City&Guilds certificate

[GroupWatcher]

Howdy,

could anybody give me some information whether it is worth to try for the City and Guilds certification?

Also would be wondering if anybody has some experience - good or bad - with a company called Avtech 2000 and offering distance study programmes. Is it worth the money they are asking for it?

Is there any other way to achieve this certification? How does it compare to e.g. the proposed course by the Uni of Glasgow?

Thanks and brgds

GW

[no sig]

GroupWatcher

The City and Guilds course is reasonable and both the Aviation Studies and Operations/Dispatch are the basis of our Company training at the moment. They are C&G accredited which is a recognised vocational qualification. AVTECH, provide a correspondence course, ask around and form your own opinion.

My Company will be moving over to the Glasgow College of Nautical Studies course in September who are a JAROPS approved ATPL college. They will be providing a correspondence course to the ICAO Flight Operations Officer/Aircraft Dispatcher Licence syllabus ICAO Dco7192 D3. This course is in fact, what we should have been doing all along in this Country. It is very close to the ATPL studies in many areas and is of course the international standard. It is, in my view, superior to the C&G course by a long way.

As I have mentioned before on this forum, the CAA issued a FODCOM last year which notified carriers that they are considering adopting the above ICAO syllabus as the training standard for UK operations officers in the near future, hence our move to the ICAO standard.

My recommendation is to wait and do the ICAO FOO licence course in September.

[AndyDRHuddleston]

Can anybody point me in the direction of the AVTECH website address??

Thnks

ADRH:)

[The - Elite]

www.avtech2000.co.uk (http://www.avtech2000.co.uk)

:D

[GroupWatcher]

Thanks for the response no sig. Would you happen to know somebody who dealt with Avtech or has done one of their courses?

Thanks
GW

[Cris L]

Just your opinions please ? I am curious.

Thanks

[FOMere2eternity]

I started the C&G 7282 Aviation Studies and lost sight along the way.

Although this might sound contradictory, I got the impression it was either too simple, or too obscure, with no middle ground. For example, listing the characteristics required when building a new airfield - they wanted stuff like 'flat ground', 'prevailing wind for runway direction' - I guess if you're a beginner it's handy, but I'm not and neither am I Wimpey !

When they mailed me a model of a 757 and a tape with ATC chatter on it, my alarm bells started ringing. When I got to the jet engine stuff, whilst on the periphery of the job, they went too in depth I think. Just my opinion.

One thing that annoyed me was the condescending way they marked the course work too. It's fairly trivial, but they wouldn't just put 'correct' or 'incorrect' - they insisted on putting standard one-liners like 'that's correct Peter - have another banana' type comments. To me, it smacked of NVQ-itis - a tick in the box but a waste of time.

I didn't go on to the Despatchers stuff, as that was £500 more and I was put of by the Aviation Studies bit. If you haven't done any Ops type stuff before you may find it, at best, interesting, but in practical terms you wouldn't get much cred with it I don't think. I know a few people who did it too and they didn't appear to have any doors opened by doing it. The CAA thing mentioned in an earlier post seems much more like the way ahead.

The only other thing I'll add, in case you're an ab-initio, is Ops Despatcher type stuff is often hard to quantify with a wide-ranging course. Certainly in the military all you do is a basic course then a load of on-the-job training. Now, here's a thought - I know the Royal Auxiliary Air Force now train Flight Ops Assistants at weekends. You actually get paid to learn and get a grounding in Ops that you could use as a basis for future civvy employment. No guarantees of course, but if you want to know what Ops is about, this could be an opening. The certificate at the end doesn't count for anything in civvy street (as usual !) but it will save you going to Monarch and asking what Ops is in the interview ! It's fundamentally the same but they make money !
:rolleyes:

[no sig]

As mentioned in my first post, the AVTECH course is left wanting in many areas, but in my expereince it has value and at least I know if someone pitches up looking for a job and has completed both certificates, that that individual has,

1. An interest in learning the basics of his trade

2. Has been exposed to most of the flight ops subjects. However, the ICAO FOO/Dispatcher syllabus is much more comprehensive, goes into the appropriate level of knowledge required, and is an ICAO standard. The FAA licence is of course the other route, but is naturally focused on FAR and US met, the ICAO course is international.

[GroupWatcher]

Thanks no sig et al,

interesting comments. I already have the FAA ticket, but was wondering about exposure to a more European oriented curriculum.

Brgds
GW

[EAZYCHICK]

Having done the AVTECH 2000 I did find there were a lot of errors and more experienced personnel than I found a whole treasure chest of mistakes that devalued the effort we were putting in. Think it's ok if you're looking for the basics but got to say, not the best course in the world! Someone else said it smacked of NVQ. Don't believe this has any value out in the real world.

[walla]

mmm who could this be, ct or ck ?:) :)

[HODGY]

Did anyone know that Jeppesen now do either a 5 day ops refresher or 6 week course in crawley.

Dont know how much it costs but it looks ok, info on their website.

Cheers