PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - The Standard newspaper article... CX losing pilots
Old 26th Oct 2011, 20:22
  #25 (permalink)  
emb145gearslinger
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Geh065,

You are wrong on many levels. What is your background exactly? I'll tell you mine. I have been a flight school recruiter, CFI in more than one country, and a major airline captain.
You use the term "cadet" in a very broad manner. Not all flight training is created equal. There are true cadet programs that are very structured around a specific airlines SOP's, then there are FBO's that call themselves an academy. These academies (and I worked for one) do nothing more that train you to pass a canned check ride with an examiner which you pay personally (no conflict of interest there) with the minimal amount of experience necessary . You can NOT fail at these types of places. All you have to do is keep throwing more money at them. I have seen students with 150 hours and still not have solo'd "graduate" eventually from these so called academies. A serious cadet program run by an airline with strict performance standards would have kicked out someone who takes 150 hours to solo rather quickly. I know the school Cyril went to. I worked there. We had spoiled Indians showing up with their parents money goofing off for 1 to 2 years smoking pot going to strip clubs and massage parlors. Hardly the type of behavior one would expect for a serious would be professional. This type of conduct was the rule not the exception. There is no enforced completion time line at these schools.
I was also an instructor at an ab-initio school where strict uniform, attendance and performance standards were a must. Failure to make the grade meant being kicked out with no questions asked. There wasn't the possibility to buy your ratings like you could at a so called Academy.

No matter where you did your training nothing can replace experience. The flight training environment does not replicate the real world. Having a flight instructor sitting next to you for 250 hours or less spoon feeding you decisions is not the same as having your own life depend on yours. I'll work next to a new hire FO who flew night freight any day over a wet CPL holder. India kicked out highly experienced foreign FO's a few years ago so they could replace them with a bunch of wet CPL holding Indians who had not flown their Cessnas in over a year in most cases. Was this the safest move in your opinion?

In conclusion. I see Indians on this board constantly whining about the lack of jobs. There is almost always a lack of jobs for the inexperienced and desperate. What infuriates me is that with the thousands of highly experienced unemployed pilots in the world Indians with the least qualifications feel entitled to the best of jobs in the industry. Outside of India with it's protectionist hiring practices, you won't see many Indians with 250 hours flying jets. To the 6000 or so unemployed Indians out there. There are 10,000 or more enemployed pilots with thousands of hours more experience looking for work too. Get in line.
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