Oxford Lose B.A I.R Contract

[jarjam]

Hi All,. . Just heard A whisper that OAT have lost the contract for finishing the B.A. Cadet scheme I.R's. Not sure what the state of play is at KID but I've heard nasty stories about poor A/C availability and people not flying for weeks on end.. .I also heard that Bristol Flying Centre have picked up the afor-mentioned contract, can anybody confirm this?. .Perish the thought chaps,. .I mean the CREAM of the integrated students finishing their training at a MODULAR school, every one knows MODULAR is inferior(isn't it).. . There was a time when I wondered if I should have spent the extra Dollars and gone to OAT, but not any more. BFC did me just fine.

"I may not be a Scholar but I can fly like an Eagle whenever the feeling invites me."

Flare God Dam-It, I Have Control!

[EGCC4284]

As far as I am concerned, school such as the one mentioned above are only as good as the instructor sat next to you. <img src="cool.gif" border="0">

[Rowley]

Here, Here EGCC!

I had a revalidation at the oldest flying school in britain this weekend! It prob cost me 1/2 of what it would at Oxford. Believe me, i have never had such a good laugh in a PA28 in all my flying history!

[Hand Solo]

Slighty snobbish initial posting! In my experience most BA cadets really couldn't care less where they go for their IRT, just as long as they pass and avoid getting the chop from their course.

[The Potter]

Great news to hear that Bristol has taken over the BA contract. A really good bunch of people with excellent instructors who, unlike the so-called "Approved" schools, haven't got their heads stuck up their own arses.

Good luck, Bristol, but please don't relegate the self-sponsored student to the gutter in favour of the more lucrative contract as so many of your inferior competitors have done. Keep your prices within reason (there are enough rip off merchants out there) & keep on churning out good I.R candidates from all back grounds.

Once again, Well Done.

[jarjam]

Sorry if my initial post was snobbish, I dont think it was. Wasn't meant to be a dig at B.A cadets, I have several friends who have been through the sponsorship scheme.. .What I do hope happens is that by BFC getting the B.A contract that it may help to shatter the notion that an INTEGRATED frozen ATPL is somehow better than a MODULAR one. After all gone are the days of 509 and Self Improvers!. .Regardless of training we all have to do the same exams and flight tests.

[Polar_stereographic]

I wonder (purely speculitivly(?) mind you) if this is a sign that BA are starting to reel in the rope, and look at more cost efective solutions. First step is to negotiate a better price rather than go with the default big players.

And, to follow on with that, I wonder if they will look more closely at those with the tickets, self funded, rather than shell out a small fortune funding new guys and gals through it. Must be a few around that meet the bill, if there where 180 that applied to the Astraeus scheme. I bet there are plenty out there who don't read the Pprune ontop of that.

BA have a lot of saving to make, and whilst I'm no authority on the subject, logic somewhere tells me where they can put a few savings in. I know we have been here before and I've been shot down for suggesting it (and my spling), but I remain to be convinced that they will not look at ways of saving money, accross the board.

PS

[Hand Solo]

I think BA will continue sourcing most of their cadets from their own funded scheme in the future for several reasons. Firstly, it doesn't really cost them that much because they recover most of the costs from cadets salaries anyway. Secondly, it allows them to choose the kind of people they want to employ and then train them as pilots, rather than trying to find the type of people they want from the relatively small pool of qualified pilots. Thirdly, by sponsoring cadets they can monitor them at every stage of the training and boot people early if they're not showing promise. With the self sponsored guys its not really possible to hire on the basis of a check flight in the sim, which was the basic ability test for DEPS. If occasionally somebody slips through the net it can get very expensive if they have to be booted after getting a type rating and going to base training three times.

[Polar_stereographic]

Hand Solo,

I hear what you are saying, and can't really disagree with it, however, I wonder if looking at it from a beancounters (that I am not btw) point of view in a time when the company undoubtedly will be looking for savings accross the board the arguments will still hold up?

