Ralph Wiggum
1st Jan 2001, 20:57
Dear All,
A very Happy New Year to all PPRuNers. As it is the New Year and I await the crisping up of my lunch in the oven I thought that I would take a gander through the Wannabes forum and archive. From the postings I see many topics on British Airways and Aer Lingus but not so many (if any) on the other airlines which offer sponsorships. Therefore I aim now to lift the lid on the Cabair schemes and hope that where I have gaps others will fill in, and where there are airlines I know nothing about (Airtours, klmUK) again others will oblige!
The Cabair group was started many moons ago and has now grown to become a large flight training organisation based mostly around London. Several airfields provide aspiring aviators with Private Pilot License training and ratings on both rotary and fixed wing aircraft. To find out more about the company and what it could offer you, check out the brand spanking new web site at www.cabair.com (http://www.cabair.com)
I shall focus however on the Cabair College of Air Training (CCAT) which is based away from London at Cranfield Airport, midway between Bedford and Milton Keynes.
Cranfield is an ex-RAF airfield with runways, buildings and hangers as per usual. The site now has no military presence but is home to the CCAT and a division of Cranfield University-the Cranfield College of Aeronautics. For anyone interested in its history, Cranfield is a major design and testing institution and indeed houses Frank Whittle's legendary first engine! Many private owners base their aeroplanes at Cranfield and it would not be a surprise to see Cessnas and Pipers alongisde Jet Provosts and even a fast taxying Lightning T5. The old Officers' Mess has become Mitchell Hall where many students and student pilots reside. All in all the campus is remote (RAF built remember) but still alright. It has an on-site bank, bookshop, newsagent, general store, hairdresser, petrol station and several bars.
The CCAT sits next to the Air Traffic Control tower. The college provides ab initio training (for those with no flying experience) to aspiring pilots who are either paying their own way or being partly sponsored by an airline, such as British European, Air 2000, klmUK) The College has a fleet of Grumman aircraft and some others and will provide you with a Frozen JAA ATPL (Airline Transport Pilot's License) after about a year or so..give or take for Bedfordshire weather.
Sponsorship schemes with Cabair are not nearly as big as say BM, BA or Aer Lingus but they exist nonetheless. Each sponsoring airline typically funds one scheme a year (again due to fluctuation with recessions etc) Costs vary and are a little higher than the company cares to admit on the website. For example, the Air 2000 cadet contribution (which you would have to pay upfront) this year is in the region of £23k and the British European one is £33k. These values are for the Cadet Schemes (not Instructor schemes which I shall come to later) and do, at the end of the day, almost guarantee you a First Officer job and a type rating. People have argued that you are almost better paying your own way completely but I disagree with this. Cabair's service also includes accomodation and food...not bad!
The cadet schemes are for candidates who have little or no flying experience (yes from 0 hours to PPL and 100 hours etc) but who have the drive and dedication to succeed. Obviously with the airlines putting up a wad of cash for your training they are asking you for a five year contract and hopefully a lot more years of flying as well.
Briefly, Cabair also offers a different type of sponsorship scheme (involving in the past British European and klmUK) by which when you arrive at Cabair for training you must already have 180 hours of flying, a PPL and a Night Rating. The CCAT provides you with the neccesary training on the ground and in the air to get you to JAA CPL (Commercial Pilot's License) standard. Once you have achieved this you start a 2-year contract with Cabair as a flying instructor. This could be at any of their airfields but it involves you building up hours, scrimping and saving for a while and then going back to CCAT for a little further training before joining your airline. It's a system that provides airlines with slightly more experienced pilots and also provides Cabair with instructors who will definitely stay for 2 years and not swan off to an airline if they get a job. Instructing is hard work and for some is something that just needs to be done but for others is very rewarding. I remember the expression on my brand new instructor's face when I passed my PPL Skills Test in minimum hours, first time..he was very proud!
Anyway, the cadet schemes are advertised both on the Cabair website and in major flying publications. To be honest I think that if you only buy one flying mag, it has to be Flight International. It is the industry standard providing up to date news, commentary and all the jobs and sponsorships as they come up. If you take out a subscription it will save you money and to be honest..you could be reading it for years until that one little brightly coloured box appears!!
Cadet schemes have four selection stages. the first is the standard Cabair application form. The whole front page is taken up with your name and address and your parents occupations (although this seems a little bizarre and a bit of a waste of space it is the same for all Cabair airline schemes.) Inside the form (which is a simple A3 sheet folded in half) are small boxes in which you have to input attractive information about yourself. Obviously your academic qualifications are required as is your employment history and your flying hours (if any).
