I couldn't agree more. But at the moment CTC and OAA have the low hour market sewn up in the uk.
On what basis do I make that statement? Well the two main players in the UK market are Ryanair and Ezy.
Ezy take the majority of their low hour cadets from both the CTC Wings hold pool and also the CTC (AQC). The exception to that rule is an MPL course from OAA which happened two years ago I believe.
Now to the other big player -Ryanair. In my 4 years I worked at some very big training bases where I did a lot of safety pilot work with new joiners. The majority of new joiners I worked with were integrated OAA. Yes there was a few modular but most came from OAA.
So if we have now established that modular guys won't get a look in at Ezy unless they get onto the AQC scheme with CTC after their training,and only a minority of modular guys compared with OAA integrated will get a look in at Ryanair, what are we left with in terms of jet operators?
Monarch take low hour guys from both the CTC Wings and CTC AQC Pools and have a tagged MPL Scheme which runs with? Yes you guessed it CTC.
Thomson did take a few from CTC a couple of years ago but they now only take rated guys many of which are ex Ryanair and I believe any low hours cadets will be taken internally from people already in the company that are not in flying positions.
BA is all FPP which is integrated and mainly CTC.
Aer Lingus did a scheme with FTE and have previously taken a few from CTC. All pretty much integrated.
Norwegian run one course a year for low houred guys and that's an MPL tagged scheme.
Outside of that you have Wizz, Jet2,Flybe, who do on occasion recruit low hours guys from different training backgrounds. I can't remember when TCX last took anyone.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Don't get me wrong I'm all for the modular route as that's what I did myself.
However the market I entered into 7 years ago is a very different beast to the one that exists today.
I will say it again. Go in with your eyes open. Don't "hope everything's going to be alright when you finish"
Last edited by go around flaps15; 15th March 2014 at 15:48.