Originally Posted by
UpAndDownAndUpAndDow
Sorry for reviving a dead thread - I was wondering if anyone was aware of how many IR courses Starspeed/Babcock/Castle Air are running these days?
Helicentre Aviation make it very obvious how many courses they're running as they post all their graduates all over social media, and I'm aware that the other IR providers don't use social media in the same way but as a result it becomes quite difficult to know what success the other academies are having.
Is it normal for the training providers to be running IR courses most of the year, or is it usually just a handful of courses in a year?
Castle Air seem to have a steady flow going by the number of flights going forth and I know Babcock have someone going through now and have had a fairly steady flow throughout last year. Starspeed always seem to have one helicopter or another doing some training when I'm at Kemble.
And be wary of pigeon holing some schools. Babcock may be predominantly be a single pilot public service operator employing experienced crews but they also have an active group of co-pilots on H145 in Cardiff, Cambridge and Norwich. Great thing to get on your CV even if its sub-optimal for raw hours building. And if your ultimate aim when you
do have the hours is to fly HEMS, its not a bad idea to be a known quantity to those in the industry. The guy that teaches you now might be the Chief Pilot recruiting later. Castle has good route into operating if you're SW based (Liskeard) and Heliservices at Wycombe have been operating for a long time for a reason. Also don't forget Vantage at Thruxton with their single.
If you want to gauge success of these operations you have to ask the graduates. The schools should be able to facilitate that if you ask. Do a dig around LinkedIn and look for co-pilots who've recently started out in the part of the industry you want to go into.
If it was my money again, I'd go and eyeball the head of training at each place and see what their simulator arrangement is - that's where you are going to be spending the bulk of your time. Also look at their helicopters. Even better, combine it with some hours building land aways. And my personal preference would be to choose the school that has the best sim/aircraft combo that will make the test as simple as possible. That means a full 3 or 4 axis AFCS, a full colour FMS (eg Garmin 750) and full glass cockpit. Most of the test can now be flown AP in so that kit needs to be good.