Other boxes ask about professional courses you have attended, societies you have been a member of, what your hobbies are and, at the end, what your motivation to be a pilot is. Best advice is to photocopy the form several times and practise filling it in until you have neat, well written and succint responses which fill the boxes well but do not look cramped or stretched to fill the space. Obviously, ensure there are no lies and that your spelling and handwriting are 100%!! At the end you need to provide two people who will write a reference for you and vouch that you are a generally well rounded, amicable young girl or guy who would make a cracking airline pilot. Think VERY carefully before you choose your referees and obviously ask them BEFORE you write them down. You cannot use family members and your best bets are reponsible professionals (teachers, tutors, professors, police, airlines etc...the kind of people you would get to sign your passport photographs) Also make sure that they have known you for a while and could actually say something about you should a reference be requested. It is all very well if you are friendly with the local Mayor..but if you only met him over a cress sandwich at last weeks' village tea party he won't really have much to say about you, or be able to vouch for you over ssay the last 5 years!
So, after a few passport sized pictures have been taken, and you pritt-stick them to your form (make sure they won't fall off) you can send off your form to the poor sponsorship secretary who is dealing with hundreds if not over a thousand very similar forms. In time you will hear back from the CCAT and if you are successful you will be invited to Cranfield for aptitude testing.
Cabair's aptitude tests are very different to some other organisations in that there are two stages. For the first one (called Stage 2..Stage 1 being the application form) you are invited to the Cranfield Library where, with your many fellow suited counterparts, you are ushered into a lecture theatre and you answer several photocopied question papers. Some questions are general arithmetic, others GCSE/Standard Grade maths which you should be able to complete in the allotted time. Areas, percentages, equations etc etc are all asked and you should revise all your maths to get it back up to speed for these. Further questions about maths are read out to you (what is 45% of 170) etc and another paper involves mechanical questions. These are different to others in that they look like the multi-choice questions you get in school exams. There are the usual cogs and wheel questions, but also others about pressures, shapes, volumes and circuits. Best revise GCSE and other level Physics for these ones. Further read-out questions involve your usage of data sheets which are provided to you. Some questions ask you to calculate cross wind components from wind diagrams and others ask you to calculate the missing number using take-off and landing data sheets (ie, if the temperature is 2º at 2000' elevation at what weight will you need 198m ground roll for a Cessna 152) If you have no idea what I am talking about then I suggest you try and get hold of some data sheets like these from a local flying club and you get someone to explain how they are used. Often the Cabair questions are not neatly presented on the sheets (ie they tell you an altitude of 3000' when only data for 2000' and 4000' is given...obviously in this case you need to find an average)
So, once you have sweated a few buckets and had your free can of coke and biscuit you are free to go. Almost everyone wears a suit to this day but there are so many people there that the staff cannot identify you all individually...wear smart but COMFORTABLE I guess..no point wearing a really starchy shirt straight out the packet when you find that it is itchy and really annoying (oops...)!!
If you are successul at this stage you will be invited back to Cranfield for Stage 3 of the testing. This involves you reporting to the CCAT in the morning for a day of testing and a short interview with college staff. Typically about 1000 people apply for a sponsorship scheme, with 200 invited for testing and then 30 invited for Stage 3.
In the morning of Stage 3 you sit what is called the Morrisby test. This is a series of tests which analyse how you think in a variety of areas. You have to work out orders of shapes, draw simple pictures, analyse shapes, join dots, write with your 'wrong' hand, answer lots more mechanical questions, do English grammer and language tests etc etc...all against the clock. Some of the tests seem very strange but they are all there for a reason. I suggest that if you can afford to you buy books by the publisher Kogan Page. They sell books about Career, Aptitude and Selection tests and some of their examples are very similar to the real Morrisby ones.
After lunch you will have an interview with the Head of Training at CCAT and the College General Manager. Usually this will be largely informal where they will check your credentials and qualifications and ask you questions about why you want to be a pilot and what you know about the airline and flying in general. Be honest, be yourself and KNOW YOUR STUFF! Make sure that you revise your application form and can expand on any answer you gave then or suddenly blurt out in the heat of the moment. You may well have in their a pilot from the airline who will ask you piloty questions but don't worry, the interview is not mailicious more of a formality and a chance to see who you are (most people at this stage could probably fly the planes and pass the course but they want to see if you've got Captaincy in you and could sit next to your older Captain all the way to barbados and get on well...obviously if you fart and slag old pilots all the way through the interview they may not look too kindly upon you...) Oh yes, they'll also check that you've got the cash should you get the job!
