As good as it all sounds, I would be very careful when spending so much money for a GCAA license. Unless you are a UAE national or at the very least a GCC national, there are no jobs available in the UAE for a pilot with low hours fresh out of flying school. The only airline offering a program close to that is Etihad and that is a full sponsorship program conducted at the Horizon Flight Academy in Al Ain.
So if there is no job in the UAE, where do you go. You can't fly in Europe, Australia, Canada etc without doing a costly conversion. Remember, JAR compliant means nothing if you don't get issued with a JAR license.
As far as I am aware there is no such thing as a 'Frozen ATPL' in the UAE yet. Although it is in the pipeline. You would be issued with a bog standard CPL. At the moment when a pilot wants to upgrade their GCAA CPL license to a GCAA ATPL, they must be issued with a foreign ATPL license and then convert to the GCAA with an ATPL written exam and a check from a TRE at the AIRLINE they work for. I know this because Ive done it, as have many of my collegues past and present. Believe me, if it could have been done locally it would have.
As far as the type ratings are concerned, they will also prove useless if you cannot get a job in the UAE or at least in the GCC. If you are a 250 hour pilot with a type rating and no hours, there are no airlines in the Middle East that will be willing to take you on. Lets say you do spend the money on converting your GCAA license to a JAR license, that type rating you paid for will still be a waste of money if your check was not done by a current JAR TRE and the JAR paperwork was not completed when you passed your checkride.
Don't get short sighted and think that because you did your training in the UAE that one of the local carriers will hire you after graduation. Even with a type rating the airlines over here won't look at you until you meet the minimum hours requirements set out on their websites, which is normally an ATPL and 2000+ hours.
I am not against this new school, I think it is great that they are setting up a school with such a high standard of training and equipment. It will be superb for middle eastern pilots with middle eastern passports. But for foreign nationals, for now at least, I believe it would be a waste of 125,000 dollars. Your money would be far better spent getting a JAR license flying Warriors and Seminols for half the money.
Cheers
DB
