As you know, an airline needs to train its pilots to fly its aircraft if they have not already been trained. The qualification is then the personal property of the licence holder, and as it is very expensive the airline needs to take some precaution to ensure it gets some form of return on its investment. This can only be some form of "encouragement" for the pilot ot work for the airline longer than the contractural notice period. The Bond is the usual form of this "encouragement" and its terms depend entirely on the airline concerned. Mostly they are fair in that they require the pilot to work for an agreed period, and that during that time the bond, usually the average cost of converting a pilot onto the aircraft type concerned, will depreciate. In other words, if you work for half the agreed period then leave, you have to pay back half the bond. There are variations on this theme and these often depend on the ease of recruiting pilots at the time! Airline companies sometimes have difficulty in recovering training bonds from pilots who leave early, so other schemes are sometimes used. One favourite is to get the pilot to take out a bank loan in their own name for the value of the bond. The company, which pockets this money for the training, then agrees to pay it off in appropriate instalments during the duration of the bond. Pilot leaves company - company stops paying off loan! A good scheme from the company's point of view, but if it goes bust, a number of suddenly out of work pilots have a further debt burden to shoulder.
It goes without saying that all proposed bonding contracts should be read carefully, with legal help if felt necessary before they are entered into. As I have already said, many are fair and reasonable (hence a judge will be prepared to enforce them in a court of law) but I also know personally a number of recently qualified pilots with consequentially huge personal debts who suddenly found themselves having to pay off an extra £10000 because the company who offered them their first flying job failed.
Last edited by P.Pilcher; 10th June 2002 at 07:12.