I am surprised it took so long for someone to work out that some sort of collective action for people doing professional flight training was a good idea.
Properly set up, an association of independently sponsored pilots has some major advantages such as:
1)Negotiating with FTO’s on the same footing as Airlines, thus reducing considerably the cost to the individual sponsoring themselves on their own
2)Obtaining same contract prices as Airline sponsored students (including accommodation at better rates)
3)Paying out monthly invoices out of a legally protected ‘escrow’ account and probably in arrears (so if the FTO goes belly up then you are one of the debtors to the company, rather than a creditor).
4)Maintaining contact with employers directly and fulfilling their crewing requirements by placement
5)Obtaining favourable rates on type training
6)Exposing potential students to the selection process to see if they will have the aptitudes before they commit large sums of money
7)Coaching for airline interviews and again getting some pre-selection sim time at good rates
8)Providing their own liaison personnel to deal with individual problems and quality checking the services provided by the FTO.
9)Negotiating with finance house for favourable lending facilities
Set up as a non-profit organization the association could employ some grizzled old veteran, with the suitable professional flight training background, commercial awareness and airline industry knowledge to protect the association’s members. The individual could do the negotiating, supervision of training standards and to help in the placement and interview selection/coaching phase. Of course this will cost some money in management fees, but then the individual will save a great deal on the overall outlay it may seem insignificant by comparison.
Of course the industry knows that the ‘wannabee’s will never organize themselves properly that way so they will be able to continue to milk the cow indefinitely, or am I wrong? Let’s see some comments on this? Email me if you like as well.