Also at some point during the day you will be usherd into the Computer aptitude testing room. These tests are conducted on old PCs and are done with two candidates at a time.
There are several simple tests:
1) You have a crosshair on the screen mimicking an ILS indicator (Instrument Landing System) The crosshair moves randomly about the screen and using the stick for vertical movement and rudder pedals for horizontal movement you have to keep the crosshair as near to the centre of the screen as possible. You get to practice and then get three shots at it for real. The aim is for you to get better at it as you go along. You will know if you do because you will be scored.
2) The next test involves images of a man holding circles and squares in his hands. These images are rotated and flipped over and through headphones you will be given a statement which you must assess as true or false and whether it is true for left or right..so you might hear "Left sqaure positive" If there IS a square in the left hand, you push the yes button, and vice versa. Again lots of shots at this.
3) Next you have 2 images per screen divided up by many random lines. You are shown a shape and asked if the shape is present in its entirety within either of the images. This one is against the clock so it is a case of being quick, but accurate.
4) Lastly you have to fly an aircraft through a series of squares which appear on the screen in a long curvy pattern. Again you use the joystick and pedals to fly through the squares which go all over the place like the Nintendo game (X-wing or something like that)
So, after all this you are released back into the open and off to a nail biting few days until you hear if you have been selected for the final board. Roughly 1 in 3 at Stage 3 progress to Stage 4 which is an extended interview with your respective airline, usually at their headquarters. For these you need to know all your airline facts, technical stuff, your application form inside out etc etc etc..basically learn as much as you have time for.
So, ladies and gentlemen..there you have it. With weary fingers and having stopped for my dinner in the middle of this post I bid you adieu and I send best wishes to all who grace Cranfield with their presence in the near future.
Any updates or corrections can be e-mailed to me and I shall edit the post. Hopefully it will end up in the Wannabes archive to serve you all for years to come.
I hope that 2001 brings many jobs and dreams come true. Your best New Year's resolution can be..this will be the year and I shall not give up until I get it!
As Buzz Lightyear put it so eloqently (!?) Reach for the Sky..it's all there if you work hard enough.
Good Luck and have a very Happy New Year!
Ralph Wiggum :)
A very Happy New Year to all PPRuNers. As it is the New Year and I await the crisping up of my lunch in the oven I thought that I would take a gander through the Wannabes forum and archive. From the postings I see many topics on British Airways and Aer Lingus but not so many (if any) on the other airlines which offer sponsorships. Therefore I aim now to lift the lid on the Cabair schemes and hope that where I have gaps others will fill in, and where there are airlines I know nothing about (Airtours, klmUK) again others will oblige!
The Cabair group was started many moons ago and has now grown to become a large flight training organisation based mostly around London. Several airfields provide aspiring aviators with Private Pilot License training and ratings on both rotary and fixed wing aircraft. To find out more about the company and what it could offer you, check out the brand spanking new web site at www.cabair.com (http://www.cabair.com)
I shall focus however on the Cabair College of Air Training (CCAT) which is based away from London at Cranfield Airport, midway between Bedford and Milton Keynes.
Cranfield is an ex-RAF airfield with runways, buildings and hangers as per usual. The site now has no military presence but is home to the CCAT and a division of Cranfield University-the Cranfield College of Aeronautics. For anyone interested in its history, Cranfield is a major design and testing institution and indeed houses Frank Whittle's legendary first engine! Many private owners base their aeroplanes at Cranfield and it would not be a surprise to see Cessnas and Pipers alongisde Jet Provosts and even a fast taxying Lightning T5. The old Officers' Mess has become Mitchell Hall where many students and student pilots reside. All in all the campus is remote (RAF built remember) but still alright. It has an on-site bank, bookshop, newsagent, general store, hairdresser, petrol station and several bars.
The CCAT sits next to the Air Traffic Control tower. The college provides ab initio training (for those with no flying experience) to aspiring pilots who are either paying their own way or being partly sponsored by an airline, such as British European, Air 2000, klmUK) The College has a fleet of Grumman aircraft and some others and will provide you with a Frozen JAA ATPL (Airline Transport Pilot's License) after about a year or so..give or take for Bedfordshire weather.
