Well this is an interesting development.
OAA is considered by many in the UK to be the 'Gold' standard for integrated training. However for their ad-initio APPFirst Officer course the cost is approximately 75,000 UKP. In terms of Australian dollars, that is about Au$ 170,000. This cost covers the training alone and does not cover accomodation / meals etc.
Whilst there are some airline cadets in Oxford, UK (who usually self sponsor anyway) most of the other budding pilots are self sponsored and use specially tailored finance to facilitate this.
OAA like other similar companies such as CTC have historically had secured finance deals set up with one or two high street banks. OAA's deal is with the HSBC bank.
The deal is the budding pilot approaches HSBC with a personal business plan detailing how with this expensive training and the kudos of training at OAA the chances of landing an airline job are maximised and therefore the loan should be considered a good investment. The Plan they produce is based on a template given to them by OAA, and after a brief interview and the lodging of your parents house as security - Voila 50,000UKP towards your training costs.
Guess what! - With all of the credit troubles, yesterday all of the banks offerring finance for pilot training have withdrawn their schemes. I wonder how many budding pilots will now be able to afford to sign up with OAA given that they are going to have to find the cash by other means? I would expect throughput will fall dramatically.
Compared to the UK, pilot training in Australia is considerably more competitive - I just hope that this crowd has not based it's purchase on the assumption that it can come over here and start charging similar charges to the UK, which with lower costs will result in more profit in order to balance the shortfall that it may start making in the UK.
I am sure we will all watch with interest!!