Examination Attendence, Future Jobs????

[variablepitch]

Hi All,

I, like many others, will soon be in the boat of having a nice shiny frozen ATPL with no hours (worth mentioning!). Like every one of us who probably asks "remind me again why am i spending £35k" i contemplate my chances of getting a job and how long it may take.

I have now had the pleasure\misfortune of attending two exam sittings, one at Gatwick and one at Silsoe and i was genuinely surprised how busy they were......

There is obviously the old argument of people re-taking exams bolstering numbers etc etc, however something hit me. Communications IFR\VFR i think most would agree, are universally accepted as easy papers to pass - not saying its impossible to fail but the national average is typically 95%ish that pass the paper from memory?

I had a quick skim of the exam list at both sittings and there were around 45 people booked in at each exam - lets minus 5 for a retake so call it 40. There are, to my knowledge, 5 test centres in the UK and i am presuming that they are all relatively similar in size? This means, based on 12 exam sittings per year there are about 2400 people every year trying to gain an ATPL.

I, like many others, am primarily interested in airline work for better or worse. Although i am sure quite a few of these will be looking for instructor work and maybe 10% helicopter, this still leaves a large number - close to 2000 anyway.

My point being, things appear to be looking up but by this much??? I could be wrong and maybe exams have always been this way and lots of people simply end up running out of time\money\hope but it would be interesting to hear a few thoughts.

Cheers

[aces low]

VP
I am not sure it is quite as bad as you make out. I reckon that the number of people (successfully) taking the ATPLs each year is probably nearer 1000....and less CPL/IRs issued. I doubt there has ever been a year when there has been 750 jobs on offer, so each year the base of unemployed CPL/IRs increases....especially in the years of poor recruitment (2001-2003). So on paper it all looks pretty bleak.

However, not all the eager beavers manage to sustain their enthusiasm or stay afloat financially...so inevitably there is a drop out as sensible people go and get a proper job....some never to return.

The moral of this story is don't start if you are not prepared to risk being skint for years with lots of debt hanging over your head. My own theory is that the jobs go to the lucky and/or the persistant.....but it is seriously difficult to be persistant when there are so many knock backs.

I am now a CPL IR MCC and FI with over 1000 hours and some turboprop time as a pilot assistant on AOC charters, and it is 3 years since I completed my last ATPL exam. No sniff of a job/interview so far, but the longer I hang around, the more people I meet and the more I understand the lottery. Like many of the good friends I have met since starting down this track, I live in hope and persistance. ....and best of luck to all those hanging on in quiet desperation...

[Northern Highflyer]

I have just returned from my exam sitting at Silsoe where the numbers changed with each exam.

The quietest one had around 20 people sitting the paper whereas the busiest one had around 50. I am assuming this large fluctuation is due to resits and/or the way the groundschools structure their courses.

[RowleyUK]

But Silsoe and Oxford are usually the busiest.

The time when i sat my exams this time last year, there was alot at Silsoe but my friend,who sat in Glasgow, reported that there were no more than ten people for each exam!!

Then again i sat my first lot Jul 02 when the Cabair sponsored students were doing their exams. We were at Shuttleworth college and there was well over 100 people in the room at that time!! :eek:

[152wiseguy]

No worries I sat some exams in Glasgow with only five of us in the room. Also no doubt some of the guys sitting exams in Oxford or Silsoe are airline sponsored students from foreign airlines who will most likely not be competing for jobs in the UK.

[My names Turkish]

I was banished to Glasgow for my sins: Having anything to do with useless CAA bureaucrats. How they can have three exam halls in London full is quite exceptional even for them. Why didnt they get their arse in gear and source more capacity.

I wondered too about the amount of people doing exams. As has been mentioned, some months it can be fairly quiet, like this month in Glasgow. The reason for this is that schools dont put students in for exams every month. So there are months where all the big schools enter students for exams and they are very busy. A friend of mine did some in Gatwick in January and it was almost empty.