Much as I've heard the arguments many times before, for the life of me I cannot make the figures stack up. If you can select the right person (yes, I know it's an IF) with CPL/IR (MCC) in hand, surely the only cost is that of a type rating plus base training. But, you'd have that cost with your cadets as well, but before they got there, you's have shelled out goodness know what up front. Sure you can right it off, and might get it back with a reduced salary over the next x years, but the problem for the company presumably is short term cash flows, and whereas the self improver may prove more risky, it does require less cash up front.

Am I being a bit dim, or am I missing the point here? Someone enlighten me.

PS

[MJR]

If this is true I can imagine that booking IR training time at Bristol, Cardiff, Filton etc is goin to become increasingly more difficult.

[Pandora]

Polar Stereo,

here are the numbers Hand Solo was hinting at:

CEP starting salary = £22000 yr1. .DEP starting salary = £33000 yr1

CEPs also have £3000 each year for the 1st 5 years taken from their salary to contribute towards training costs.

BA negotiate a hugely reduced price for the ab initio course at OATS, I don't know what it is exactly but I heard a figure of £38000 per cadet. If you are a self sponsored Oxford student you will know this is far less than the price they are charging you.

So the CEP has paid back £15000 out of their own money, and has an £11000 lower starting salary than a DEP. BA has clawed back £26000 of the £38000 Oats course in the first year. It takes 7 years for a CEP to climb onto the same pay scale as the DEP and I think I am probably right in thinking that over years 2-6 the total difference in pay is enough to cover not only the OATS course but the MCC/JOC training as well.

BA in the past have had problems with inexperienced DEPs. This is not to say they are all bad, just enough to make BA interested in retaining the ability to weed out undesirables sooner rather than later.

It is possible to enter the company as a self sponsored CEP but of the 4 people I know who have done it straight out of OATS, not one of them averaged less than 95% in ALL their exams, frequently scoring 100% in things like Nav and Instruments, and they all passed the 6 flying exams first time with a score of 1 or 2. That is much more than BA requires of its' own cadets at OATS, and much more than most of them did score. Even so, these SS CEPs still have to pass all of the same interviews that the CEPs take, including the psychometric tests. There is also still an age limit of 30 (but I have it on good authority that this has recently become a bit more flexible). They make very good pilots but unfortunately are like gold dust.

So in the meantime, BA will continue to take a mix of CEPs and experienced DEPs, as the cost difference is not that great - they just don't want another retirement bulge in 25 years or so time, and the rare occasional CEP might just make it.

[Cypres]

This thread discusses 'Undesirables' slipping through the net and ending up with a CPL/IR in their sticky mitts.. .Just what is it about these rascals which makes them undesirable?. .I'm not being pedantic here, all I'm after is a clue about some possible flaws within an individuals attributes which would get them all the way through to Base training only to be chopped at the last hurdle.

Cheers. .Cypres

[Pandora]

They are perfectly capable of flying an aircraft, but you are only allowed to fail command developement courses so many times....

[Cypres]

Pandora,

you can't just leave it there - can you expand a little on your last posting please.

Cypres

[greengage22]

CAVOK My ARSE has got only half the facts. Sorry to spoil a good story with the boring old truth, but here goes anyway.

Oxford have NOT lost the "BA Contract". Since Sep 11, BA have discontinued cadet training but, up till then, they sent cadets to 3 separate schools - the three they considered the best. These were Oxford, Jerez, and West Michigan University. All 3 gave groundschool and flying leading to a frozen ATPL.

JAA regulations require the IRT to be carried out in a JAA country. No problem for Oxford or Jerez. But WMU used to sub-contract the last phase of IR flying to a UK-based suv-contractor to get the IRT done.

Until recently, the sub-contractor to WMU was Oxford. WMU have now placed that small part of their course with BFC.

This is not necessarily any reflection on Oxford, though it may be - I don't know - you'd have to ask the management of WMU for their reasons. It might simply be that they made a commercial decision that it was a bit daft giving trade to a business rival in the same contract - there would be a conflict of interests.

