So, worzel, just why then do the JAA/CAA allow airlines and TRTO’s to provide such training ? - remembering that, ultimately, it is government agencies who license such training to take place – Just what is it they know which you, and IFALPA et al, don’t ?
Indeed one would suggest that it’s common knowledge that various airlines, e.g. BA and others, have, for years, recruited people with little or no experience, put them through a
very expensive ‘approved / CAP509’ cadet training course, subsequently leading to these people being granted a jet aircraft type rating, so allowing them to occupy the right hand seat of even the largest wide body jet airliners – all of this being allowed, by the CAA/JAA, when these new pilots actually have very ( and I mean ‘very’ ) little real aeronautical experience behind them.
Indeed, do I correctly understand what IFALPA ( and you, through your post ) are saying, i.e. that the chap from IFALPA’s implied suggestion being that nobody who is short of several thousand hours of experience should be allowed to pilot a public transport jet aircraft – regardless of how they arrived at the type-rating, be it either airline or self sponsored ?
Or is it that the
‘troubling practice’, referred to above, is that if an airline pays for all of a ‘new’ pilots training then that makes it alright, but if an individual was to front-up the exact same amount of money, and go on to gain the exact same type-rating, through an exact same airline / TRTO – i.e. as an ‘non-airline sponsored’ pilot - then for some strange reason the self-sponsored person should not be seen as being of the same calibre as the person for whom an airline paid for it ?
Well, right oh then, I’ve got it – if it’s a level playing field we’re after we’ll follow the American airline employment version shall we ? I.e. there should be no more self-sponsored type ratings, and also no more airline sponsored type ratings ( unless you’ve got, say, 3000 factored hours total time ), and nobody should be allowed to co-pilot an airliner with less than, say, 3000 hours TT ?!
Personally, I think it’s a great idea – indeed the last person I want to go to work with on some dark and stormy night is some low hour Johnny Come Lately Ace of The Bloomin’ Base; Yep, from now on I’ll only accept folks with a few thousand hours under their belt !
Joking aside, one would imagine that any TRTO's reputation and business longevity, much depends upon them making sure that their training standards require and maintain the Zenith, rather than being linked to the size of a students bank balance.
Certainly w.r.t to the title of this thread, it strikes me, from the literature I've read regarding how the Bond Aviation course is structured, along with its associated pre-course assessments, that Bond have indeed thought through how to provide a qulity training product ( as indeed have the other TRTO's mentioned by Crashdive above ) and they do seem to be quite careful to ensure that only those people who 'have what it takes' to become airline pilots are allowed onto their type-rating course.
In closure, I would like to say that I'm with WWW on this and find it hard to support and promote self-funded type ratings - but for those people for whom it seems to work I must also say, good luck to them !