Examination Attendence, Future Jobs????
Hi All,
I, like many others, will soon be in the boat of having a nice shiny frozen ATPL with no hours (worth mentioning!). Like every one of us who probably asks "remind me again why am i spending £35k" i contemplate my chances of getting a job and how long it may take.
I have now had the pleasure\misfortune of attending two exam sittings, one at Gatwick and one at Silsoe and i was genuinely surprised how busy they were......
There is obviously the old argument of people re-taking exams bolstering numbers etc etc, however something hit me. Communications IFR\VFR i think most would agree, are universally accepted as easy papers to pass - not saying its impossible to fail but the national average is typically 95%ish that pass the paper from memory?
I had a quick skim of the exam list at both sittings and there were around 45 people booked in at each exam - lets minus 5 for a retake so call it 40. There are, to my knowledge, 5 test centres in the UK and i am presuming that they are all relatively similar in size? This means, based on 12 exam sittings per year there are about 2400 people every year trying to gain an ATPL.
I, like many others, am primarily interested in airline work for better or worse. Although i am sure quite a few of these will be looking for instructor work and maybe 10% helicopter, this still leaves a large number - close to 2000 anyway.
My point being, things appear to be looking up but by this much??? I could be wrong and maybe exams have always been this way and lots of people simply end up running out of time\money\hope but it would be interesting to hear a few thoughts.
Cheers