Yip
I can understand people taking the contracts if they had already started the process before the downturn, but for those who haven't yet, and didn't, I think they have been/would be mental. What I don't get is if you are about to invest £100,000 then why the hell are they not researching everything? I don't buy the "oh the flight school sold it to me" brigade. £100k is a serious amount of cash and I for one would want to be armed with all the facts before ploughing any kind of cash into flight training.
A sad indictment of the way it has gone is that these have been the only contracts on offer for a long while and yet the flight schools were full, people queuing up to throw their cash at them. I personally don't believe that this is down to the schools' selling tactics, I think it is down to the individuals who will stop at nothing to sit in the rhs of an airliner and will do "whatever it takes, at whatever the cost", this is the real driving force behind it and the schools and airlines (Easyjet) are coining it in and laughing their tits off. I thought the credit crunch would stop the banks lending money to all these individuals but they are finding the cash, I don't get that either.
Where does it end though? I am not sure it will, not now. It really pains me when I am flying around and I hear all the foreign pilots flying for Ryanair & EasyJet. The cadets with cash are coming from the continent and are keeping the schools full over here too, the free labour laws are unfortunately a one way gravy train, but that's a different discussion for another day.
You could say I am slightly bitter about it all, (I'm not though, I am happy to be employed) I am an experienced pilot (if u call 4,000hrs experienced) stuck on a "modern" turbo prop with nowhere to go. The natural step up for the likes of myself is to go to Easyjet, Monarch, Thomas Cook etc, but we can't go anywhere. The only way to get on in this industry now is to have absolutely no experience. When & where will it end? I'm not sure it will.