Poonpossum, biting the hand that feeds you is never a good move. Take the same logic, did you go to an employer before you started to fly and ask your potential employer to pay to teach you to fly. Of course not! First jobs are hard to get in these times, the better the skill set you have the better the chance of getting that first job is. Paying for ICUS is like another endo, it improves your skill set and gives you more tools.
Ok cool. So I suppose paying ones way into an airline is good too? It's the same thing, just diluting the industry from the opposite end.
Let me get this right, the timeline of someone who definitely isn’t me, paying for ICUS, our hypothetical newbie.
- Finishes flying school.
- Gets MECIR
- Forks $14k to fly revenue charters ICUS. Acquires ‘skill set’ associated with flying Navajo at night, IFR.
- Finishes ICUS
- Flying school: “Actually, sorry, no job, thanks for your cash, now get out of my office”
- Gets single engine VFR job for a year or more.
- IFR skills get rusty, isolated location and no cash inhibits renewal opportunities.
- Finally it’s time to progress.
- Twin job interview passed.
- IFR skills rusty, needs retraining anyway
- Trained to standards of the new company anyway.
- Wonders why she gave her flying school ridiculous cash for something she just got for free, that was of a better quality, from someone that actually saw her as an asset and not a cash cow, that had a real, working system in place to properly train pilots up to their own company’s standards.
Is that the general jist of it?