why are people paying so much to fly?

[easilyjetting]

I hear of First Officers with £120 000 of debt from becoming a pilot but I do not understand why. Somebody is fleecing them.
Not long ago the full course at Prestwick was £60000! I myself paid about £28000 to get qualified and it was roughly as below
ppl in USA £2000
150 hours USA approx £5000, BCPL approx 1000, ground exaqms for atpl appros 1500, bcpl to cpl/Ir upgrade £18000, twin rating, £1000.
Some of these training organisations are making a fortune and it seems the airlines are also making money out of employees wishes to fly planes. I would say to anyone wanting to become a pilot, go the independant route and save yourself a fortune.

[v6g]

Simple. It's an arms race where the only way to 'compete' is by how much debt you're prepared to take on.

[Bealzebub]

You may well save yourself a fortune, but then what?

There is a massive groundswell of misconception that all you have to do is somehow aquire the necessary paperwork and a couple of hundred hours, and you are suddenly fodder for the clamour of hungry airlines.

That isn't true, and never was! A rapidly growing number of companies are seeking to reduce their operating costs by recruiting low hour pilots into the right hand seat. However most of the companies that do this do so from training organisations with whom they have an affiliation programme. That enables them to achieve their objective and still keep control of the input requirement. The quality training programmes tend to gear their courses not simply towards licence aquisition, but also to the whole airline environment. The training places constant and significant emphasis on CRM aspects and modern Standard Operating Procedures likely to be found in their clients businesses. This results in the low hour First Officer bringing something significantly beneficial to the airline beyond simply 200 hours and enthusiasm.

I have seen this for the last 12 years, and there is simply no getting away from (for want of a better phrase) the quality of the product. That isn't to say that low hour pilots who "self structured" are any less enthusiastic or determined, but the same quality is a much more hit and miss affair, when the same lack of experience is coupled with a less structured and specifically relevant training regime. That may not be what some people will want to hear, but time and time again it is borne out.

The job market has been either flat or in decline for some time now, which tends to mask the significance of my point, but when it starts moving again airlines will increasingly input this sector of their ab-initio requirement from those training organisations on whose product they can rely, and whom they are increasingly contracted with.

[clanger32]

Beazlebub,
That's two posts of yours in the last two threads I've read that have left me feeling a little bit "hurrah" inside. I vey much don't agree with Ll hour posts or opinions but on this topic and the Thomas cook one, I doff my cap to you.

To the op, I'm qualified, low hours and have been sitting on my blue book for coming on two years now. I'm fortunate, I had a very well paid fallback plan and took no debt whatsoever to get there, but people are paying to fly because - in my opinion - of two things. Nowadays, I would seriously think that the average modular budget must be fifty, integrated courses (the prestwick equivalents) costing more than £70 grand. Couple this with the airlines desire to earn revenue- or at least reduce the cost of the rhs and it becomes obvious that the "old" way is dead or dying. Hell, there are plenty of flyne pilots complaining that noons now will give turboprop jocks he opportunity to move up to the jet jobs anymore. Therefore you have a situation whereby the would be pilots are in up to their eyeballs anyway and cannot afford to do the old style FI or banner towing jobs ( if there were any available that is!) their only hope of return on investment is the jet jobs longer term. Draw your own conclusion as to what sorry state of affairs led to the situation where pay to fly was financially a better option than going instructing, but there you have it.

[michael95u]

The price is the price the market will bear. If people are willing to pay a high price, the price will stay high. Take ATP Flight School in the US as an example. In the peak of pilot hiring from 2005-2008, their price went up to at least $60,000.00. Now it is back down to $48,000.00. If there were people willing to pay $60,000, then they would not have lowered the price. So part of the problem is the uneducated potential students who fall for the marketing trap of a lot of the flight schools and end up paying more than they had to for a mediocre product.

The other thing students need to understand is just because the price is high does not mean the flight school is "fleecing" the students. I can tell you that most flight schools operate on ridiculously low margins. 10-25% margins are typical profit margins. That is pretty bad, especially when there is no volume (ie little to no flight students).

[dogmaster]

training became more expensive because of:

-they use DA40 instead of old C152
-insurance went up
-less students after 9/11
-maintenance went up (high tech plane cost more to maintain)
-many crooks in this business
-P2F students willing to prostitute themselves.

[Muddy Boots]

Let's go back to the original post for a minute.

British Aerospace flying school at Prestwick closed in the 90's and moved to Jerez to become FTE.

Secondly, the CAA examiner fees are more than some of the prices being nostalgically quoted.

What time and space continuum are you from?

[Mikehotel152]

People get pretty fed up paying for an often clapped out C152. It may have fresh lipstick but it is still a C152.


:eek: Bananas! Best plane to train on in my opinion. I love 'em but they do drink AVGAS.

But yeah, £120,000 is ludicrous. It's so unnecessary too. I went modular and my total training costs including rip-off B738 type rating were half that. And judging by the intake at my airline, going integrated gives you absolutely no advantage.

I agree with Clanger32 and Sky Captain, and only disagree with Bealzebub in so far as he seems to place emphasis on the necessity of tie-ups between airlines and their source of cadets due to training standards and emphasis on airline requirements.

Personally, I think (and I am biased!) that flight training up to CPL/IR can be fairly generic, provided it's to a high standard, and that the best candidates will adapt quickly to the airline environment and SOPs at the MCC stage.

The current fashion is to leap into a DA40 for initial flight training and a DA42 Twinstar for the IR. I don't think it's necessary. If anything, I think raw handling should be taught in rickety old taildraggers and the IR should be done in a 30 year old Seneca! :)

The need to be familiar with glass cockpits is an overblown gimmic in my opinion. An airline glass cockpit is intentionally designed to be so simple and intuitive that you don't need prior experience. After all, you'll get enough of that on a Type Rating course. But I do accept that all new pilots look enviously at glossy brochures showing fancy aircraft. :)

I say all this with hindsight, of course, and I'm not denying that I was excited about flying the Twinstar on my IR! Nice plane...but is it necessary?

[goaround737]

I dont know anyone who :mad: £120,000 of their own money on flight training, but conversely i know quite a few who parted with £120k of mum and dad's. Generally the ones that were paying for it themselves were a little more switched on over costs.

As long as their are silver-spooners with limitless cash being thrown at them, no questions asked, there will be an FTO waiting to scoop it all up. providing them with type ratings, P2f deals and other :mad: that will help them "complete your initial career goal of getting hired by an airline most economical, professional...."

blah blah blah...