Is education required to get a job with major airlines

[don2105]

Hi everyone I've got a small question, do u need any education requirements to get a job as a pilot with the major airlines like say Cathay Pacific or is it all just about the flying experience and the amount of flight hours u have.
Thanks

[Clare Prop]

Having enough education to be able to spell the word "you" would be a good start but I suspect a wind up here :rolleyes:

[Ultralights]

2 things, spelling, yes, and education, and the most important is... $$

[nitpicker330]

They say if you have to ask how much then you can't afford it.

Same applies regarding education I would have thought!!

[Captain Dart]

You won't get a job with Cathay Pacific with 'zero flight time', i.e. cadet, unless you have a 'Permanent Hong Kong ID Card' (long term resident).

Having said that, from my experience, most military and airline pilots do their jobs very well using just the three times table and 'fifth form' physics. The 'degree' courses are a rip-off and a waste of time. There is no substitute for commitment and experience, although conditions in the airline industry have deteriorated so much over the quarter-century I have been in it, 'commitment' is a big ask. Consider a more lucrative career, and either 'sport' or private flying.

A healthy survival instinct, communication skills and attention to detail are also an advantage.

And for Chrissake don't use Gen Y 'textspeak' in your job applications or CV. It's bad enough in PPRuNE posts.

[4Greens]

An aviation degree will put you further to the front of the queue.

[27/09]

An aviation degree will put you further to the front of the queue.

Which queue? The Far Queue? :E:E:E:E

[Hugh Jarse]

An aviation degree will put you further to the front of the queue.
Can't speak for Cathay, but for any airline in Australia - no, it will not. An aviation degree in itself proves little. You need to get through the S&P (if applicable), the interview and the sim before your aviation degree will help you.

If it came down to the wire, having a degree might gain a slight advantage, but my choice would be the candidate with the better manipulative and interpersonal skills over the degree every time.

However, I agree with whoever wrote the answer about Gen Y text language. Your app would go straight in the bin (or 'trash', if it were an online app). You wouldn't even get an S&P with written skills like that :)

[Ultralights]

An aviation degree is an easy way to get into the course when you dont have the marks to get into straight away, finish aviation degree, then go on to others such as, law, medicine, geology, economics etc etc etc

thats all its good for.

[Captain Dart]

If you have one, it hasn't been good for your punctuation skills.

[Ultralights]

punctuation comes with final proof reading, spell checking and ensuring conformity with form before submission. something thats hard to do on a pad. :ok:

[Jack Ranga]

It's not that hard :ok:

[Ultralights]

ok, more to the point, i dont really care for punctuation when on the interwebnets.

[Mach E Avelli]

Look at it from the recruiters' angle. Let's say they have 500 applicants and 20 vacancies. Of the best 100 candidates, hours, age, ATPL subjects passed, unrestricted medical etc puts them all about equal. The shrinks have a look inside their heads to decide who to pass on to the simulator guys. Say 75 are left. The simulator sorts out those with two left feet. Of the original 500, now 50 are left.

25 of those 50 have tertiary qualifications and 25 have basic high school. The final interview ties up a couple of very busy and highly-paid senior management pilots for 45 minutes per candidate.

Who do you think gets invited to the final interview for those 20 jobs?

[Sunfish]

Too weeks ago I cudnt spel ayrlin pilut, now i are wun.

[Captain Dart]

Of the 480 unsuccessful candidates, those who have completed an aviation degree course have wasted an awful lot of time and money, have missed out on lots of experience and hours, which also may have jeopardised their chances, and the degree providers are laughing all the way to the bank. It's all a bit of a gamble.

For information, Cathay Pacific Airways takes anyone for the ab initio course who has the above-mentioned HK Permanent ID Card, a pulse, English (of a sort), and a degree: in anything.

Someone I know spent years doing an aviation degree, flying out of airports in the SYD-MEL-BNE triangle, and wouldn't go 'up north'. He got interviewed when the majors were recruiting, and he is now... a school teacher.

[Mach E Avelli]

I don't think very many here suggested an aviation degree. Did I? The op asked if education was relevant to getting into airlines. Yes it is.

[Hempy]

Sunfish, Wot uh grate countree!!

[outnabout]

The ability to read and write is helpful in any career.

Grammar, punctuation, syntax, are going the way of dinosaurs (sadly).

Sunfish, :D

(I is a pillott. No. I are a pylot. No. I fly planes. :ok: )

[Jack Ranga]

Just say I as an aviation employer was browsing these threads whilst taking a 10 minute breather. If I saw this thread and the thread started by gearupandorrf I know who I'd employ to represent my company.

[27/09]

Grammar, punctuation, syntax, are going the way of dinosaurs (sadly).

To some extent I agree. However there has to be at least a few people who can get their grammar, punctuation and syntax right otherwise there'll be no SOPS and manuals worth having.

[Sunfish]

If you don't have the grammar, then your chances of correctly construing instructions in a manual are zero....

As in "Press any key".............. Where is the "any" key?

[The Green Goblin]

I have never been asked about tertiary qualifications in any job as a Pilot.

It was always hours, experience and flying assessments. The psychometric and behavioural style interviews came into play for large domestic airlines.

In fact I was never asked to provide anything from high school either. I always provided high school results in CVs, but were never asked about it. I know a couple of airlines require it (Qantas, Skywest) but I never interviewed with them.

Theoretically you could leave high school in year 10, pass your CPL and ATPL subjects and become an airline Pilot easily in this country.

An aviation degree is a waste of space. If you want a degree, get something useful as a back up (accounting, IT, or even law would be handy these days if you aspire to pilot councils and representing pilot groups).

GG

[Mach E Avelli]

Although I got into airlines over 45 years ago with nothing more than 1500 hours, three years of high school education and a few ATPL subjects already passed, I really think times have changed.

The equipment, for a start, is less hands-on. Back then if your first airline aircraft was to be a DC3, some tailwheel time was more highly regarded than a Leaving Certificate. As long as your math was good enough to pass navigation and flight planning, and your written English good enough to describe various meteorological situations to the satisfaction of the examining board, that was about all the formal education needed.

Now, I expect that computer literacy would rate highly, although if recruiting was left up to me I would rather see a good aviation-associated technical trade qualification. An avionics LAME ticket perhaps.

But someone who can't string a sentence together in reasonably-correct English won't get through the door because first impressions DO count. And having got through the door, most substantial airlines will use something like the process of elimination I described earlier. Why? Because a) it's easy to do and b) because it's their train set, so they can.

Today, someone with the basic education that I had - i.e. three years of highschool - and someone with no willingness to self-improve via study courses, TAFE etc would probably be limited to a flying career of cattle mustering or scenic flights. They might just make some second level turbo-prop operation but even the RFDS would probably overlook someone lacking a good education - again because they can afford to be picky. Sorry to sound negative towards the OP, but if he/she did drop out of the education system too early, it needs to be said that self-improvement WILL be required to succeed, regardless of whether 'education' is really relevant to actually being able to fly an aeroplane.

[VH-FTS]

To some extent I agree. However there has to be at least a few people who can get their grammar, punctuation and syntax right otherwise there'll be no SOPS and manuals worth having.

The ironic thing is how many times do you see "SOPs" written as "SOP's" in SOPs?

[Animalclub]

Grammar, punctuation, syntax, are going the way of dinosaurs (sadly).
Sadly so is torking proplee if TV noos reeders and reporters r yor gide.

[The Green Goblin]

Language is fluid and if modern usage dictates how language will evolve, expect no grammer and many abbreviations.

If you went back to English speakers 500 years ago, you'd probably have a hard time understanding them. :hmm: