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Thread: Pilot shortage
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Old 30th Dec 2017, 12:18
  #29 (permalink)  
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Join Date: Aug 1998
Location: Ex-pat Aussie in the UK
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Wishful thinking, clients will generally go with the cheapest option (within reason) regardless of instructor experience.
What happened in the UK is the set up of "academy-style" instructing schools. Live-in full training, level 5 full motion flight sims etc etc. The cost of a licence at these is over £100,000.

That's in an environment where "mon & pop" flying schools can give you a licence for £40,000. Yes, the toys to train on at these local flying schools are of a lower standard - but the licence at the end is the same.

So - how did the UK manage to triple the cost of training, and still be swamped with clients? The "academy-style" businesses approached various airlines and tailored their training to specific airline SOPs, and they included early "job interviews" in the mix, with the result that those airlines only accepted candidates from those schools. If you want an airline job, you had to go to one of those schools (regardless of how good you were.).

So if you want instructing to pay - you need to work with the end employer of your student product. You increase the value of your training by getting the quality recognised not by the student, but by the end employer. Once you can prove that quality results in an increased chance of airline employment only THEN do you have a product that students will be willing to pay more for.

It's the reason Harvard can charge $62,000 a year while South Texas college only charge $1300 a year. People expect that the job opportunities with a Harvard degree are better than an STC one.
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