree. If enough people call for change then governments or Public Regulatory Bodies will listen. Many on here argue that training schemes are 'scams' designed to make money from wannabes, and that the best pilots don't get the jobs.
It would seem sensible, from the perspective of an objective yet interested bystander, for someone to actually conduct an audit or report first off addressing this issue, to determine whether the industry needs a regulatory body to control training, and stop pure money-making outfits taking place.
If this has already been done, please accept my apologies and forgive my naiveity. As I said, I'm just an interested wannabe.
However, from what I've seen, I think a lot of people are being taken for mugs. There are thousands of trained people out there, but places on training schemes are being given to completely novice applicants. How come?
Perhaps this is my jealousy speaking - I would love to be a pilot, and would give my right arm for my dream, but find it suspicious entering an industry where it seems the best pilots don't always get the best jobs.
Find me another industry where you pay to attend an interview (some places do!). Find me another industry where you are charged such an extortionate sum to take exams. Find me another industry where your examiners are (see other thread) paid according to whether YOU pass or fail (note that a driving instructor doesn't, because you suggest this). Find me another industry where companies hiring employees ignore highly qualified professionals and take on complete newbies.
Find me another industry that lets companies get away with it?...THEY DON'T.
It's time the pilot training industry had a regulator. It's been called for time and time again on these forums, but nothing has done. Please pprune, mobilise your membership, work with similar organisations, and get some weight behind an investigation.
Feel free to comment as appropriate. Sorry if this is highly irrelevant, silly or ignorant. I hope people sympathise with at least some of my points.
Best Wishes,
Barry
Just to go on more (ranting, I know!), I'll give you an example to show you what my waffle is leading to.
Pprune active 'membership' is some several thousand, some qualified pilots, with varying experiences, some wannabes, some failed wannabes...and some failed pilots!
If you took the following members:
- Several 'fully qualified' pilots (different experiences)
- Several successful sponsorship/cadet scheme applicants
- Several unsuccessful applicants
- Several staff members from different training providers
- Several flight instructors and examiners
You could then conduct a report into the following, over the course of a year:
- The routes to becoming a pilot, and their respective costs
- The difference between self-improver and Cadet Schemes such as CTC, in terms of quality, costs etc
- The job market - employment statistics, airline staffing levels, projections for future growth and expansion, the shape of the industry
- What airlines are looking for from applicants (like the similar GAPAN investigation)
- The dangers of a lack of regulation, and the benefits it could bring
- The 'fairness' to those interested in aviation careers, e.g. why some qualified people can't get jobs, when complete novices get sucked into cadet schemes and offered jobs
- Investigation into the dangers of airlines relying too heavily on sponsorship schemes.
- Examination costs, breakdowns, procedures and licence costs
- 'Average' costs for qualification
- Cadet/Sponsorship training organisations' justification for their charges
- What would happen if organisations such as CTC didn't exist (at all)?
Once such a report is complete, the working party could make a series of recommendations based upon its findings. So, hypothetically:
- Compile definitive 'basic requirements' list to weed out unmeritorious applicants and wannabes at the first stage (i.e. actually set down some minimum academic requirements (defined). Make this an industry standard, rather than an airline standard.
- Standardise examination costs, so that exam costs are fairly weighted according to the actual cost of setting the exam. It has been noted in other threads that certain CEE Atpl exams cost the same extortionate amount whether the test is a very basic quick test, or a mammoth and difficult assessment.
- Develop industry wide code of practice for cadet/sponsorship schemes to abide by when selecting candidates (ie. provide acceptable, informative and constructive criticism/feedback). Give clear reasons for decisions, explain to those not selected WHY they weren't selected.
- Periodic 'random' spotchecks and also yearly assesment and inspections of training providers and cadet schemes, rather like Ofsted do for schools, to monitor selection procedures and check they are fair.
- Campaign for the industry to conduct full pscyhological and scientific research to determine the most effective method of testing applicants for training schemes, rather than relying on a variety of tests which, although accepted as good, are criticised for many (and indeed the examiners themselves) as not necessarily being an accurate indication of whether you'd be a good pilot or not. Research into alternative testing and review of the current testing system.
