Relevance of specific MCC-course
 

What is the relevance of a MCC if you choose for a FFS on a B737NG, instead of a simple Kingair sim? Does it make sense, regarding to applying for jobs of course, to pay 5000 euro for a 'sophisticated' sim, when it's also possible to obtain a MCC-certificatie at a simple sim and pay 2000 euro.

Vacancies show often only 'MCC-certificate' as requirement, but do recruiters also select on MCC sim-type/MCC-provider? In other words; is it wise to do your MCC at the well-known provider Simtech Aviation Ireland for example, or gives an unknown provider you the same value, in terms of attractivity during applying?

And how about JOC? As far as I know a JOC isn't a legal recognized training. But are you significant more attractive when undertaking a JOC, combined with a MCC?

Currently I'm working as Flight Instructor (A) with 500 hrs TT, besides a full time job. But I'd like to explore my chances in larger aviation.

Think of it the other way round. What advantage will you obtain with an MCC certificate earned on a 737? After all, you won't have a Type Rating, just a piece of paper saying you can read a checklist. The same goes for the JOC stuff. Do you really need it? To the best of my knowledge, most employers have now unloaded all financial liability for training onto their new employees. They appear to prefer employees with deep pockets rather than any particular skill set.

I dont think anyone uses Full motion 737 for MCC courses, other then not being necessary it would cost way more the 5€K.

MCC is just that, not a type rating, therefore you only learn stuff about crew corporation so a simple sim will do the job.
Granted, if you do it on the 737 sim you will obtain some basic knowledge about the aircraft and its cockpit setup, but really if you want, you can do that from the books and the cockpit posters. Save your money, my 2 pence

Just before reading this, I was hesitating between a very expensive and well know provider such as CTC, and the more affordable Simtech, but people here would seem to consider simtech as expensive and ctc as extremely expensive ?

What are the best choices at a reasonable price, then ?
Saving 8k (from 11k at CTC to 3k elsewhere) seems very interesting indeed.
What about job prospects ?
Does it help to have a name like CTC or simtech on your CV when compared to anything else ?

The MCC/JOC where I work uses a 747 sim and my last student is about to do his interview sim ride on a 757 for a major airline. He managed to fly the 747 with no trouble and is about to be tested on an aircraft which is 99% the same as the one he trained on.

It may be that he spent his money wisely?

I agree with the last poster ..... In addition, Tyoe Ratings are being done in shorter and shorter timescales so learning in a complex swept-wing jet FFS is a definite advantage IMHO. ATOs that make the MCC a real stepping stone in all respects of reality to real airline operations in the aircraft types the main hiring airlines right now are using, you will have a "step up" to passing the TR. if you don't want to believe me then look at this article from Ryanair about those who fail their courses.... in the main they chose cheap and got exactly that .... FNPT II Kingair course versus realism in required standard and practices in for example, a 747-400 FFS.

In life it seems you get what you pay for ..... and if I were interviewing and I had one slot and two very similar candidates with nothing to chose between them then I would take the one that did the MCC/JOC on the 747-400 over the one who did the FNPT II course. Others will have their opinion but this is mine.

It deleted the article sorry all :

https:// davidlearmount. com/tag/ andy-oshea/

I think we all forget what the MCC which is all about. Personally I'm choosing Simtech which is a very competitive price and from what I hear from past pilots who went there that it's done with experienced instructors who have worked in the industry for years.

Personally I think going to do an MCC on a complex full motion or whatever could be a disadvantage as you spend most of your time focusing on the aircraft and not what you're are really there for which is learning how to fly multi crew.

I can tell you from my experience that its down to the individual and not the aircraft you do your MCC. I did mine in simtech , altough not a great realism sim, I got the job. My sim partner during the type rating did his MCC coincidentally speaking on the B200 King Air, and as a matter of fact, the transition to a jet aircraft was a breeze for him.

And I think you guys might be confusing the FFS with FNPT2, as so far I haven't heard or came across Full Flight Sim which stands for full motion, which MCC courses don't use, unless you pay a fortune for the privilege.

Yes by FSTD FFS I am referring to full motion level C or D devices and having looked around they are used by quite a few ATOs across EASA for both MCC/JOC. Some argue that you don't need this but the feeling of motion especially in JOC for appreciating the pitch power couple for example is I believe greatly beneficial.

Whatever you think about it is your decision ultimately but I refer you again to the article I posted a link to earlier so you can see what is being thought about this by an actual airline who hire and attempt to train hundreds of low hour pilots per year and not just those of us who haunt the threads on PPRUNE.

