OK, wasn't going to admit it but here goes. I recently attended assessment for the ATP scheme. I was one of only two English candidates out of 7 people. That alone says something about the level of mistrust about this scheme. All but 2 of the candidates present were clueless Greeks and Italians who were quite truly living in cloud cuckoo land with their belief that they would be walking straight into a jet job (no offence intended). The top notch sales pitch delivered over lunch does wonder! There was a 50 question tech "test", which wasn't too bad in terms of difficultly but the hilarious thing is we were all left in a room on our own discussing the answers! There was also a personality profile questionnaire. The standard type.
Over lunch, they discuss how Middle Eastern airlines are "begging" for pilots but tactically avoid stating how many people have been placed with airlines. Sadly, our European friends are very unsuspecting but for a native English speaker the Bull5hit factor is hard to ignore.
The sim session was interesting to say the least. Let’s just say it left me shocked to see how incapable even those with a thousand hours instructing are at manipulating a jet.
They got in touch with me very quickly and said I was the only one who showed the “right” skills and only I was being offered a place for next months course. As the days rolled by the story kept on changing. It went from one, to two, to three people (who attended the assessment at the same time as me) now starting the course. Wait a minute! I thought they were no good??? The way the story changed left a bitter taste in my mouth. It proved to me that by them stating I was the only good one that I would be extra keen on signing up, when the truth was far from that. I declined because I could no longer trust their word.
Last edited by Wannabe24; 6th Nov 2008 at 13:59.