- Remove the need to pay to apply for cadet schemes, either by passing the cost onto those that are successful, or:
- Perhaps (this may sound far-fetched), offered an examination in Pilot Aptitude and Potential (made-up name!), which can be taken by candidates in testing centres such as schools, colleges and universities, under timed and controlled conditions, for a nominal charge (GCSEs cost £50 to sit). You would then need a certain score on this test to apply to the training scheme.
The final point may look like a different way of saying the same thing. I suggest it's not. Cadet schemes justify charging applicants anywhere between £100 - £200 on the basis of simulator time and other examination costs.
If students could pay £50 earlier on in the process, to give them sufficient standing to apply for such schemes, it would weed out clearly unsuitable candidates in the first place, so there would not be as many unsuitable candidates being weeded out by the schemes themselves. This would mean less applicants = less testing = less costs = less cost passed onto the successful Pilot Aptitude and Potential certificate holders.
Universities have such a scheme already - and cadet schemes are very similar to universities in a way. My own experience, from Cambridge, is that in maths they require STEP papers (additional to A level), Law will require the new LNAT test, medicine and biological sciences requires BMAT. These initial tests act to separate good and bad applicants at the initial stage before they are even invited to interview (though, incidentally, it is cambridge policy to interview almost everyone - not so in other unis), thus saving interviewers time. This is equivalent to saving CTC McAlpine money paying assessors and resources.
Such a standardised examination could be drafted with airline input and responses from the 'what we want from a pilot' reports circulated by GAPAN, and thus could be tailored to actually target the real things that aviation employers want, rather than bubbling along at present without having any real concrete idea of what people are looking for. Such an exam could help clarify that - a flight sim test and interview would be where discretion comes in.
I'm all for testing, but only if it's fair and accurate. Having read of and tried some of the tests out there, it is accepted they don't always deliver the best candidates.
- Push for greater use of the 'taxi rank' system, so that airlines pick up qualified pilots before they turn to complete newbies. This would require airlines NOT to take people from places such as CTC, but to look elsewhere first, placing the emphasis back on the Direct Entry recruitment route.
I realise this last option isn't desirable (or perhaps it is - fully qualified unemployed pilots watching newbies get recruited may agree), so perhaps what is really needed is a layer between organisations such as CTC and employers - a sort of 'aviation temping agency'. Airlines would subscribe to these organisations and get their recruits (thereby encompassing EVERYONE), so the location and method of training (whether self-improver, already qualified or cadet scholar) wouldn't matter.
the danger would then be that such agencies are in effect substituted for cadet and sponsorship schemes, and can then monopolise the market in their own way and charge whatever they like.
the problem is complex, messy, and i've made a mess of trying to put forward suggestions.
But i hope at the very least i spark up some debate on the issue of how to address the inadequacies in the current system.
As an interested beginner, and someone new-ish to the site, I can see clearly some of the major problems facing people here trying to get jobs in the aviation industry.
Some of the site visitors are wannabes, looking to get a foot in the door.
Others are fully qualified pilots looking to get a foot BACK in the door.
It amazes me how ridiculously expensive some of the training schemes are, and how much people question their true worth. People also complain about the lack of a regulator in the training industry, suggesting that students and training pilots are cut a raw deal.
My question is this:
This site is clearly one of the more authoritative and popular sites among pilots/trainees/wannabes in the UK.
There is a huge potential for strength in numbers here. Real strength.
Couldn't you, as a body, use some of the pprune funds to push towards and indeed make inroads towards a regulatory body to overlook and oversea flight training?
Organisations such as CTC McAlpine can, at present, do whatever they want, because no-one is powerful enough to say otherwise. Having a regulatory body would stop them - rather like OFSTED is to education.