For those too bored or perhaps too stuck in their own mindset to copy paste the link above, here it is for you.... food for thought

A new approach to airline pilot training

02/10/2015 airline pilot training, Andy O'Shea, APCC, ATPG, ATPL, CPL/IR, EASA, EFIS, GA, JOC, LOFT, MPL, Ryanair

Ryanair has found, consistently over the years, that half the licensed pilots who apply for first officer jobs fail its entry tests.

That’s not because the tests are particularly demanding, or because Ryanair springs unexpected things on them in the simulator. Wannabes all get a month’s warning of everything they’re going to face, and all the data they need to prepare for it.

Ryanair’s head of training Andy O’Shea told me his airline had recently considered backing future pilots via the MPL route, because that’s designed to deliver airline-ready pilots complete with a type rating.

But they’ve abandoned that idea because they think the MPL – as it’s organised right now – is too inflexible to cope with the vagaries of market demand. It locks the airline and the student into an 18 month relationship that may not survive market changes.

On the other hand the CPL/IR route prepares pilots to fly a light piston twin all on their own. It’s really only preparation for a good general aviation job, which is fine if that’s what you want to do.

Even if the twin is EFIS-equipped, it’s a million miles away from preparing a pilot for the right hand seat in a Boeing 737. And bolt-on multi-crew and jet-orientation courses are clearly not delivering, or Ryanair wouldn’t have that high failure rate.

O’Shea is looking for a way of plugging the skills and knowledge gap effectively between the CPL/IR and the right hand seat of a jet. If that can be done well – and he has been working on it with EASA and a working party called the Airline Training Policy Group – the students and the airlines would be able to enjoy the flexibility of the CPL/IR route, but it would produce the flight-deck-ready pilots that the MPL is designed to create.

He summarises what’s missing in those who fail their tests. They lack – to a greater or lesser degree – knowledge and understanding, flight path management skills, crew resource management ability, and what he calls “maturity and attitude”.

Basically, what O’Shea and the ATPG propose is a CPL/IR course extended to embed quality MCC and JOC components, including sessions closer to airline line oriented flight training than is done currently, plus some more advanced knowledge training. The result would be a course known as the Airline Pilot Certificate Course.

One of the possibilities is that the APCC would be available to students as one of the choices, as well as the MPL and CPL/IR as they exist today. That would not demand any more flight crew licensing regulatory work, but EASA could – and seems likely to – endorse the APCC as a valid qualification.

The question is, if the APCC is successful in attracting students and airlines, what would the future of the MPL be?

The CPL/IR could continue to be a stepping stone, via GA, into the airline world, and the MPL incorporating a JOC might be an alternative equivalent to the APCC.

This is still a work in progress, but something along these lines looks likely to win approval in Europe.

If Ryanair are looking at it they want to work out how they get a slice of the pie. 18 month commitment? O'Shea is taking the piss. According to MOL, RYR are the most successful and profitable airline in Europe. And they can't guarantee the next 18 months? That is either a downright lie or their passengers have such little loyalty to RYR that given the slightest downturn in the economy they will desert it in droves. It's one or another.

Rubbish. Pilots have been trained that way and made the jump from CPL/MEIR (and the predecessors of these specific courses) to an airline job for decades.

Personally I think this is another way for airlines, notably FR, to profit from those who are all too happy to hand over the dough for no particular reason.

That said, I don't disagree that there is a gap between the CPL/MEIR courses and a jet FO position, but if I'm not mistaken that is what the Type Rating course intends to address? After shelling out thousands and being in debt for years, I'm not too keen on airlines shoving that training responsibility back on to students on top of MCC, which really would benefit from being operator specific and thus included in initial training.

Maybe I'm just too averse to handing over silly amounts of money for duplicating aspects of training. But it seems that every few years there's a new reason to extend training/funding with still not even a glimmer of a job unless you successfully navigate through the ever increasing hoops!

Cardiff use FFS 747-400 level C at the moment with full motion for the MCC/JOC and have a level D about to go into service.

It's not the airlines that are piling this extra cost it is about to be EASA as JOC is to soon be a mandated compliant course with defined key competencies as will be UPRT.

God, no, when will this end ??
Are 150k€ not enough ??

Intriguing comments at the end about "maturity and attitude".

Could it be that some candidates have churned their way through training without ever having had a real job and suddenly find themselves tasked with the very real prospect of piloting a hundred tons of metal. That would make me nervous, even in a sim :eek:

Andy O'Shea also pointedly points his finger at the 'selection' procedures used by ATOs. Ryanair find no difference in quality between modular and integrated candidates and he notes that where selection has taken place it has had no obvious filtering effect, otherwise one route would be obviously superior to the other. From an end users point of view it isn't.

