The pilot that failed.
So, I have been reading a lot of speculation here, mostly in the third person. Well, this time I can guarantee you I am real and I speak in the first person. I can’t reveal names due to legal reasons, but if you want to talk to me in person, just send me a message in my inbox and I will collaborate.
I am a CTC Wings pilot that failed.
What do I mean by that? I completed the course and I did not get a job offer after two years. Moreover, I was invited to just one assessment, in which I ever got a response. More details later.
Yes, after spending 100k pounds and a couple of years of my life in it, my outcome was very unhappy. I was just diagnosed with chronic depression,which also means i won’t renew my medical. Besides the drugs, my doctor told me journaling could be an efficient treatment to cure my disease. That’s why I am writing here. It is not my intention to help anyone here - although I believe it could - nor to blames on the school. I just want to help myself and I hope, therefore, that my story is published at the forum.
Now to the real deal: if I could start it over, I would have not started at CTC. I would have learned to fly first, get a PPL, and then start applying at airline programs. You see, once you are at CTC you should be prepared for a constant battery of tests, which comes to what could review the course in one sentence to me:
CTC will never help you. CTC will just assess you.
If you are already a very good pilot, coming from the military or with a good PPL i your pocket, go for it. The training standards here are no better than any other school. For all my colleagues with flight experience, CTC was a walk in the park, perhaps with the stress of needing to performing close to perfection at the ground school tests.
So why is CTC so successful if their training is mediocre? Well, again that comes to the second sentence of the mantra:
CTC will never help you. CTC will just assess you.
CTC does asses you all the time: class after class, flight after flight. Airlines love to see those reports. It is much easier for them to choose from a pile of candidates from CTC than a pile of candidates from other schools. If you read a report from CTC, you will always find a grade and a bunch of generic terms to fill out the blanks: „Situational Awareness“, „Selective Attention“ are a couple of examples.
What the national carrier wants to see is basically: passing everything first time (first series does not count), 95% or better performance at ground school, zero extra hours and exceptional non technical skills. Plus, good grades at school.
What the big low-cost carriers want to see: passing everything first time, maybe one first-series is fine, 85% or better performance at ground school - maybe one test failed is fine, no more than 10 extra hours and a good report from school.
The very worst low-cost carrier (that one with the extinct type-fleet) will pretty much assess anyone from the holding pool interested in paying their expensive TR and for all the costs of a very disorganized and expensive assessment.
My results: Ground school passed everything first time, 92%, first series CPL, first time IR, 13 extra hours, horrible report written by the school.
You see, I just had the chance to be assessed by that last airline. I had to pay for my sim session to apply, plus hotel, flight and everything else. They pretty much call you some days before the assessment, so you can’t even find a cheap flight to go to their assessment (hold on two days). The sim did not even work. I never got any response or feedback. I have asked for my money back. The airline got mad at me and the school kicked me out of the holding pool. Or, in better words, got rid of me.
More to come later...