PT6
Firstly low hour pilots.
BA for many years sponsored and then employed cadets without any problems at all. These cadets finished integrated courses with a fatpl and sub 300 ( now I belive sub 200) hours. They went on to be employed as fo on potentially any of the ba fleets, eventually gaining commands all without any problems.
Low hours by itself is not the problem, its the training environment and the company culture that counts.
Giles - single pilot commercial operations are inevitable a higher risk, possibly streaching it a bit, but like natural selection, the survivors have good skills and luck those who don't generally die out.
Sadly the opportunities for getting on such schemes is minimal, the traditional routes in Europe are now dead ends and so the only practical way into aviation is through the various schemes operated by the schools and certain airlines. That many of the schemes are ripoffs and exploitation, that the majority here disagree with, is immaterial. They are here to stay barring legislation forcing companies to change their hiring policies.
P2F - are we able after X many pages able to agree on what is p2f?
For all these paying means candidate buys product paying full fees themselves through cash or loan with no money returned after completion. Salary does not count as mon3y returned.
Paying for initial training to FATPL level?
Paying for type rating?
Paying for line training?
Paying for 500 hours?
Paying for type rating but refunded payment after a period of time eg 3 years?
Reduced salary during training?
Short term contracts for non type rated fo's? Eg 6months usually in combination with most of the above!
Thoughts ideas welcome.
Agreed, BA have had cadets and all was well. But BA have an excellent training department and also the cadets were of small numbers mixed in with DEP from civil and military. The current trend is to solely recruit cadets.
As I said, any statement regarding them as safe can only be made when a full,audit of ASR and QAR safety data confirms this. How many issues/incidents are put into the ongoing training to final line check or flight ops errors that are headed off by the experienced captains.
Just because we don't here horror stories doesn't mean all is perfect. For balance I will say that experienced guys may well have issues as well. Only the data knows the full story.