PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - A Vain? Hope
Thread: A Vain? Hope
View Single Post
Old 26th Aug 2003, 01:45
  #2 (permalink)  
Obs cop
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Midlands
Age: 50
Posts: 395
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
This is probably gonna sound really harsh, but from my experience at least it is realistic.

The old style of sponsorships are now very rare, but in any case the entry requirements are quite restrictive. The most restrictive part for you or I is age.

Most if not all required applicants to be no more than 28 years of age. A couple of the less well known ones would consider up to 31 years, but at 33 years old, I feel you could be unlucky. From memory, the following did offer sponsorships over the last year:

Britannia, Easyjet, Air Atlantique.

There are no doubt more, but at 29 years I was too old for all of them!

Gapan do a sponsorship for PPL training, and I don't know what the age limit is. At least that could be considered for furthering your training. The applications for this are usually around spring time and your current efforts would go some way to demonstrating your desire. A search on the internet should turn up their site.

Even if you were 18 you could spend years trying to get sponsored and never quite getting there. I fear you need to jump on the same boat as I have and figure out personal finances to pay for training.

The big players OAT, Cabair and now CTC Macalpine all provide limited help in sourcing some of the £55k to £70k needed for their courses, but all borrowed by yourself with the risk to yourself. Certainly it is worth having a chat with them to see what your options are.

Going by the modular route can lower costs to £25k if you search around. Less money to find but I would suggest a lower risk and thus more likely to achieve.

Practicalities are that the airlines are less willing to spend vast sums of money running sponsorship schemes at the moment. With the glut of people willing to pay £70k and then buy their own type rating, nobody said it would be easy. It has taken me 10 years to get enough money to train (Re-mortgage!) but even then I still need to find a bit more. The hurdles may seem impossibly high, but they can be jumped even without sponsorship.

Obs cop
Obs cop is offline