my biggest problem though is ur comments on fee-help. Not all of us are blessed with rich parents to give us loans to go become pilots. Fee-help allows people who have the will and the work effect to become pilots and oxford is accomindating to that.
And last time i checked OAA was meant to prepare you for the airlines, most of which use GPS, get with the times man
I Didn't say anything bad about fee-help buddy, i think it was a good addition to the Higher Education System, but for oxford to max it out for flying costs up to CPL is a complete joke, speak to any St Kevin's students who trained with GFS just before fee-help was introduced and they will tell you they were paying ~$320 an hour, I can understand some markup from that due fuel prices, but the price they currently charge, plus landing fees on top of that is just cruel to kids who would need to use Fee-help.
You think every pilot before you had rich parents? plenty of kids had their parents re mortgage the house to give them a loan or they take a few years off after school and work(e.g the mines, hell you could go to the desalination plant in Victoria where they are offering unskilled labour's around $100K), saving money and enabling them to take a loan from the bank to pay for flying, like you say if you have the will and work effort, you can get a job to pay for flying costs.
Yes I see airlines use GPS but you are not going to go straight into an airline(unless you are very very lucky or in a cadetship), your going to have to do some time in GA until you have enough hours to get close to apply, and everyone doesn't have GPS. Do you believe any other students at other schools who don't have GPS(mainly g1000) are not prepared for an airline. Oxford is simply looked positively upon by airlines due to the fact of their strict SOP's which are quite similar to what most airlines would use today.