Originally Posted by
Rottweiler22
As someone from an integrated school, I can sort of comprehend what's being said. I'm somewhat older than most integrated students, and had further education and a career before signing-up so (i'm not just saying it), but I'm very different to the typical integrated student.
In my experience, I would say 70% of the people I know are or were straight into flight training from school. I.e straight from A-Levels onto an integrated course, at age 18 or 19. Maybe 1 in 5 went to University, and then straight onto an integrated course. The biggest proportion of students are definitely those straight from sixth form or European equivalent into flight school, without further education or the experience of an actual proper job. For three quarters of the people I trained with, their first ever job interview would have been for an airline as a first or second officer.
The average age of an integrated course is very young. I would be interested to know what it actually is, but I was the third oldest on the course of twenty people at the age of 23, so that explains a lot. The majority were 19 as far as I can remember. "Unemployable" is not the word, but "limited life experience definitely" is.
I concur. I too was in another career before I picked up flying. Did slightly better than the average 19-22 year lot.
Same scenario where I come from.