At the same time, training providers wouldn't simply give up their freedom, at least not lightly. But to have thousands of members of this site, and a financed campaign backed by industry professionals from all levels, taken to the airlines with demonstrable evidence of the inefficiencies and inequalities of the present system, backed by similar sites and organisations (GAPAN, Air League, as well as other websites), it would be a huge voice calling for regulation of what, it is generally (it seems) agreed, is a slightly flawed system.
This post ISN'T a rose-tinted call for a petition, with a naive suggestion to push for changes. Changes will be immensely difficult to make and I wouldn't imagine leaders in the aviation industry would listen to a handful of people alone.
However, if some of the thousands of pounds allocated in the pprune fund could be used to set up a taskforce, based upon highly qualified pprune members and trainers, it could set about conducting an audit into the training industry and documenting the well-known problems facing unqualified or semi-qualified pilots. This, I suggest, would be more valuable than simple donations or subsidies.
It is all very well and good sharing ideas on these forums, and calling for change, but if nothing is ever done about it it's pointless. Bashing CTC or BA or whoever won't change things. What's needed it logical, methodical and rational action.
Some will say this post is pointless - we can't change anything. I would disagree. If enough people call for change then governments or Public Regulatory Bodies will listen. Many on here argue that training schemes are 'scams' designed to make money from wannabes, and that the best pilots don't get the jobs.
It would seem sensible, from the perspective of an objective yet interested bystander, for someone to actually conduct an audit or report first off addressing this issue, to determine whether the industry needs a regulatory body to control training, and stop pure money-making outfits taking place.
If this has already been done, please accept my apologies and forgive my naiveity. As I said, I'm just an interested wannabe.
However, from what I've seen, I think a lot of people are being taken for mugs. There are thousands of trained people out there, but places on training schemes are being given to completely novice applicants. How come?
Perhaps this is my jealousy speaking - I would love to be a pilot, and would give my right arm for my dream, but find it suspicious entering an industry where it seems the best pilots don't always get the best jobs.
Find me another industry where you pay to attend an interview (some places do!). Find me another industry where you are charged such an extortionate sum to take exams. Find me another industry where your examiners are (see other thread) paid according to whether YOU pass or fail (note that a driving instructor doesn't, because you suggest this). Find me another industry where companies hiring employees ignore highly qualified professionals and take on complete newbies.
Find me another industry that lets companies get away with it?...THEY DON'T.
It's time the pilot training industry had a regulator. It's been called for time and time again on these forums, but nothing has done. Please pprune, mobilise your membership, work with similar organisations, and get some weight behind an investigation.
Feel free to comment as appropriate. Sorry if this is highly irrelevant, silly or ignorant. I hope people sympathise with at least some of my points.
Best Wishes,
Barry
Just to go on more (ranting, I know!), I'll give you an example to show you what my waffle is leading to.
Pprune active 'membership' is some several thousand, some qualified pilots, with varying experiences, some wannabes, some failed wannabes...and some failed pilots!
If you took the following members:
- Several 'fully qualified' pilots (different experiences)
- Several successful sponsorship/cadet scheme applicants
- Several unsuccessful applicants
- Several staff members from different training providers
- Several flight instructors and examiners
You could then conduct a report into the following, over the course of a year:
- The routes to becoming a pilot, and their respective costs
- The difference between self-improver and Cadet Schemes such as CTC, in terms of quality, costs etc
- The job market - employment statistics, airline staffing levels, projections for future growth and expansion, the shape of the industry
- What airlines are looking for from applicants (like the similar GAPAN investigation)
- The dangers of a lack of regulation, and the benefits it could bring
- The 'fairness' to those interested in aviation careers, e.g. why some qualified people can't get jobs, when complete novices get sucked into cadet schemes and offered jobs
- Investigation into the dangers of airlines relying too heavily on sponsorship schemes.
- Examination costs, breakdowns, procedures and licence costs
- 'Average' costs for qualification
- Cadet/Sponsorship training organisations' justification for their charges
- What would happen if organisations such as CTC didn't exist (at all)?
