WingoWango
Sorry my experience level with this sort of matter is as limited as yours I'm afraid. I have only been a fully fledged BALPA member for little over a year and a half and have had very little dealings with them. My earlier post relating to your question of how the pilot fraternity moves to abolish PTF was merely my own opinion on how to get BALPA to act. I have no idea how many members BALPA has and therefore couldn't tell you what proportion would be needed in order to ensure a BALPA led campaign is perused. Approach company councils is an idea, however BALPA holds many members who's company may not have formal representation (Ryanair, Jet2) or who work for airlines outside the UK. However PTF could eventually effect each and every member at some stage in their career. So it needs to be a universal effort from across the spectrum of the BALPA membership in my opinion. I agree that this sort of thing will be difficult to organise and administrate, however a battle against something like PTF needs to be staged by something with a certain degree of clout. The only clout that we have in the UK (as a group of individuals) is, unfortunately or not, BALPA.
Global Warrior
Believe me, your letter addressing the very real safety concerns of PTF has already been attempted. A colleague of mine showed me the response received from the DofT (Paul Clark - Under Sec of State for Transport). He ignored references to the AAIB report of the Kos incident and the associated safety concerns of PTF - such as crew rest (citing Colgan Air where the flight crew couldn't afford accomadation) and psychological issues associated with the high levels of debt and job uncertainty related to PTF. Instead Mr Clarke detracted from these points and focused on the fact self sponsored flight training has been alive and well in the UK for quite some time (no sh1t sherlock) and that cadet pilots have been placed in airlines up and down the country. He went on to say that airline training programs are highly regulated (as we know) and the flight and duty limitations schemes are adopted and regulated within all airlines (again as we know). Talk about blatantly ignoring the point! But then what do you expect from a politician!?!
