LVL_CHG: well done - at least you are making contacts - that is all this game is about. Better to be seen as a worthwhile investment for pilot training than be taken to the cleaners by unscrupulous schools that do not teach airmanship or anything beyond the minimums to get through an LST.
BZB may not be financially involved with the self licking lollypop that is CTC. It is clear however that he takes a myopic view when it comes to the quality of the output of that this money making machine produces. How anyone can think that a 200h (soon to be 70h MPL plus SIM time) straight into an A319 with severe restrictions on manual flying is a good pilot apprenticeship is beyond most aviators.
As for the EZY Line training being OK - ask those CTC cadets at EZY Swiss who were shafted at Line Check.
A 200h cadet scheme pilot is usually hugely under confident. CTC give extra SIM sessions to their own Wings cadets to meet the LST. But getting someone to a pass level only for a single test then to fail later is expensive for all (even assuming no accident occurs). The whole CAA multi choice ATPL exam system has similar faults in training for test not knowledge.
Why are youngsters hit so hard on car insurance? Are they safer than a 28 or 40 year old with 100,000 miles or so of driving experience? So how is having 60 to 70% cadet recruitment a good thing on a jet airliner? Was Sullenberger a 22 year old cadet?
Even the best Military schemes have several stages before being let loose in a fast or large jet aircraft. Emergency handling is taught from the earliest lessons. Situational awareness and capacity are assessed on every sortie not through naff Compass tests or SIMS (where there is no chance of death unless you fall off the bridge) but in the actual flying environment with additional simulated tasking.
Those that fail go through an air warning/ground warning remedial package and if not up to scratch chopped or assessed as a training risk.
Many cadets do not have good instructional continuity and many of the instructors have no instructional background in teaching qualifications or FI backgrounds outside of a CTC TRI course. Some of the ground school is almost all Power point / CBT without supervision by a trained person. Type Rating exam answers have been known to be given to cadets before test.
I am not against cadets. I am against them being under trained for the benefit of shareholder profits. I am against them being given false expectations and a system that is depriving aviators in other sectors of career progression. I am against the dilution of piloting skills in airliners in the UK through exclusive P2F/Cadet/Flexi recruitment schemes.
I am for the proper training of those with the nouse and hard graft to become seasoned aviators. Would that there were real apprenticeship schemes that give a 5 or 10 year career path for junior pilots. Both Integrated and MPL are failing to do this because of profit over quality.
Those that claim there is no other solution but paying for TRs or Line Flying are (sadly) the deluded ones who believe the lies the Pilot Mills/So called Approved Schools have told them. They complain about not having a job with 200h and a CPL. Not that long ago you couldn't even get a CPL without 700h ! They either wish to borrow huge sums or waste their own or their family's inheritance/hard earned cash on these jump the queue rip off deals that lower entry conditions for all pilots. They have not spent 8 or so years flying anything with wings to gain experience. They ask others to do job searches for them so they don't have to put in the hours making their own contacts.
Yes the system is broken when you get the biggest UK LoCo excluding all but CTC cadets because they have cadets now becoming captains and management pilots and HR who know of no other system and deride GA and Military training without real knowledge.
This system has only worked because of the Pilot Mill propoganda selling the RHS at EZY, the lack of moral fibre to stand against it by existing (well paid) staff and BALPA, the fear of the Flexi crew pilots that if they go sick they will be sacked or not given a more permanent job, a CAA that has turned a blind eye, a reliable A319 aircraft with half decent FBW system and hard working Line and Training Captains that have looked after the cadets or taught them what they should have known before joining the airline.
All it takes is for the holes in the swiss cheese to align. As Flight International reported:
"In the past 20 years, almost all the business, technical and operational ground rules governing commercial aviation have radically altered, forced by market changes, air traffic management, navigation, and aircraft and avionic technology. Logically, these demand a change in training - but that change has not been delivered. What has most affected pilots is the influence of low-cost carriers, bringing radical change to many airline relationships with flightcrew. But what has most changed crew recruiting and management is the decline of the military as a pilot skills provider.
Meanwhile, there has been a loss of pilot exposure to *anything other than pre-packaged flight planning, followed by automated flight on the line. In unusual *circumstances - non-standard or not automated - a lack of pilot resilience has led to fatal loss of control (LOC) accidents, making LOC the biggest killer category this century - taking over from controlled flight into terrain in the last.
This is acknowledged by industry bodies such as IATA and the International Civil Aviation Organisation, and their respective training and qualification initiatives. So carriers cannot say they have not been warned, but these efforts have not been translating into action. Just as a reminder, the number of fatalities caused by airline accidents in the 1980s was about 1,100 a year, whereas numbers now are less than 800 a year, despite revenue-passenger kilometres being three times larger. The industry could revert to the bad old days, but for a different reason: the aircraft are better, but the skills to operate them are degrading."