Folks, I've been reading through the aerlingus website. Am I missing something? It doesn't specifically say that the flight training will be fully funded as it has been in previous years? Can anyone confirm?
I believe that last year they made it clear that future schemes would be fully funded unless otherwise stated, or something to that effect. They've stated this year that they are funding living expenses, why would they fund living expenses if they weren't going to fund the rest of the programme? In short, it appears to be very, very good.
If you can afford an Airbus A320, why can't you afford 150k for the pilot to go with it? The answer is that you can, but you can cut costs because people are willing to pay to get into flying. So it must be hard for one airline to be the one that starts funding cadetships because presumably that makes you marginally less competitive against your peers. Unfortunate knock-on is that us lot have to be 'dedicated' and suck it up...
You don't have to "suck it up", you can simply apply for the programmes which offer full funding and this programme would appear to be one of those. Remember, the last time BA ran the FPP, they didn't fill their ninety-something spaces despite having thousands of applicants. That's how high the bar is, if the airlines can't fill their quotas, they'll have to offer better terms.
A Merchant Navy "Sponsoring Company" wouldn't charge you six figures to be a Deck/Engineering Officer, they'd pay you. Train Operating Companies have been known to experience hundreds of applicants per Driver's job, they don't charge you to be a Train Driver, again they pay you. Why should it be any different to become a First Officer for an airline?