I want figures!!!!!!!!!!!

[Tarmach]

This business about CAP509ers is starting to bore. However, seeing we are all stabbing in the dark about how CAP509ers fair in the employment market, surely wouldn't it be much better if the intergrated schools or the CAA published actual employment figures. These could detail how many graduates gained airline employment within the first 12 months!

Likewise the modular schools could do the same. If these figures are not available, which I believe is the case, it may prove that the intergrated schools may be hiding something about employment. Usually from what I've heard, these schools give a load of qualitative bulls@it out by saying 'many of our students find airline employment after the first year'. What does this mean exactly, many of the few perhaps??

I would not dream of sending my kids- (if or when I have some) to a fee-paying school without knowing how many reach University and also from University to well paid jobs.

I really think though the CAA should be responsible for this. They are the ones who 'invented' the CAP509 course therefore they should still be monitoring its performance in the new millennium. Simply listening to some old farts who run airlines requesting CAP509ers simply doesnt work!

[window-seat]

Hi Tarmach,

This is the question i Have been asking myself for the past six months. I only know two pilots, a Cap. for JMC (757) who walked straight into the job from the RAF, and a f/o for Easyjet, who went modular over several years.

Even-though they have got there in completely different ways, they both recommended that I went Integrated if I had the choice. (not everyone has the choice I know).

Just for comparison, my PPL instructor and examinar both suggested that I should go Modular, (and cut my teeth properly)!

At the end of the day, I believe that if you can't for whatever reason (money, family etc) go full-time, then go Modular rather than go nowhere!

If however you are lucky enough to have the 45-50K avaliable, and the time to do it, then go Integrated, as this is what i recon a full-time modular course will end up costing you anyway!

I don't belive that Integrated training makes you a better pilot than your modular counter-part, but I certainly doesn't appear to do your future any harm.

It all comes down to your individual circumstances:- age, money, location, responsibilities, aspirations and of course.....at the end of the day WHO YOU KNOW!

Sorry not much in the way of figures was there!
;)

[scroggs]

Good point, Tarmach. It's not the CAA's job to monitor pilot employment, just to regulate our whole lives! I wonder if BALPA has any figures on this? Might be worth giving them a call - I'd be very interested to hear the result!

[wysiwyg]

99% of the people you ask will tell you to go through the route that they went through, so I'm afraid the only right solution for you can be decided by you.

regards
wizzy

[Harry Wragg]

Just reading this thread reminds of the vexation felt as I tried to find the magic formula. Unfortunately the CAP509 course provides you with the basic qualification to get an airline job. However, the market dictates the current minimum requirements.

What makes it so frustrating is that the goalposts are liable to move. This is something that will happen throughout your career. First you need to get a job, usually on a turboprop, but you need 1000 hours, then you try to move to a jet, but you need 500 jet (type rating prefered), then you need wide body experience to go longhaul,and so it goes on until you get all of the aforementioned, by then of course you are too old to get any job. C'est la vie.

Anyway, the figures quoted by the schools include all those sponsored by an airline so it tends to give an optimistic picture.

However, since I completed my CAP 509 course in 1991, just in time for the worst recession in aviation, everyone that I knew then now has an airline job.

And the magic formula, perseverance, and a little bit of luck. A bit like life really.

Harry

p.s. I know , or know of, CAP509ers in every airline in the UK, myself include. Hope that removes some of the doubt, keep trying.