Cadetships cost 50% to 100% more than the traditional flying school route.
Approx $125k for an integrated Cadetship. Ready to start employment as an airline FO after graduation. For the “traditional” route budget at least $100k by the time licences, ratings, theory etc is taken into account. So not too much more, and far greater opportunities for initial employment into an airline and faster progression afterwards. Overall you’d make back the slightly higher cost of a Cadetship within a few years, and over the course of a career have higher overall earnings.
An aviation degree does not appear to be a pre requisite to airline employment.
No, but some university programs now have industry links upon graduation. Worth looking into.
An airline job or airline front row seat on graduation is not guaranteed.
Nothings guaranteed in life. The economy may take a downturn, you may not meet the required standards on course. But you will surely be in a better position than someone who gained their CPL from a normal flying school without any association with an airline. It does seem the vast majority of Cadetship graduates end up working for that airline. If you looked at a number of those who got a CPL from a normal flying school how many would be in an airline after 1 year, 2 years or even 5?
I still don't understand how an airline college graduate to airline FO gets the required command hours and experience to ultimately obtain an ATPL and airline command?
It’s all explained very clearly on the CASA website regarding ATPL requirements:
“
Pilot in command (PIC) or pilot in command under supervision (PICUS) flight time:
500 hours in aeroplanes as PICUS or 250 hours in aeroplanes comprising at least 70 hours as PIC (the rest may be PIC or PICUS)”
Getting your air transport pilot licence
For a variety of reasons - including over regulation and a Regulator determined to wipe out GA - it appears extremely difficult to find a worthwhile GA pilot job that offers security and aircraft type advancement to gain the required hours and experience for an airline job. Additionally, with Qantas and Virgin establishing commercial "pilot academies" and talking 250 to 400 pilot "graduates" per year, I suspect the transition from GA to airlines will be increasingly difficult in the future.
So wouldn’t it be wise to concentrate into applying for a Cadetship as the primary goal?
With all these new airline colleges, there will obviously be a demand for instructors, but the airlines are very reluctant to employ a pilot whose predominant experience is 2,000 one hour circuits in a SE aircraft.
Not necessarily, experience as an instructor will be more than single engined circuits. It is actually common for instructors to go straight from GA instructing into an airline.
Has your son/daughter thought of an alternate career with a real future - medicine, engineering, IT?
Google “Don’t become a doctor/engineer/teacher/lawyer/ insert profession here” and you’ll find plenty of articles advising youngsters not to go into that field, like this one:
Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Doctors
We all seem to think we have it worse than every other profession. Any pressures on professional piloting seem to be ones that will affect all industries. Overall it’s still a well paid career that opens a lot of doors.