Once you see the whole picture, and see how small this tiny bit of final testing is compared to the whole of the fATPL syllabus, you realise the emphasis of this story is a bit distorted. Oxford have not lost a "BA contract" - they still do the IFR flying for their BA students. What they have "lost" is the sub-contract to WMU, which is not a BA matter at all. There is no evidence that BA are in any way dissatisfied with Oxford.

Greengage22

[presbycusis]

OK - happy to corroborate what Greengage22 just said - the man speaks the truth, it's only WMU who have switched to BFC. I would have made that statement myself at the beginning of the thread but I just got fascinated by the way the initial rumour got turned into fact and lead to the related discussions. I was just curious as to how long it would be before someone came out and put the facts straight <img src="rolleyes.gif" border="0">

[ 13 February 2002: Message edited by: presbycusis ]</p>

[greengage22]

So are you saying, presbycusis, that you are CAVOK MY ARSE? And that you deliberatly started a false rumour to see how well it would travel?

And that you are happy to discredit a respectable FTO just for fun? Even after Sep 11, when anybody in this business needs his job deperately, whether pilot, engineer, cabin crew, or instructor?

What kind of a guy are you? You are playing God with peoples' livelihoods. It's not funny.

Greengage22

[presbycusis]

Don't be an arse greengage - no I am not CAVOK My ARSE and what you say about peoples jobs etc. was exactly my point. I was being cynical, learn to recognise such things! <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

[Pandora]

Cypres,

every FO at BA has to attend a number of command developement course to assess their suitability for command. Noone looks at how you joined the company - it is judged purely on your performance on these courses (well of course if you stuffed an aircraft into the ground or something they do have a look at that). If you repeatedly fail, your file is marked as unsuitable for command. BA requires all of its pilots to be suitable for command (Captains for the Future and all that), so when it got quite a few of the C grade pilots it looked at where they were coming from. They were mostly low hours DEPs. Now if it is going to recruit a low hours DEP they have to fulfill all of the criteria that a CEP fulfills. And there just aren't that many people out there with a frozen ATPL who didn't apply to BA before spending their own cash.

[Polar_stereographic]

Pandora/Hand Solo,

Thanks for the replies. I consider myself numericaly enlightened with the figures. I sort of see where BA are comming from on this.

With regard to the problems that they have had in the past with DEP's, surely this is more of a recruiting problem than anything else, where they have failed to select suitable candidates. If BA's experience where to be spread industry wide, every player would only ever select CEP's. Clearly not an option for all. Other's have made the DEP process work.

I agree that when looking for CEP's, there will always be a much larger pool to choose from. If memory serves me right, last time they advertised they had over 20,000 applications. Clearly, you will never get that many DEP's comming forward. I guess, given time and money, eventualy just about every one is capable of getting the required paperwork together, which clearly does not say much for DEP's applicants quality. But I maintain, that's the job of selection because I would suggest that the majority are up to the job, not the minority.

Thanks again for the replies. Only time will tell if BA's approach changes on this one.

PS

[MagCheck]

I just have a small point and question to chuck into this topic.

Does the fact that WMU have changed from OATS to Bristol have anything to do with the below national average first time IR pass that OATS has?? I just ask as it may be relevant to people who are looking to start their training.

[greengage22]

Yes, but don't forget that the national average includes ex-miltary and also experienced pilots with established foreign licences who simply need a conversion and those who are experienced, but have let their licences lapse.

There is a heck of a difference between an ex-Tornado pilot with 2000 hours doing a civil rating at anither college and an ab initio with 150 hours on Warriors and Senecas doing it at Oxford.

Oxford only deal with ab initios. You're not comparing like with like.

[presbycusis]

You're right in saying that a "national" average is really fairly meaningless, but you're off the mark when you say that WMU moved elsewhere because of pass rates compared to such an average - they did not. There were other issues involved which started the whole process.

[jarjam]

Well didnt I open a can of worms.. .I think Greengauge22 needs to simmer slightly, I can tell you that myself and Presbycusis are indeed seperate people and did not start this thread to have a go at OAT. . .Lots of valuable input added to this topic, All I was after was conformation of a rumour, I think Greengauge got a bit carried away harping on about SEPT11!. .Cheers Chaps.