It seems this ugly little scheme has surfaced again.
The truth is that this scheme did not ever stop despite a Senate Inquiry and a pending Fairwork Australia prosecution. That is not entirely true, the advanced courses for qualified, but low experience did stop but the ab-initio courses are to this day liberating money from the naive with no prospects other than after 18 months of training, joining a long (and getting longer) queue of graduated cadets under the scheme waiting for an offer of Employment that is not guaranteed. Their plight is only made slightly easier by those lucky ones who find work elsewhere in the industry meantime and those who have resorted to working in maccas or woollies to make ends meet whilst being crippled by VETFEE HELP debt repayments. These guys may find it too hard and be happy to throw an airline career away based on their initial, bad experience after finding something better.
I am told by a few that frustration levels amongst previous cadets are starting to rise, stress levels are on the increase, ratings have long since expired and the lack of regular flying is seriously eroding skills and knowledge.
According to the evidence given by certain witnesses this is preferable to a an experienced pilot with recent command experience who is supposedly contaminated by GA!!
This scheme is morally no better than the 'black money' scheme in 60 minutes last night where scammers con you out of a huge amount of cash under the guise of a fast track to the stars and then, when you are broke, have lost everything and vulnerable the scammers offer you a job as a scammer where you will spend years scamming others, as you were scammed, to make your money back. At least the guy in 60 minutes broke the chain and I hope his wife sees that he realises he put his family's financial future at serious risk, has let them down and has tried to do the right thing. Hopefully they can put their differences behind them and be together as a family in the future.
I think it is time for a little 'Game Change' of our own as until we get a smoking hole attitudes within the airlines and particularly Jetstar will not change.
To do so requires the support of as many pilots as possible writing to your MP not about the Cadetship type arrangements, CASA has already demonstrated its shortsighted and unhelpful position by simply referring to the regs and saying its legally ok therefore we are virtually powerless.
We must address the thing that allows the cadet ships generally to survive. MONEY. It's a little like the boats coming from Indonesia, stop the boats and you will stop the transfer of money to those people smugglers that profit from it and they will move on eventually the boat will stop.
VETFEE Help is the only reason cadetships survive today in the Australian Aviation Industry - the airlines don't want to pay and without help most, if not all, have a spare 100k floating around without asking mother and father. Remove the finance that supports these schemes and there will be less cadets being able to afford the cost to participate in them and less opportunity for employers to benefit from naive individuals with easy access to a large government backed loan - without any hint of credit checking or an assessmenr of ability to repay. Aviation is a worldwide industry, leave Australia and your payments stop. Hey Wayne if your looking for ways to stem the deficit START HERE!!
Accountants at Jetstar and the Training Organisations see this as a revenue stream, nothing more. However they know that they cannot access it without an individual who is willing to sign for it. The lure for the Con: the hope of bypassing the hard yards of GA and making it directly to the glamour of a right hand seat of a High Capacity RPT will 177 fare paying passengers on board. Reality check: it is not glamorous anymore and there is a long long queue of graduates in front of you. They thought they could employ cadets for $36000 a year at the beginning but that did not last long since I exposed the scheme for what is was two years ago. It is no accident that the number of graduated Jetstar cadets actually being offered employment has slowed dramatically yet with the high number of those graduates waiting hopefully for the call there are still plenty entering the Cadetship at the bottom quietly given the details of the scheme are nowhere to be found on Jetstar's website.
How do we do this??
Using VETFEE help for the Commercial Pilots Licence is illegal under the Higher Education Support Act as this is a Certificate IV level qualification. VETFEE Help is only meant to fund the training for an instrument rating and multi engine endorsement. About $25k at the most.
Hey Julia, let Wayne and Chris Bowen know that your Government is authorising and paying out tens of millions of dollars in training funding that is not permitted by the laws that your government debated and passed!! You are in appropriately spending public money!!
.....and then to make matters worse your Government is opening up the migration system to, not only 457 pilots but, wait for it, Permanent Residency!! Show me where the shortage is if your Government Department CASA says it is perfectly acceptable for a newly qualified Commercial Pilots with an Instrument Rating and a massive 150 hours under their belt (70 in command) in a small training aircraft to be second in command on an aircraft carrying 177 of your countrymen and women....maybe even you!!!
I have posted on other threads explaining the detail.
We must take our fight to the Government since they are signing off the course approvals for the training providers.
More to Follow
The Kelpie
Last edited by The Kelpie; 3rd June 2013 at 23:56.