Once such a report is complete, the working party could make a series of recommendations based upon its findings. So, hypothetically:
- Compile definitive 'basic requirements' list to weed out unmeritorious applicants and wannabes at the first stage (i.e. actually set down some minimum academic requirements (defined). Make this an industry standard, rather than an airline standard.
- Standardise examination costs, so that exam costs are fairly weighted according to the actual cost of setting the exam. It has been noted in other threads that certain CEE Atpl exams cost the same extortionate amount whether the test is a very basic quick test, or a mammoth and difficult assessment.
- Develop industry wide code of practice for cadet/sponsorship schemes to abide by when selecting candidates (ie. provide acceptable, informative and constructive criticism/feedback). Give clear reasons for decisions, explain to those not selected WHY they weren't selected.
- Periodic 'random' spotchecks and also yearly assesment and inspections of training providers and cadet schemes, rather like Ofsted do for schools, to monitor selection procedures and check they are fair.
- Campaign for the industry to conduct full pscyhological and scientific research to determine the most effective method of testing applicants for training schemes, rather than relying on a variety of tests which, although accepted as good, are criticised for many (and indeed the examiners themselves) as not necessarily being an accurate indication of whether you'd be a good pilot or not. Research into alternative testing and review of the current testing system.
- Remove the need to pay to apply for cadet schemes, either by passing the cost onto those that are successful, or:
- Perhaps (this may sound far-fetched), offered an examination in Pilot Aptitude and Potential (made-up name!), which can be taken by candidates in testing centres such as schools, colleges and universities, under timed and controlled conditions, for a nominal charge (GCSEs cost £50 to sit). You would then need a certain score on this test to apply to the training scheme.
The final point may look like a different way of saying the same thing. I suggest it's not. Cadet schemes justify charging applicants anywhere between £100 - £200 on the basis of simulator time and other examination costs.
If students could pay £50 earlier on in the process, to give them sufficient standing to apply for such schemes, it would weed out clearly unsuitable candidates in the first place, so there would not be as many unsuitable candidates being weeded out by the schemes themselves. This would mean less applicants = less testing = less costs = less cost passed onto the successful Pilot Aptitude and Potential certificate holders.
Universities have such a scheme already - and cadet schemes are very similar to universities in a way. My own experience, from Cambridge, is that in maths they require STEP papers (additional to A level), Law will require the new LNAT test, medicine and biological sciences requires BMAT. These initial tests act to separate good and bad applicants at the initial stage before they are even invited to interview (though, incidentally, it is cambridge policy to interview almost everyone - not so in other unis), thus saving interviewers time. This is equivalent to saving CTC McAlpine money paying assessors and resources.
Such a standardised examination could be drafted with airline input and responses from the 'what we want from a pilot' reports circulated by GAPAN, and thus could be tailored to actually target the real things that aviation employers want, rather than bubbling along at present without having any real concrete idea of what people are looking for. Such an exam could help clarify that - a flight sim test and interview would be where discretion comes in.
I'm all for testing, but only if it's fair and accurate. Having read of and tried some of the tests out there, it is accepted they don't always deliver the best candidates.
- Push for greater use of the 'taxi rank' system, so that airlines pick up qualified pilots before they turn to complete newbies. This would require airlines NOT to take people from places such as CTC, but to look elsewhere first, placing the emphasis back on the Direct Entry recruitment route.
I realise this last option isn't desirable (or perhaps it is - fully qualified unemployed pilots watching newbies get recruited may agree), so perhaps what is really needed is a layer between organisations such as CTC and employers - a sort of 'aviation temping agency'. Airlines would subscribe to these organisations and get their recruits (thereby encompassing EVERYONE), so the location and method of training (whether self-improver, already qualified or cadet scholar) wouldn't matter.
the danger would then be that such agencies are in effect substituted for cadet and sponsorship schemes, and can then monopolise the market in their own way and charge whatever they like.
the problem is complex, messy, and i've made a mess of trying to put forward suggestions.
But i hope at the very least i spark up some debate on the issue of how to address the inadequacies in the current system.