I have my belief and you have yours and thats what we're all going on. 3 years ago did you ever imagine the economy would be the way it is today?
No, in fact around 3 years ago I was gearing myself up for the CTC scheme, having seen all the lovely
PR and heard about the big shortage of pilots, it seemed like a dream ticket to a job. The difference now is I've spent over a year flying the Airbus and, despite me already having had a reasonable knowledge of the industry before I ever started out, being on the right side of the flight deck door has taught me a lot more about the whole situation than I could have hoped to know, and has helped to reinforce the important point that much of what eminates from the FTO
PR departments is garbage. Particularly when it comes to saying that X airline will need Y pilots in year Z. Some airlines don't even know what their requirements will be a couple of months ahead, never mind two or three years.
Better that there's people out there determined to still persue[sic] their desires than not.
The problem is that in many cases that desire is attempted to be pursued by taking out a five-figure secured loan against someone's property in the middle of the worst recession for years and possibly decades. I can't agree that this shows particularly sound judgement. But we'll have to agree to disagree on that.
Just to clear up a few apparent misconceptions about this ATP business. CTC Wings ATP, the bit of the course where you join at the AQC (intermediate) stage and then enter the hold pool, reopened this year. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has been taken from that pool this year - there might have been one or two still hanging on from a while ago who got forwarded to easyJet under FlexiCrew terms in early 2009, I don't know, but if there were then it's very few - the intake was predominantly cadets. It is absolutely true that some of the Airline Training Partnership ATP (completely different, nothing to do with CTC) 'cadets', who made the required standard, were invited back to work on summer contracts again this year, having signed up to the FlexiCrew scheme. But it would appear that the reference to "ATP fools" from a poster above refers to the former group, i.e. those choosing to apply to the CTC Wings ATP scheme to join a holding pool lower in priority than a big load of cadets ahead of them.
One further possible misconception... Wings and FlexiCrew are two separate entities. There are the guys who are doing their 6 months on £1k/month as the final part of the Wings Cadets course, and then there are last year's cadets/ex-ATP(non-CTC) etc. who are working on FlexiCrew terms.
Are you allowed to get a job while you're in the holding pool?
Yes.