Carbheaton,
I am not really sure where to start with your post.
What killed off my aspirations to become a pilot, was that I got to the stage of having my CPL issued and then having to make the financial decision to continue or stop based on the likelihood of gaining employment within a reasonable time after qualifying. A couple of years ago, it was accepted that the
only way of getting on was to buy a type rating. I had budgeted a certain amount for exams/cpl/multi IR and MCC. The additional £25k which I had not budgeted for was just too much, and in my humble opinion a step too far.
I happen to think that any business has the right to expect its prospective employees to be up to a certain standard before they hire them, or before the employee expects to be hired. I am absolutely amazed that we think just because we do a multi IR we should expect to be taken on by a benevolent employer and trained, with a salary, so we can go fly their incredibly expensive equipment without any investment on our part
I happen to think that CPL/IR/MCC
is a certain standard. Airlines
require pilots to fly their aircraft in order to make money. The cost of training staff, be it a secretary, maintenance engineer, pilot or accountant is a legitimate company expense. How quickly do you think companies would hire secretaries if the requirements included the secretary to provide their own laptop and training in company provided software? Aviation still holds a certain level of glamour and fantasy about it, but I have seen a few pilots private lives fall to pieces with the stresses and pressures that the job brings. Adding an additional financial pressure of having to pay for a type rating is not really fair on the employee – but that is just my humble opinion. I do not feel that comparisons with doctors, dentists or lawyers are particularly valid, as they do not have the ability to kill as many people in one accident as an airline pilot, nor do they carry the same amount of financial responsibility, liability insurance on aircraft runs into the billions I believe. It took Harold Shipman 20 years to kill off one 737’s worth of people….
You ask where will the line in the sand be drawn. In my opinion that will be only where people like me say no to paying for further training. At the moment that is not at SSTR and I make no apology for it.
Well what about the guy who has a little more money than you and decides he is going to pay for the command course you refuse to pay for? His line in the sand is just that little further up the beach than yours, so you will never get a command because of it. What then?
Also I have NEVER intimated that SSTR pilots are of inferior quality – but you seem to be a little sensitive to that, so who knows? Maybe there are some people kicking around who paid for a TR that were of borderline ability but they could pay a little more to get through? I do not know if that is the case, but I have heard from people within the industry that there are certainly some people who have had more money than ability.
It is not as if I am saying that anyone who has made it to the fATPL level has a God given right to a job – this is not my position and never has been.
Is someone with and engineering degree from Southamton inferion to an engineer with a degree from the Institute of Electrical Engineers and vice versa. Both are internationally recognised and both attained in completely different ways.
It has always been the case that certain universities have been recognised as being of a higher quality in teaching certain subjects than others. I suspect someone who has gained an engineering degree at Imperial is likely to be more highly thought of than someone who graduated from one of the former polytechnics.
I will withdraw from the discussion now, I will simply say that I disagree with the concept of paying for a type rating, and feel that it is a reasonable cost for an employer to bear.