Well Captain Fyne, it seems I have caused you, personally, some insult here. That was not my intention, so I will immediately apologise for that, if it is what you would wish me to do. I extend that apology to anyone who feels that the cap does not fit.
However, I would wish to raise the following points with respect to your statement above:<ul type="square">1. In fact, I don't think I quoted any statistics in expressing my personally held beliefs as to the privileged versus the unprivileged. I guess the issue here is subjective in that privilege may be relative. What I said was:
"for too long in this country, a civil piloting career was the domain of the very privileged, other than a relative handful who went via the military to civil route."; Correct me if I'm wrong, but the 'frozen' UK ATPL costs some £50,000, net of all associated expenses. In other words, the average income earner must have saved this sum after paying tax, NI, and all other living costs and must then maintain him/herself for the period of obtaining the licence. And there are other essentials on top of the bare licence, aren't there, which we'll ignore here for the sake of expediency. This is a vast sum of money, equivalent in some instances to the purchase price of a modest house, and it is beyond the reach of the great majority of youngsters, or their parents. I do not believe it is stretching the truth at all to say that those who can find such sums of disposable income are ‘privileged’ to some degree.
2. To take your own stated case, I understand you have been flying for 24 years and I gather from your past posts that you took many long years to achieve your first real return as a professional pilot. You don’t here say, but you have in the past said that you joined Emerald not that long ago. Thus it took a very long time for you to advance from PPL to CPL/ATPL, did it not? Why was this? Perhaps because you were not privileged, which I would accept. You did it the hard way, which I would applaud. But you must have been free to do so. That is to say that your personal and family responsibilities did not entirely outweigh the cost of you funding your airline piloting aspirations. Some would say that this meant that you were, in fact, privileged.
3. That you are able to count on the fingers of one hand those you know to have been funded by ‘daddy’ may be quite meaningless, for example it may mean that you simply don’t know how the many pilots with whom you have had contact actually achieved their licences. I mean, how many do you think would actually own up to having been funded by ‘daddy’?
4. I did not suggest that
‘any’ of those who did not get their wings in the military are privileged. You said that. I expressed a general belief held personally, and I stand by that generalisation. There would certainly be exceptions, and you claim to be just one (
but see 2 above).
5. The exams and tests of which you speak are, in reality, a piece of cake. And like a piece of cake, the ATPL subjects can be learned and passed in conveniently sliced parts. One does not need to be a mental giant in order to pass ATPL subjects (
I am living proof of this assertion). One does not need to be a Michael Schumacher to fly the small machines used to achieve that licence. The primary requisite, it can be argued, is the money to pay for these things and to sustain oneself and ones dependants while doing so. Thus, when ‘seriously intending to become a professional pilot’, the primary pre-requisite is: MONEY, and lots of it. And I do not here argue that the professional airline pilot is stupid or inarticulate. Your own parameters for the Pprune scheme are proof that you yourselves hold that the ‘frozen ATPL’ and IR are not, of themselves, sufficient for candidacy as a professional airline pilot.
6. I would wish to understand how you claim that “The 40+ applications received so far all point to individuals who are extremely determined, of very limited resources and prepared to [do?] what is necessary to make sure they remain eligible to apply in this very competitive market.” You have determined this, have you, from their having completed the on-line application form?
7. The fact is that I am not a part of ‘making’ the Pprune scheme what it is. You, and others, are. If I wished to make myself a part of such a scheme I would certainly assess worthiness without regard to financial circumstances. And I would then consider personal funding of suitably capable applicants. I will certainly not commit personal funds to a scheme that bars the impecunious.
8. I have not accused you of being ‘elitist’ but I repeat my assertion that your scheme, as it stands, bars the impecunious and perpetuates a system that has long favoured the wealthy among our population. And I make no apologies or retractions for saying that.[/list]
Consider this: I have asked you and yours to consider a small refinement to requirements regarding IR currency. Notwithstanding your views on my personal beliefs and mores, do you really feel your statement above was a reasonable reaction to such a relatively small, and unselfish, request? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
[ 29 January 2002: Message edited by: interested ]</p>