Fastmover321 wrote:
If you want to pursue another profession (like doctor or lawyer) you will find that this entails yours of debt and education followed by more years of hard work and low pay. A type rating is exactly the same in that it is a professional qualification. Why should pilots be treated differently to other professions
Actually, you're not quite right. It's only partially correct to say that a prospective doctor or lawyer will have to pay for their own basic medical or legal training as does the prospective commercial pilot - but only if the medical or legal student is a mature student, and then it's not cheap. The debts incurred by a medical or legal student who goes straight from school to university are significant, but do not reflect the true costs of their training. Post graduation, however, the NHS or your legal practice is financially responsible for your further training. As a doctor, for instance, you will go through a couple of years as a Junior House Officer learning the basics of various branches of medicine; say general medicine, surgery, obstetrics, and paediatrics, before you decide which will be your speciality. All that is at the NHS's expense - as it should be. Any further training you need, in or out of your speciality, is paid for by the NHS. The legal profession (and most others) works in a similar manner.
Post-graduate specialist professional training is accepted in most professions as properly the employer's responsibilty. I can just about accept the premise that a speculative purchase of a type rating is a legitimate, if undesirable, way of impoving your employability, but I cannot accept the idea, now becoming general, that you should be expected to pay for training
after you have been contracted to a company. I do not, however, regard lower pay for new pilots as unreasonable.
You chose to buy a rating, as is your privilege, and it worked for you. Unfortunately, the more people do this, the more companies will expect their raw recruits to come with, or to pay for, a type rating. It's difficult to know how to stop it, but it can't be seen as a good thing by anyone except airline accountants.
Scroggs