Some of you have asked me to reply to points, so I am. Usual disclaimers - I am not trying to advertise the course, merely to reply to criticism. These are my own views and are not management approved; I am writing as a private individual, albeit one with knowledge of the company.
To answer bow5 and RichTea's point - Yes, I certainly think that the 4 airlines which have already signed up to the Partnership Programme (bmi British Midland, British European, KLM (UK), and Channel Express) will look no further for their ab-initio entrants.
Look at it from their point of view. For any business, recruiting anyone, whether a pilot or someone to clean the loos, is a very iffy procedure. It costs money to place adverts, vet CVs, compile short lists, arrange interviews, set up psychmetric testing, hold a 3-day course, etc. Even then, you don't know what you're getting until you've actually seen them in employment for a while. Some people can put on quite a good act for a few days. Even after all this, once you've made the best possible choice from the information available to you at the time, not all the sponsored students hack it. A small proportion of our airline-sponsored students have their sponsorship withdrawn for not achieving the required standard. It's not that they are not achieving the standard to become a pilot - they all get licences - it's that they are not achieving the standard required to be a BA, Aer Lingus, or bmi pilot. That's a higher standard -- right now!
Compare this with what the Partnership airlines will be getting under the new scheme. The students will be selected but selection won't be the airlines' resonsibilty (or expense). The students will have been on the course for some months before they are considered by the Partnership airlines. Any weaknesses will have already become apparent. The airlines will not have to bear the cost of sponsoring students not up to their high standards. There will be a comprehensive 5 page report on each student (everyone at Oxford gets this, not just the new course) which will cover all exam results, flying grades at all phases of the course, character sketches by several ground school and flying instructors and summaries by the CGI and the CFI - covering 6-9 months of actual performance. Not too much of an unknown quantity there!
If you were a Partnership airline, wouldn't you prefer that as an option? You'd far rather pay, say, £30K sponsorship per student once you knew that they were a good bet than £50K for what's basically a bit of a gamble at the start of the course.
This does not mean that it you do the standard ATPL course you won't get a job. Only 4 airlines are current Partnership Programme members. There are plenty of other airlines out there. We placed half a dozen recent graduates with Ryanair recently - by direct contact. We'll do that for anyone who we think worth recommending on the standard ATPL course.
As for the rest of you who keep whingeing about the "£75K" price, didn't you read my earlier posting? Pilots are supposed to be able to be able to pick out the salient points from a mass of information. Also, you should only need to tell a pilot something once. Good pilots stay level-headed, not heated with emotion, and they don't get drunk. It won't cost you £65K in fees if you don't get a job, because you'll have transferred to the standard ATPL course at a lower price. It'll cost you even less if you hack the course because we expect the Partnership airlines to sponsor you once they've taken you on. I shouldn't need to make this point again. If you can't take it in after being told twice, perhaps you're not very suitable pilot material.
Paul Hickley