Sponsorship schemes with Cabair are not nearly as big as say BM, BA or Aer Lingus but they exist nonetheless. Each sponsoring airline typically funds one scheme a year (again due to fluctuation with recessions etc) Costs vary and are a little higher than the company cares to admit on the website. For example, the Air 2000 cadet contribution (which you would have to pay upfront) this year is in the region of £23k and the British European one is £33k. These values are for the Cadet Schemes (not Instructor schemes which I shall come to later) and do, at the end of the day, almost guarantee you a First Officer job and a type rating. People have argued that you are almost better paying your own way completely but I disagree with this. Cabair's service also includes accomodation and food...not bad!
The cadet schemes are for candidates who have little or no flying experience (yes from 0 hours to PPL and 100 hours etc) but who have the drive and dedication to succeed. Obviously with the airlines putting up a wad of cash for your training they are asking you for a five year contract and hopefully a lot more years of flying as well.
Briefly, Cabair also offers a different type of sponsorship scheme (involving in the past British European and klmUK) by which when you arrive at Cabair for training you must already have 180 hours of flying, a PPL and a Night Rating. The CCAT provides you with the neccesary training on the ground and in the air to get you to JAA CPL (Commercial Pilot's License) standard. Once you have achieved this you start a 2-year contract with Cabair as a flying instructor. This could be at any of their airfields but it involves you building up hours, scrimping and saving for a while and then going back to CCAT for a little further training before joining your airline. It's a system that provides airlines with slightly more experienced pilots and also provides Cabair with instructors who will definitely stay for 2 years and not swan off to an airline if they get a job. Instructing is hard work and for some is something that just needs to be done but for others is very rewarding. I remember the expression on my brand new instructor's face when I passed my PPL Skills Test in minimum hours, first time..he was very proud!
Anyway, the cadet schemes are advertised both on the Cabair website and in major flying publications. To be honest I think that if you only buy one flying mag, it has to be Flight International. It is the industry standard providing up to date news, commentary and all the jobs and sponsorships as they come up. If you take out a subscription it will save you money and to be honest..you could be reading it for years until that one little brightly coloured box appears!!
Cadet schemes have four selection stages. the first is the standard Cabair application form. The whole front page is taken up with your name and address and your parents occupations (although this seems a little bizarre and a bit of a waste of space it is the same for all Cabair airline schemes.) Inside the form (which is a simple A3 sheet folded in half) are small boxes in which you have to input attractive information about yourself. Obviously your academic qualifications are required as is your employment history and your flying hours (if any).
Other boxes ask about professional courses you have attended, societies you have been a member of, what your hobbies are and, at the end, what your motivation to be a pilot is. Best advice is to photocopy the form several times and practise filling it in until you have neat, well written and succint responses which fill the boxes well but do not look cramped or stretched to fill the space. Obviously, ensure there are no lies and that your spelling and handwriting are 100%!! At the end you need to provide two people who will write a reference for you and vouch that you are a generally well rounded, amicable young girl or guy who would make a cracking airline pilot. Think VERY carefully before you choose your referees and obviously ask them BEFORE you write them down. You cannot use family members and your best bets are reponsible professionals (teachers, tutors, professors, police, airlines etc...the kind of people you would get to sign your passport photographs) Also make sure that they have known you for a while and could actually say something about you should a reference be requested. It is all very well if you are friendly with the local Mayor..but if you only met him over a cress sandwich at last weeks' village tea party he won't really have much to say about you, or be able to vouch for you over ssay the last 5 years!
So, after a few passport sized pictures have been taken, and you pritt-stick them to your form (make sure they won't fall off) you can send off your form to the poor sponsorship secretary who is dealing with hundreds if not over a thousand very similar forms. In time you will hear back from the CCAT and if you are successful you will be invited to Cranfield for aptitude testing.
Cabair's aptitude tests are very different to some other organisations in that there are two stages. For the first one (called Stage 2..Stage 1 being the application form) you are invited to the Cranfield Library where, with your many fellow suited counterparts, you are ushered into a lecture theatre and you answer several photocopied question papers. Some questions are general arithmetic, others GCSE/Standard Grade maths which you should be able to complete in the allotted time. Areas, percentages, equations etc etc are all asked and you should revise all your maths to get it back up to speed for these. Further questions about maths are read out to you (what is 45% of 170) etc and another paper involves mechanical questions. These are different to others in that they look like the multi-choice questions you get in school exams. There are the usual cogs and wheel questions, but also others about pressures, shapes, volumes and circuits. Best revise GCSE and other level Physics for these ones. Further read-out questions involve your usage of data sheets which are provided to you. Some questions ask you to calculate cross wind components from wind diagrams and others ask you to calculate the missing number using take-off and landing data sheets (ie, if the temperature is 2º at 2000' elevation at what weight will you need 198m ground roll for a Cessna 152) If you have no idea what I am talking about then I suggest you try and get hold of some data sheets like these from a local flying club and you get someone to explain how they are used. Often the Cabair questions are not neatly presented on the sheets (ie they tell you an altitude of 3000' when only data for 2000' and 4000' is given...obviously in this case you need to find an average)
So, once you have sweated a few buckets and had your free can of coke and biscuit you are free to go. Almost everyone wears a suit to this day but there are so many people there that the staff cannot identify you all individually...wear smart but COMFORTABLE I guess..no point wearing a really starchy shirt straight out the packet when you find that it is itchy and really annoying (oops...)!!
