Becoming a FTE

[Genghis the Engineer]

I think that the point of TPS, for FTEs who are already graduate engineers, is that it gets them experienced in flight test very quickly, and thus deemed employable. It's not the only route but, if somebody will pay for it, it's the fastest route.

I've trained up other people, mostly in a university environment, in flight testing, who have gone on to do pretty well careerwise in flight testing (and still are). But it didn't necessarily happen as fast as the very intense, and relatively broad, training of a Test Pilot School.

Without doubt, significant time actually in a flight test department, starting as the junior bod assisting much more experienced people, then progressing to direct control of programmes in your own right, is the classical route and works well. It's just that getting that first job as the FT department graduate tea-boy, is incredibly difficult.

Ultimately the more real world flight test experience you have, the more employable you are as an FTE. It really is that straightforward. But, TPS is regarded as accelerated real world experience, not "school" like most degree courses are. A PhD is a halfway house - time in the lab / computer room is mostly "school", but the handful of us who did our PhDs in a real flight test environment, that's "real world" in much the same way as TPS is: close enough to count in employability.

But whilst all TPSs are inhabited by proper grown up flight testers, only a tiny number of PhD supervisors and/or their students would similarly qualify. Mucking around with an aeroplane, whilst supervised by an aerodynamicist with no FT background will probably do your career more harm than good.

G