You could blame the candidates for lack of maturity etc. but really one would expect ATOs to filter out the untrainable, politely decline to take their money, and then train the remainder up to standard.

Alex
Do you think there's a correlation between lack of knowledge and understanding...maturity and attitude etc. (I would add interest, dedication and motivation to the list) and the ability to pay for a type rating to secure a first job? Does the employer not play a large part in the identification of suitability for the role, or is the technical ability assessed by an independent contractor (as is the case for Flybe at the moment for example)? Why is there an apparent difference in the calibre of new entry pilots at British Airways, TUI (Thomson), TC and others compared to RYR (and others)?
Are you seriously suggesting that ATO's permit weak candidates to continue training despite the potential risk to both the individual from a financial/career perspective and an operator from a cost and safety point of view....

Oh absolutely I am, its shameless. 'Selected' candidates for all-in-one courses with 6 or 7 exam fails or several flight test fails being put forward to airline schemes. Bad joss on the airline if they accept them without question.

[edited to add] Sorry, I didn't answer the rest of your question. The answer is that Flight School A get a contract from airline B for, say 20, MPL candidates. Big advertising campaign follows, 2000 hopefuls apply and absolutely the best 20 candidates are selected, they are so good that even my mum would be able to tell they would succeed. Of the remainder Flight School A has capacity for, say 200 integrated candidates and 100 modular. The candidates that failed the MPL selection are then told, sorry, you failed that, but very high standards etc., how would you like a white tail integrated course? Or even a modular course? No promises but we'll put you in the hold pool and we have very good relations with airlines, between you and me we should have you flying for airline B within 2 years.

The next bit depends on the recruiting market. If the airlines are desperate everyone gets a job, gin and tonics all round. In bad times lots of hopefuls go to the holding pool. Airline C later discovers that it hasn't planned its recruitment very well, phones up the flight school asking, can you let us have 30 pilots? Why yes, of course, but not any 30, we will choose the best we have. As a result in bad times the bottom of the holding pool fills up with detritus. Flight School A realises this is not good, they can't have people actually knowing they have 300 people in a holding pool that is growing year by year, but how to get rid of them? Answer, institute a policy that says if you fail two (or three) airline interviews you get binned. It then follows that the smart thing for Flight school A to do is to send 100 pilots for interview to airline C, some good, some bad, not just 30 good ones. The airline takes the good ones and it's one strike for the remaining 70 who were submitted for interview, and so the wheel turns. Of course no-one who still wants a flying career is going to boast that they got chucked out of a holding pool, so this operation is kept fairly quiet because neither the flight school nor the binned candidates benefit from people knowing this goes on.

As to the contract you mention, the contractor, who we will call flight school D, emptied the bottom of its holding pool in the direction of the poor airline, and gossip has it that they were even phoning up hopefuls who had been thrown out of the holding pool two years before in an effort to fill slots. I doubt that really helps the airline.

Some airlines use recruitment contractors who are motivated to provide their own students rather than others, some airlines use recruiting contractors who do not have an ATPL training company attached, and are therefore more independent, some do the recruitment themselves (with varying thoroughness). Ryanair do their own very thorough selection which includes a full day of competency based tests and a sim ride. They recruit continuously, and plan their recruitment. To be fair, they claim a 50% fail rate, airline C in the above scenario would have had a 70% fail rate! I think the answer must be that the Ryanair figure is a continuous average for the biggest airline in Europe over several years, and therefore possibly represents more reliable data than a 'single event' recruitment for a smaller one. Note that Ryanair do not say they take 50% of the applicants, they say that 50% who get to selection are unemployable by their standards. It may be that they do not take all the remaining 50%, it would seem unlikely. They probably reject candidates who are employable but not in the top percentiles, but I am guessing.

Yes, absolutely.
Because the flight school isn't making any passenger take any risk.
The only people who could endanger future passengers are :
- CAA examiners
- Airline recruiters

And none of them have a say in who gets accepted into flight training.

So basically, any incompetent who wants to have a CPL will go to a modular school and pay for CPL training. The school will tell them with more or less emphasis that it will be hard for them to pass the CPL test within the minima, but they will gladly accept the guy's money

FTOs are companies and they basically don't care about the well being of their customers, as long as they get their money.

Obviously I'm telling that with a caricatural tone.
Flight instructors are human beings and they will probably be empathetic with their student's financial well being. But at the end of the day they will always know that only a CAA examiner can give a CPL to a candidate.