Dear All, and especially those who were up to this point considering training with CAE.
I am in Malaga on the easyjet MPL with CAE. Here are a few facts.
- It is now 225 days since I finished ground school and I have done TWO flights.
- The core phase operations were temporarily shut down by the CAA but only because of a whistleblowing report to the CAA. CAE were happily pushing us through things that we had long since reported to them as unsafe.
- When we arrived for core phase we were given out of date charts. It took months for these to be replaced.
- We haven't been given a cohort meeting with them in WEEKS. Meetings are routinely cancelled at the last minute and there is radio silence from them between times.
- Emails are not replied to by them.
- Two days ago the head of training was here from the US along with other members of the CAE team - did they invite the cohorts for an update or meeting? Of course not.
- I have heard some aircraft have gone out over MTOM
- The training manual is not being followed
- We are not getting to backseat any training flights becuase we have 2-seater aircraft. This will greatly reduce our learning.
- Sim instructors have been playing games on their phones during sim sessions.
- Cohorts were brought out to Spain BEFORE the relevant approvals were obtained for the place here and the sims here etc.
- We are at an aerodrome which does comms in Spanish.
- There have been a number of near misses at this aerodrome but operations were not shut down immediately in the aftermath.
- We don't have any training manuals for the flight part of the training.
- We were given 187 online presentations to do, many of which were from an old Jet Blue training program and some out of date enough to tell us that EASA was soon going to replace the JAA. This is hardly "designed specifically for easyJet" as the website blurb would have you believe.
- The website also promises that you will be "mentored by easyJet right from the start" but this couldn't be further from the truth. The easyjet representative didn't even come and say hello to us when we arrived at the training centre in Gatwick.
- Gound school staff were mostly very good.
- The runway at LEAX here was damaged by floods but despite that being on the 13th Nov we still have had no official comms about it or the way forward as they see it.
- Our VISAS will be running out in a matter of a few weeks and there has been no guidance on what we need to do.
- Those students with cars out here will have to take them back very soon when they reach the 6 months limit. No idea how we will get around rural Spain after this.
Would you sign up knowing that this is how they deal with problems? CAE categorically sent students out here before it was anywhere near safe or ready to do so.
Their glossy website with all shiny promises about how they do things and their corporate values etc reads more like a dark comedy.