Mentored / Sponsored Pilot Schemes - The industry gone mad
Dear all,
We have all seen the recent ‘Mentored Pilot’ and ‘sponsorship’ schemes. Essentially the same thing, these are aimed at ab-initio candidates i.e. people with very little (trial hour) or no flying experience.
Oxford are currently training cadets on behalf of Thomas Cook and Excel Airways. FlyBE have always used Cabair for their sponsorships but are also currently offering a scheme through FTE in Jerez. ThomsonFly have chosen FTE in the past, as have British Airways Citiexpress. I would like to ask:
Do the above mentioned airlines *really* think low hours f(ATPL) candidates, trained outside of an "approved" organisation are a training/employment risk or are they just being seduced by the sales/marketing staff of the likes of Oxford, FTE and Cabair who through clever marketing of their integrated courses ‘seem’ to be offering a better kind of candidate?