Less pilots start training

[Martijn123]

I don't know if it is yet mentioned at this website, so I will post a new thread about it.

Dutch news website Minder piloten in opleiding - NOS Nieuws (http://nos.nl/artikel/514385-minder-piloten-in-opleiding.html) & Minder studenten de lucht in - NOS op 3 (http://nos.nl/op3/artikel/514240-minder-studenten-de-lucht-in.html) reports that there are very few students beginning training at a flight school in the Netherlands this year. It is the first year since the beginning of the economic downturn that there are less students starting to become a pilot at a flight school in the Netherlands. The trade union of commercial pilots said that they estimate that around a thousand pilots are jobless since the beginning of 2013.

NOS reports that in the Netherlands only 30 students have started to train to become a pilot since the beginning of 2013. Previous years it was around this time of the year 4 times that number. Also at information days of the flight schools it is not busy it all. There are very few people attending them, were in previous years, 4 times a year it was very crowded at the information days. At KLM Flight Academy only 6 students will start to train in 2013, previous years they always trained about 70 students a year. The flight academy said that to NOS.

Major pilot loan provider in the Netherlands ABN AMRO is according to the news article pushing the flight schools to train less pilots. New rules state that if a flight school is training too much pilots for the job market, the bank will only provide a new loan for a new student when two jobless pilots found a job. The bank said that today's job market is bad, but it is improving.

Flight schools are afraid that the new rules of the bank will have the consequence that "being a pilot will only be for rich kids, because other students cannot get a loan" and that some flight schools will go bankrupt, resulting in loss of knowledge about training pilots in the Netherlands.

The link to the full articles is above. The articles are in Dutch, but can of course translated to English with Google Translate.

What do you think about this article? I think it is good idea of the bank that 2 jobless pilots must found a job before a new student can get loan. Only concern for me is that news article doesn't say it must be flying job. What are your thoughts about this?

[RVR800]

I think that the Bank is exercising what many would regard as common sense. With so many pilots in the pool of unemployment it simply doesnt make sense to train more. It doesnt take long to train to be a pilot (compared to other professions e.g. Doctor) and so when the glut has gone it will make more sense to start training agai. Of course other factors are coming into play here - migrant workers across |EU accepting lower pay rates and low cost (=low pay airlines) and the economics of pilot debt repayment. The MPL is shifting the balance of training to the airlines away from the schools. Airlines see this as another means of making money. People are waking up and smelling the coffee on the marketing.....

[pudoc]

I think that the Bank is exercising what many would regard as common sense

Banks? Common sense? Surely not!

[TeaTowel]

2 jobless pilots must found a job before a new student can get loan

Fantastic idea but make it 100 pilots and a new student can start training rather than a loan. That stops the rich kids too.

At the moment we have people training to be flight instructors to train pilots to be flight instructors to train pilots......

[No RYR for me]

That stops the rich kids too. You talk :mad:. The beauty of the dutch system was that anybody could get funding not just rich kids as you needed no collateral. That was also the problem because too many people had access to funds hence too many people trained....

[Martijn123]

If you just read the news article you could start to believe that the bank can be seen as a kind of "hero" by stopping too much new students getting a loan. But these rules were only introduced (I think) after the bank was criticed in the media and for giving so much loans for new students, and they bank already knew that the job market was bad after the beginning of the economic downturn. There were some TV interviews of students that they consultants of the bank were in such a rush. The bank employees were just pushing for a signature for such a huge loan. One student said (If I remember it correctly, this fragment was aired on a TV) "I asked if a can read the contract, to really understand what was written" and the employee responded something as "You can go the hallway and read it there, but I only got 15 minutes, I got more work to do/other appointments waiting".

[OutsideCAS]

Not sure about the bank being a "hero" but I think it is more to do with the fact that they (the banks) have no wish to loan money with an increased risk of no return (after all they are in business to make money) on that loan. A prudent move on the banks part I have to surmise.