For the aviation enthusiast, maybe the three career streams that presently exist, do so for good reasons?
Route 1: On the one hand you have the traditional academic route, of which I am a product - BEng Aero Eng, PhD Unsteady Aerodynamics. These courses (claim) to equip you with the necessary mathematical/analytical/computational techniques that form the basis of many of the major technological advances of the 20/21st centuries. You need a degree of mathematical ability to succeed.
With this type of qualification you can get a job at GE doing CFD, or Ferrari working in their wind tunnels, or with Airbus looking at FBW development.
Route 2: Alternatively, you can aim for a
wrenching qualification. Some of the most fun I ever had was post BEng wrenching on light pistons and DC3's. My degree didn't help one iota for this work. PT6 hot section inspection? Re-hanging C206 control surfaces? Re-riveting a B18 wing underskin? Huh?
All news to me. No differential equations to solve in this job.
To succeed in this discipline a mechnical inclination would seem to be a good pre-requisite. You're the kind of guy/gal who took things apart as a kid, works on your own car, improvises repairs to your PC when a motherboard fails...
You can get a job with Marshall Aerospace with this qualification or Storm Aviation.
Route 3: And then you have wannabe pilots.
I only ever wanted to be a pilot. The other qualifications I accumulated along the way were only circumstantially acquired.
I'd love to know the demographics behind the average qualfiying fATPL holder these days, but I'd hazard a guess, many of them have already been down Route 1?
It would appear to me, initially at least, that if you try and amalgamate all these streams, you'd wind up diluting the course and de-valuing each one of the disciplines as a result?
An engineer doesn't
need a PPL. A mechanic doesn't either. A pilot doesn't
need a BEng.
I would of course, justify my experience of all three streams by saying they've added to my experience base and made me a better pilot as a result, but I'd hate to think of a graduate with an Aviation Studies degree thinking that because he'd got a PPL he'd have a head start towards a fATPL.
Knowing how the airlines think these days, he'd only have to enroll in an Integrated 509 course anyway whereupon he starts from scratch again like I did. Time wasted?
I try not to think of my 10 years in streams 1 and 2 prior to arriving in the flightdeck as wasted, but thats not always easy.
Of course, the problem with this, is that because this is the way the system works, you have to make the decision early in life facing the very real possibility that you'll get the decision wrong and have to start again in the stream you really
do want to be in!
An anecdotal story that perhaps justifies my
dilution theory....
When I first started at flight-school, during my ground school Flight Dynamics class, after an auspicious start, the instructor went on to talk about
Lift Pressure.
Being fairly confident that seven years at University had taught me the difference between a
Force and a
Pressure, I proceeded politely to tell him there was no such thing.
Eventually I gave up, figuring, I'd best keep my mouth shut for the duration of the course, for fear of acquiring a name for myself.