If you are successul at this stage you will be invited back to Cranfield for Stage 3 of the testing. This involves you reporting to the CCAT in the morning for a day of testing and a short interview with college staff. Typically about 1000 people apply for a sponsorship scheme, with 200 invited for testing and then 30 invited for Stage 3.
In the morning of Stage 3 you sit what is called the Morrisby test. This is a series of tests which analyse how you think in a variety of areas. You have to work out orders of shapes, draw simple pictures, analyse shapes, join dots, write with your 'wrong' hand, answer lots more mechanical questions, do English grammer and language tests etc etc...all against the clock. Some of the tests seem very strange but they are all there for a reason. I suggest that if you can afford to you buy books by the publisher Kogan Page. They sell books about Career, Aptitude and Selection tests and some of their examples are very similar to the real Morrisby ones.
After lunch you will have an interview with the Head of Training at CCAT and the College General Manager. Usually this will be largely informal where they will check your credentials and qualifications and ask you questions about why you want to be a pilot and what you know about the airline and flying in general. Be honest, be yourself and KNOW YOUR STUFF! Make sure that you revise your application form and can expand on any answer you gave then or suddenly blurt out in the heat of the moment. You may well have in their a pilot from the airline who will ask you piloty questions but don't worry, the interview is not mailicious more of a formality and a chance to see who you are (most people at this stage could probably fly the planes and pass the course but they want to see if you've got Captaincy in you and could sit next to your older Captain all the way to barbados and get on well...obviously if you fart and slag old pilots all the way through the interview they may not look too kindly upon you...) Oh yes, they'll also check that you've got the cash should you get the job!
Also at some point during the day you will be usherd into the Computer aptitude testing room. These tests are conducted on old PCs and are done with two candidates at a time.
There are several simple tests:
1) You have a crosshair on the screen mimicking an ILS indicator (Instrument Landing System) The crosshair moves randomly about the screen and using the stick for vertical movement and rudder pedals for horizontal movement you have to keep the crosshair as near to the centre of the screen as possible. You get to practice and then get three shots at it for real. The aim is for you to get better at it as you go along. You will know if you do because you will be scored.
2) The next test involves images of a man holding circles and squares in his hands. These images are rotated and flipped over and through headphones you will be given a statement which you must assess as true or false and whether it is true for left or right..so you might hear "Left sqaure positive" If there IS a square in the left hand, you push the yes button, and vice versa. Again lots of shots at this.
3) Next you have 2 images per screen divided up by many random lines. You are shown a shape and asked if the shape is present in its entirety within either of the images. This one is against the clock so it is a case of being quick, but accurate.
4) Lastly you have to fly an aircraft through a series of squares which appear on the screen in a long curvy pattern. Again you use the joystick and pedals to fly through the squares which go all over the place like the Nintendo game (X-wing or something like that)
So, after all this you are released back into the open and off to a nail biting few days until you hear if you have been selected for the final board. Roughly 1 in 3 at Stage 3 progress to Stage 4 which is an extended interview with your respective airline, usually at their headquarters. For these you need to know all your airline facts, technical stuff, your application form inside out etc etc etc..basically learn as much as you have time for.
So, ladies and gentlemen..there you have it. With weary fingers and having stopped for my dinner in the middle of this post I bid you adieu and I send best wishes to all who grace Cranfield with their presence in the near future.
Any updates or corrections can be e-mailed to me and I shall edit the post. Hopefully it will end up in the Wannabes archive to serve you all for years to come.
I hope that 2001 brings many jobs and dreams come true. Your best New Year's resolution can be..this will be the year and I shall not give up until I get it!
As Buzz Lightyear put it so eloqently (!?) Reach for the Sky..it's all there if you work hard enough.
Good Luck and have a very Happy New Year!
Ralph Wiggum :)