Originally Posted by
Dan Winterland
One sure way of ensuring you don't end up in airline management as a pilot is to have a qualification in it! This may sound a bit cynical, but no-one - and I mean absolutely no-one I know who has done one of these courses has ever been chosen for management as a result. This may be because an airline's management don't want someone turning up who is going to make them look bad - or because no one can possibly know better than they do. It's usually a job for the boys anyhow. if your face doesn't fit, forget it.
Dear Dan,
Thank you for your message.
I agree with most of it, nevertheless if you think rationally and thoroughly about it, you will agree that getting yourself a degree (whatever it is) shall not - by itself - grant you access to whatever management position. It is my understanding that for any management position you need a lot of soft skills that no degree will grant you - you either have it or not. At the same time, obviously any middle or top level position is a position of trust, so you will always have to be chosen by someone high above and they will need to have a deep and close knowledge of yourself as an individual as well as a professional.
My intention to get either an MBA or one of the ATM MSc we are talking about is to get a knowledge on areas that I know little of. I'm not doing it for the sake of getting myself a management position, it may never happen and still I may feel the money was well spent - as far as I'm concerned it is all about educating myself above anything else.
Originally Posted by
Dan Winterland
The advice to do a generic MBA is a good. But the issue here is that everyone seems to have one these days, and choosing the correct course to make you stand out is difficult. Another option is to look at some of the other courses in aviation science which some universities offer. I was looking for a MSc course in transport safety and I narrowed the choice down to the Safety Management MSc at UNSW Australia, the Safety and Human Factors MSc at Cranfield, and Safety and Accident investigation MSc - also at Cranfield. The former is all correspondence and several of my colleagues had embarked on it and lost steam after about 6 of the required 9 modules - and not all the modules interested me. So I discounted it. Of the two Cranfield courses, the Safety and Accident Investigation won, mainly because the modules looked more interesting, but also because it also qualifies you as an accident investigator. Both Cranfield courses are attendance and the accident investigation course requires 11 weeks in the first 2 years. I managed this despite living in Hong Kong.
I have found the course fascinating - all the modules were good and none of it was boring. There is also a huge amount of latitude in what you may chose for your research project. It's also a highly regarded course and I have had a several of invitations to apply for jobs as a result.
Safety and Accident Investigation is an area that interests me a lot and that is another line of study I may think about in the future - again as another step of education. Would you be willing to elaborate about the invitations to apply for jobs? Would it be jobs still compatible with continue flying or something that would get you out of the cockpits?
Again, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts.