Fatboytim,
It was all about the Chicken drumsticks mate… lol
For anyone who hasn’t twigged on the BBQ banter, yes I am a CTC cadet training out in NZ.
I've already written a fair whack of ‘factual’ information about CTC. So I’ll leave most of that out.
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...11#post1960811
My main point is that I support exactly what you are saying.
To all other readers & posters,
The commonality is that we all want to get our licences, pick up as much experience as we can and get the ‘holy grail’ (right hand seat of a jet belonging to a major airline). Unfortunately, this thread hasn’t really done much to assist the person who first started it.
It leaves me concerned only for people who are trying to research how to get into this industry. Guys don’t be put off by what you read on PPrune! There’s a lot of attitude on here and a good 80% of what you read comes straight out of a Donkey’s ars*. (In fact; my apologies to the Donkey race). This is partly contributed by:
1) Cadets from each school.
(This is useful only when they support their own establishment with objective factual information).
2) People who actually work for these schools/companies and who try to sound like cadets etc.
(They generally tend to be more constructive in what they say but are rather biased).
3) People who unfortunately got stung by one of these schools/companies at some point &/ failed/missed the required standard in some part of selection/currency testing. Of course they rarely admit this!
(However, there have been some admirable objective comments by some people who have openly admitted to being in this position).
The good news is that 20% of what you read is useful information. It’s just spending the time to find it and then maybe PM-ing the guys who post it as so to get some more information. Generally these will be the people that tend to get back to you as well!
When I finally accepted that the BA sponsorship scheme had been consigned to the graveyard for ever and knowing I wasn’t getting any younger; I had to think about my last stand at getting the dream job.
Without initially reading the sh*te spewed out on PPrune, I researched the 5 possible avenues left to me. CTC, OAT, FTE, Cabair or a longer modular route where I kept my current job until I had enough hours & qualifications to step over.
This involved an ‘in depth’ study of their websites, ordering every brochure they had to offer and conducting a lot of comparative analysis. After spending some time on this, I prioritised the key issues. As for with Fatboytim, the top 2 for me were PLACEMENT (a company’s ability to successfully place as many cadets as possible derives from many other attributes) & FINANCE (I had no money to spend on training. This meant firstly I had to have a way of getting the money and secondly because I was borrowing it; I had to be as sure as I could that it was being invested wisely). My order of preference in terms of making applications was as listed above.
I was lucky enough to succeed with CTC. This was the best option for me. OAT would have been next. They have an initiative that assists cadets in finding employment & openly publicise they’re success rates in terms of numbers & airlines. They also offer similar financial arrangements with a bank as with CTC.
However the important philosophy with CTC is that the ‘airlines’ are the ‘customers’. We are not! Therefore CTC don’t advertise in the industry press & their selection process is by far the hardest. I’ve only been training for just over 2 months now and I should know in the next few weeks which airline I will be working for, upon successful completion of the course. You then have to ask yourself, why do several major UK airlines have this type of confidence in CTC?
I’d just like to provide some general stuff in response to OAT-BA related stuff posted on here as well.
1. BA have a good relationship with OAT, they used to send a lot of their cadets to them for training back in the day. OAT provides more cadets to BA than they do to any other airline (when I last checked).
2. Far from everyone wants to work for BA once all the cards have been laid on the table.
3. CTC are again providing more cadets to BA and have the potential to provide a lot more once they get ‘integrated’ status.
4. Regardless of where you come from, if you are earmarked for BA, you’ll have to go through their entire selection process as it was for their sponsorship scheme. Ouch, if you’re fully qualified and fail a PILAPT test or worse still one of those 500Q personality checks (Madmandan1, Globalwarning & Ston’ed’ Cold
)!
Good luck to everyone trying to get the dream job!
P.S. Fatboy, I happen to know who Monarch A330 is! If can you sort me out with some more flights I may be prepared to break with convention & betray him to you..