Is the training being hit too hard by financial issues?
I am one of the new starters on the Hurn training course, and after the first 3 weeks of intensive bookwork, I thought it could only look better. How wrong could I be?
To start with, we have been told the meterology course has been cut down from 30 ish hours to 13. We have the progress tests for it this week (bah, doesn't matter you may think, but the marks are passed on and looked at in case you need a re-course). We haven't yet covered all of the material for the exam, so going in a little blindly tomorrow, trying to fill in the gaps ourselves.
We've just started the radar skills course. Initially, a lot was expected of us. We had no idea about the terminology to use, or the headings of the runways. So we were told to revise all of this. Is this before, or after we revise for the met, AFTN and Law progress tests?
We're the first course to try the radar skills over 8 phases. Each phase has 3 runs of increasing difficulty, and we're on for 30 mins, with a 15 min debrief. You can do the math as to how long we're on there. The course above us that spent a lot longer on the radar, just lost 3 people to the summative.
The learning curve on this course is getting to be much too steep, and I've had some of the instructors agree with me. They say its due to the financial gains of shortening our course.
We were also sent some distance learning packages before the course to study to prepare us. This would have been fantastic, except for the fact I recieved it on the Tuesday, and the course started on the Sunday....
My question, is it really worth losing the title of some of the best trained ATCO's in the world for a few pounds?