Yeah. Didn't LAN post an ad on El Mercurio a few months ago stating that they wouls consider pilots with only a private license and LAN would put them through commercial training.
How is it going for you? Still flying that King Air? I'm back flying Air Ambulance in a Commander. Might be back in la calle Valparaiso in April or May.
Hi Yeager, yeah still king air, soon the 350 if lucky, and some Jet if everything goes extremely well... Trying to take the BizAviation Route... most friends already Joined LAN though, hahaha
The Newspaper ad was for "surveying" purposes mainly, they cant hire people with less than 200TT, but they wanted to know how many pilots were in the National market preparing to try join LAN, they made a meeting in some hotel in Santiago and (Internally) assigned a timeframe to the hour difference to reach the 200TT... lets say Pilots with 150TT IFR would be asked to take the tests in 6 Months, Pilots With 180 TT IFR in 3 and so on... So in that way the company can make a projection of the extra-chilean pilots they might need.
So they wont put them through commercial training. Although i have heard of certain Internal program to PAY to train Pilots, that means reaching 150TT AND passign your screening (The very same that all pilots take to join) they would extend a Guarantee Letter (Is that well said?) to you to borrow money from a certain Bank to finish your training, this program is only for ground or non flightdeck personnel and Capt or FO sons.
Lan Chile Itself would not train ab-initio pilots in the near future, they have plans to hire a major Flight School here in Chile (Pretty much the same thing they did in Peru) to provide trained pilots but thats 2012 onwards and is only a project by now.
That's it
Cheers everyone