L3 blows the lid off the "Integrated v Modular" debate!
After decades of listening to the often heated debate about which is the best route to the airline pilot seat, L3 Harris have just announced their Modular Pilot Training with the caption "Become a pilot at your own pace and only pay as you train" The long established modular schools must be jumping up and down with excitement!
Its sad to think it took a pandemic to have one of the biggest integrated schools to finally acknowledge modular is a great option and really protects the student giving more choice and control whilst still achieving the end goal. The prices they are quoting on the other hand are incredibly high which is to be expected. I feel pretty sure modular schools will jump on this straight away and advertise prices considerably less with the argument that the quality is just as good, so let the games begin!
I would caution all potential students to do their homework and not just consider the price offered, even if this is highly important in these uncertain times. Look closely at reputation, time in business, climate, environment, facilities, experience of the instructors, size of school (big is not always best, small can give you much better personal service) and do you best to understand the importance of receiving quality instruction and training to high standards with a tough examiner at the end, not a push over examiner, so you are well prepared and ready for the airline job when it comes around, which it will.
Apart from some excellent schools in UK and in some parts of Europe to chose from, USA still has some excellent choices. In Florida for example, there are 3 EASA approved schools, one which has been established for 20 years (EFT in Ft Pierce). The second, established over 10 years ago as a flying holiday company, have recently launched their brand new Academy in Sebastian Florida, (Pilots Paradise). Although not the best time to launch, it seems they are being very realistic on price to get things moving coming in at almost half the L3 prices - surely worth a serious look if you are on a budget. The third is FIT in Melbourne, they are a long established College and obtained their EASA approvals around 5 years ago. I think all these schools are worth a look as they each have great facilities and experienced instructors.
I look forward to seeing Alex Whittingham's contribution to this thread, he has been banging the modular drum as loud as he can for a long while, but my opinion now is the genie is out of the bottle and we cannot justify trying to put it back in.
Oh and just to be clear, I am not now, and would never knock the integrated schools (I trained at Oxford in the 80's), some of them are still very good, but for the life of me I could never understand why parents or self funded students would pay such vast sums for their training and be trapped with little choice when it all goes wrong. In one of my previous posts I did support strongly (and still do) the idea of a 'selected and sponsored by an airline course' at an integrated schools, but these are rare and somewhat a thing of the past.