Leezyjet,
I almost had to double check to see I hadn't written your last post! My current situation is very, very similar...sitting it out in my old job waiting for the right opportunity. I will NOT go on a speculative line hours scheme. I very much hope a decent opportunity will come up, but confidence in that is waning, I'd have to admit...still I'd rather fly a desk for the rest of my life than spend another £30k without a job at the end of it.
SloppyJoe,
bit of an awkward one for me, as I agree with what you've written, but the aggressive, condescending tone and continual swearing actually undermines much of it, IMHO. Hopefully something to think on, because clearly you have something sensible to say.
My tuppence?
Personally I would be prepared to pay for an initial TR (as long as it had concrete job offer attached). This is because as someone mentioned earlier, I think it's extraordinarily naive to think that you'll get away with an absolutetly free TR ever again. That's not to say you WON'T get a free TR, they do exist, but ...well..."hens teeth" sums it up. Personally I'd treat getting a completely free TR as an absolute bonus.
I MIGHT even agree to
not be paid (note the subtle difference between not being paid and paying for) for line training (as long as concrete job offer attached - although for me, this would have to be a very good job and one I'd look to hold for a long time).
What I will NOT do, is pay for a TR and/or LT on the basis that there may or may not be a job at the end. This is why (if you read my other postings) I did not move forward for the OAA/easyJet scheme.
That said...experienced pilots need to start realising that whining and pining for the "good old days of the self improver route" is pointless. I couldn't give a **** if
you spent 20000 hours crop dusting to get where you are....my only concern -and you can probably take this as read for most newbies - is how do
I get to where I want to be. That sounds very "me first"...well it is, because by refusing to take a job offer I change nothing...someone else will take that job instead. The endless whinging about how wonderful the old ways were, the insinuation that anyone that pays is somehow less of a pilot than someone who didn't buy their rating is both a ridiculous notion [there are both good and bad pilots that can and cannot afford a rating] and fosters a siege mentality which only serves to aide airline managers in dividing the workforce and subsequent futher reduction.
The above is not to say that the self improver route has gone, but the fact is, it is no longer the de facto route to the RHS. I would question the sanity of anyone...ANYONE who [wanting to fly commercial transport a/c ultimately] sets out to earn the pittance a newly qualified SEP FI earns for years and years, rather than go direct if the option exists. THIS is the problem, there is no point blaming people for not wanting to instruct, simply because there is another legal route open to them.
The way forward to stop these schemes - or one way at least - is to force the CAA to define a route to the RHS. As long as it's allowed by legislation to jump straight into the RHS of a MRJT with the base qualifications, then someone, somewhere will always seek to offer a route that jumps the queue. If that route is tightly defined (a la "min of 1500 hours tt to fly as crew on an A/c over 7.5 tonnes - purely as an example) then it controls the route to the RHS and levels the playing field. But then of course, someone would sell block bookings of 1500hrs, someone will have the money to pay and others that can't will whinge that "I had to do it by licking the chief pilots shoes for 12 years to earn enough..."
This is the new reality. Do not seek to blame others who find themselves caught in the maelstrom that it represents for being caught in a storm...as an industry it's up to all of us to build a shelter for them.
The new aviation world is all about trying to gain an edge, by fair means or foul. It's only our internal moral compasses (or Moral IRS in my case...
) that dictate to what level we'll go to get that edge. However, for Moral compass swinging purposes, posts by G-SPOTs lost and Kirks Gusset are a good starting point.