Originally Posted by
Chris the Robot
Outside of aviation, a lot of training courses in various industries follow the integrated model, when I did the training for my current career it was definitely "integrated", however I was an employee from day one, had a wage and pension etc. so didn't have to worry about funding the training or indeed my living costs.
In aviation, even the most generous training programmes don't pay much in the way of living costs during training unless you have very few commitments, additionally you don't get the protection and rights of employment from day one of training. That might be about to change with a new training programme mooted by one of the low-cost airlines.
Even with the sponsored programmes of the past couple of years , the majority of trainee pilots still have to pay for their own training which leads to a catch-22. If you don't have a wealthy family background then you need to get a job to save money for flight training, if you want to go down the integrated route it would need to be a very good job allowing you to save at least £10k per year if you wanted to get in before 30 unless investment returns were particularly good etc. Going down the modular route in this scenario would allow a trainee pilot to be qualified years earlier whilst staying in their job until receiving an offer from an airline. The integrated route would require someone to give up their lucrative career which has allowed them to save despite there being no guarantee of what the market would be like at the end of training. Getting back into the original career after an 18 month break might be a challenge too, especially given the gap would involve pilot training.
As a result I suspect self-funded integrated courses produce a very specific demographic of pilot, that is usually 18-25 from a wealthy family background.
I don't have a wealthy background. Bang in the middle really. I am also 39 with two kids so am fighting it the hard way but I went to a lot of schools looking at my options and I will be 70-80k all in by the time I have finished. Mine is half "modular" and half integrated. I am doing the majority of my hour building at my local airfield which is cheap @£130 an hour and is 20-30 minutes from my home. I am also doing my ATPL theory at home (Oh the joys of that
). Then the last part will be integrated for all my ratings and hopefully an interview and type rating. I am doing my theory with BGS which is what a lot of these integrated schools will use. If anything the ability to take in and learn information without having your hand being held is a positive in my eyes at least.
I was earning good wedge managing 100+ people in a Factory then at the end of 2020 the company lost a contract and boom my job was gone and the factory closed. No job is safe regardless of how you are trained. No different to no guarantee of a job with flying. I have never felt so positive about my chances in the current climate. Brexit did a lot of trouble to the UK but one thing it did do is make the job market a hell of a lot better for people in the UK. Hence why loads of companies with EU registered planes are discounting courses to get pilots trained plus the English ones cannot just pick students from EU countries to fill their needs.
Yes the majority of those on integrated courses costing 100+k do come from rich families but if I could go back 20 years to when I was twenty and living with my parents I would be getting a HGV licence. Max out my overtime and earn 60k a year. Within 3 years you would have enough to fund a integrated course and be in the right side of a narrow body by mid twenties. That is available to anybody who is willing to put in the graft regardless of background quite easily. I wish I had my head screwed on a lot more when I was younger in that respect!