Really? HONESTLY?
you don't see the glaring holes in your argument?
ok - I'll take 5 mins to highlight some of the monster holes:
Say integrated takes 18 months - cost £85k (including living costs)
It doesn't. It takes 15 months. Alright, benefit of doubt, you're using round numbers for ease of calculation. £10k living cost is prob about right for an integrated course.
all living costs [whilst training modular] are already accounted for
- errr? What? So YOU don't have that £10k cost if you go modular? Your rent/mortgage and food costs are paid by someone else? No - what you
mean is, "I already pay for those out of my salary, regardless of whether I'm training to be a pilot or not" - NOT that they don't apply. So - notwithstanding any following arguments - you have to add £15k of cost to your modular bill - cos you've got two years of living to fund out of your salary. To add the living costs to an integrated course, but NOT to a modular course, is only valid for those students who have to fund *TWO* sets of living. Otherwise, that cost is incurred whether you live in Oxford, Jerez, or Barnsley, whether you're a full time student or part time. To be clear - put it in a spreadsheet. What you're
actually saying is "the cost of modular is £40k (*cough* *Cough*), +£15k of two years living expense, which is offset by two years of salary, whereas Integrated is £75k [if you take the most expensive option] + £10k living cost which is not offset at all".
Modular I'd say is reasonable to complete in 2 yrs around the demands of a professional job
PLEASE tell me you're joking? Or do you mean "only the professional aspects of the training" - i.e. not including the lengthy PPL and hour building sections? If the latter, then you're again not comparing apples with apples. Include another £7k ish for a PPL and at least 6 months for the PPL + hours building.
If not, you honestly reckon that if doing it full time takes 18 months [which, as noted earlier, it doesn't] - that's 18 months of 9-5 every single day - you only need 6 months longer to do it, when only flying at weekends and evenings in the summer? Not including the fatigue of your day job causing you to "not want to go today", or missing flights because you don't have time to wait for wx to clear? Or the requirement to work late/weekends occassionally, or the inconvenience of having to fit your partner/friends in around it. Or allowing for more than min time, because you're NOT building your skills flying every day so it may take a bit longer to master asym approaches? You're either taking the p out of your employer - in which case you're unlikely to REMAIN employed for 2 years - or this is monstrously optimistic. I'd suggest the latter. 3/4 years if working full time is probably far more realistic. And actually, having been on PPRuNe for 5 years, I'd say that comes out as the most common and realistic time frame for those going mod whilst full time working.
If you're talking FULL TIME MOD, then yes. Totally agree. I would even go so far as to say you could match or better an integrated course timescales. But that's not what you said. Consider ground school alone is 6 months FULL TIME, without 9 months of full time flying.
Lets say you can save £700/month over the period
- ok, so to "live" (£10k a year, remember) and save £700 a month, you need to earn a minimum of £23k gross. And have NO OTHER COSTS AT ALL. Like travelling to/from work. Like going out. Like running a car or going on holiday or buying clothes (either for home or work), supporting a family or doing ANYTHING fun. £700 a month - alright, probably is achievable, but it's not very realistic for most people. Therefore you're presenting a case that's based around unrealistic scenarios - one that only someone working full time, earning more than £23k a year and with no other costs could meet. Not something that most people could meet.
Cost of modular training (~£40k)
No. it's not, is it. I'm sure that it CAN be done for that, taking the cheapest option at every corner, but let's be fair - if you're comparing the cheapest (or nearly cheapest) with integrated, let's compare it with the cheapest integrated course.....£53500 with Cabair. Or, let's compare your probably-about-right sum for "integrated courses" of £85k all in, with well recommended suppliers of modular....as noted earlier, on current prices, places such as BCFT, Aeros, SFC etc coming in at around £50-£55k. Not including your £15k of living costs. Even the original poster comes in at just a touch shy of £50k. So, to support your argument, you've shaved 20% off the cost that even WWW reckons is about reasonable and then compared it with [one of] the most expensive courses out there. hmmm.
You then start on about how integrated students [who don't get a job quickly - and let's also be clear here, they go integrated for the perceived BETTER chance of a job] will only be shelf fillers. And how they'll have to pay all that nasty interest.
What about those who have VERY good fallback careers - like me, currently earning more than all bar legacy captains. or the Oxford University Graduate who is a fund manager that I trained with, or the police seargeant who has gone back to the force? Or those who paid the whole costs with their own cash and no debt whatsoever?
What about the modular guys who funded every single penny with debt - and believe me, I would say the VAST majority of mod guys I know took at least some debt - most of them took nearly all of it as debt.
This is the major, major, major problem. People ALWAYS compare the most expensive, worst case scenario of integrated against the cheapest, best case scenario for mod. I think in five odd years on PPRuNe I've only ever seen one modular student ACTUALLY try and compare like for like. You sell
yourself the concept it's £40-50-60k cheaper, because it helps justify your own choice, but you don't want to admit the more realistic numbers.
You [modular defenders]
always conveniently forget that nice metric "time to first job" and the kicker that goes with it - unfreezing your ATPL and the increase in salary/seniority that goes with it. Want to put some figures on that? I'd argue that if it took the integrated student a year to find first job and the modular a year and a half, the increase over your working life in salary/seniority would more than cover the delta. But strangely, that's never considered - because it makes the scales a LITTLE more balanced.
Look - I really don't disagree with the concept that modular is cheaper, or that it's the best route to go for the forseeable future, but if you've qualified then you have a duty of care to those that follow to present accurate, realistic pictures, not to dress up your own choice in spurious argument.s