Thanks very much for your last input there WWW and Scroggs. If I understand you correctly you both seem to agree with my feelings that the modular candidate will start to be viewed as a not so far apart from the integrated one. Much in the same way that none of us would buy Skodas today, this may not be as quick as is deserved however!
Having just read TB’s other related thread, I really hope that nobody here thought that they would walk into a jet job with 200/250 hours. If so they really haven’t done enough research, or talked to people in the industry. I fortunately have had a chat or two (!) with airline pilot instructors, which has educated me enormously.
Personally, I feel that instructing is an excellent route to build hours for a year or two, as WWW has described it can be very fulfilling, and there’s no autopilot/autothrottle FD FMC or whatever, i.e. it is real flying.
The reason I got involved was that if an employer demanded 750 hours more on paper for a modular candidate, then it is a reasonable (if somewhat simplistic) extension of the argument that a 1000 hour integrated pilot looks the same on paper as a 1750 hour modular person.
So that is an extra year of instruction at least (or a lot of solo hours perhaps – not sure how though), which for me is fine, apart from it is a different set of maths to work with when looking at integrated vs. modular.
I am prepared to be flamed out for this, but I assume I can get a non-instructing job at 2000 hours at latest, really on the basis of examples I know. Therefore it (for me) becomes an exercise of money/time, a feasibility study if you like, hence my personal interest.
I love flying enormously, but to barrel into something blissfully unaware of the dangers facing you at the end really constitutes taking a large risk, which is something that does not sit easy with becoming a commercial pilot (IMHO).
So come on folks listen to Scroggs and WWW. Plan to spend much time building hours, and if that is not your cup of tea, walk away at this stage.
As the thread started off ‘This is not fair’ – I have an ironic smile on my face as the CP who draughted that ad probably took about 2 minutes based on his previous experience in that position and I have spent for ever it seems discussing parts of this thread. They will have far too many good applicants to give a damn if 100’s of good candidates are not eligible at application stage.
It may not seem ‘fair’ to some modular wanabee’s, but I guarantee they only have to do their selection process once and end up with a good set of pilots, so certainly operationally efficient…