Towards the end of my time there, it seemed the accountants and corporate bods had full control of the place. The intakes kept rolling in, with courses constantly becoming bigger. It was a case of throwing hundreds more students through an already tired and overworked machine. More bums on seats equals more money. Hammer the instructors and aircraft, with just minutes between one flight and the next.
To keep things streamlined, they closed CAE Brussels’ IR department, but also opened CAE Madrid. They now send all their students to CAE Phoenix for VFR training and CPL, and everyone to Oxford for the IR. The students kept pouring in, and the disgruntled and overworked instructors kept leaving. Student to instructor ratios were in excess of 10:1 when I was there, so I dread to think what it could be now.
The school were giving students a few months off between finishing their CPL in the USA, and starting their IR in Oxford, as an obvious solution of controlling the mass of students flooding into the Oxford IR department. They used to quote 12 weeks for an IR, but now it would be in excess of 20 weeks. Far too many students for what they were capable of dealing with.
I assume what’s happening now to be an attempt at controlling the flow of students into the school, which is a very wise move. Hopefully they’ve realised that having 100 students in the system making good progress and finishing on schedule is better than having 180 students, all of which finish 5 months behind schedule.
Taking 8 months to do your VFR training and CPL, when they quoted 5, or 24 weeks to do your IR when they quoted 12 is not the least bit amusing. Hopefully, they’re trying to stop this by controlling the inward flow of students.