Originally Posted by Day_Dreamer
Why should a recent fATPL have to go through the progression from Air Taxi, Regional carrier to Airline.
Err, perhaps because it will produce a more rounded pilot? Sure, most can sit and press buttons by rote fresh out of school but give me a pilot who has been around the block a bit any day of the week.
Originally Posted by Day_Dreamer
Unfortunately the times are hard and there will be no free type ratings for many years to come. (if ever there was such a thing in the last 10 years)
I've had three (jet) ratings in the last ten years, never paid a penny. Netjets have about a thousand pilots now, at least 30% of them will have changed fleets at least once within the company. I know of some who have had four ratings out of the company. Add in those who have moved on and I'd say that NJE have shelled out for
<plucks figure from the air> at
least two thousand type ratings in ten years. Not one pilot has ever paid anything toward them.
You see this is the problem. The training organisations hard sell the airlines and nothing else. Those airlines using cadets who pay their own TR or worse still the 'pay-to-fly' ballast that I Like Planes describes encourage it and people get into the business with rose tinted spectacles, oblivious to the many other and more rewarding branches of the business. Initially those don't pay as much but there are very, very few occupations in which you are not expected to serve time before the mast. Why should aviation be different?