Government funded flight training: the loan to nowhere

[Five dollar shake]

Greetings from a first time poster / long time viewer.


Over the past couple of years, I have contributed countless hours training students under government funded programs through the fee help scheme. Whilst some of them could barely fly a kite with the cash they were given, overall it has been a pleasure to train most of them. My issue is that it pains me to see my company pumping out CPL’s on a daily basis courtesy of the taxman, only to have them walk into a dead industry with $100k loan (indexed to inflation might I add). And I know my company are not the only mob on this gravy train...


I always try to maintain contact with my students through social media, and it saddens me to see how many actually have jobs in the industry – I could almost count it on one hand. I’ve been told by friends up North that they have never seen so many pilots working bars and stacking shelves, often they see up to 5 hopefuls a day hassling for work.



Training institutions around Australia continue to spruik data from Boeing that the market will need thousands of new pilots in the years to come. Really? A manufacturer claimed that? Then it must be true. Has anyone ever looked into how they calculated these statistics or is it just based on the amount of aeroplanes they plan on flogging to China?



I am very much aware that the demise of an aspiring young pilot is not a new thing. But one cannot ignore the fact that this is now happening on a much larger scale with Fee Help and Universities raking in money from this government funded cash cow. My organization has produced hundreds of pilots under this program, and I have fellow instructors in other capital cities who can say the same about their training institutions.


Even if the forecasts from Boeing are correct, the majority of these are for the Asia region and I highly doubt that when Joe Bloggs takes his licence overseas, he will bother paying off his loan to the taxmax on a foreign income! As fantastic as it has been that these programs have made flying affordable to all, the program needs to die, even just for a short time to allow the industry to catch up. So my question is this: how much longer until the gravy train ends? Given the current government is trying to reign in expenditure, surely this should have been the number 1 target?