Originally Posted by
truckflyer
"So no, enrolling on a stupid expensive training course is not pay-to-fly. "
If it was really that simple!
But somebody needs to put their business goggles on here, unfortunately most pilot's are not business men/women, and the above comment is at best very naive!
I guess a full transparency in who get's what in the +£100.000 training is missing here, and why should they provide this.
Now as I am a business man (not me, but somebody who wants to make this business) , and not a "pilot" , I know there is a negative Stigma with P2F, so how can I camouflage my true intentions?
First I have an agreement with a training establishment, or I create one of those myself, then I have an agreement with an airline, where I will produce X amount of pilot's for them, at satisfactory standard for this airline.
There is a chance that the airline will pay me "finders" fee for every employee I provide them, or there is a chance that I pay them a certain amount to take my professionals.
This does depend on my business model, do I want to sell training with "guaranteed jobs" - regardless I do guarantee that I will provide X amount of newly trained professionals, and I do guarantee how much they will be paid.
Now I can calculate their training salary into the cost of my training.
As an example, I have a company where the average pay for Profession X is £2000 a month, however I will also provide you training so you are qualified for this Profession X, so I charge you £100.000 for the training.
However the training real cost price is only £40.000 because I have a good deal with training providers, as I provide them a stable amount of students every year. Now since I provide them 100 students every year, they give me the training cost at a discounted rate.
So in this case my profit seems to be £60.000 each student, however of this I might decide to use £24.000 for the first year as "pay" with the airline I have an agreement with. However the newly trained professional is not aware that I am actually using his OWN money to pay him his first year of salary.
In my example here the cost would be £66.000, and my profit would still be a staggering £34.000
If somebody can go privately modular and get their training done for £50.000, it will be possible to get each student average cost price much lower then this, if I provide a 20 integrated students to a much more cost efficient and cost conscious course.
So I do believe many of these courses that are provided with airline "job" is hidden P2F. It's obvious as the last I heard somebody paid 320 rating was £38.000 with an airline, while you can get this rating for around 18.000 Euros.
So yes for me this is the same as P2F, however your invoice does not read that you are paying for X amount of hours, but your own money is what is the basis for your pay.
This is very common practice in many other business, disguise the details of what the customer is actually paying for.
From a business aspect, the actual cost of an integrated pilot course should be less then a modular course