Can CTC McAlpine provide ALL airline pilots?

[Bodie]

Hello folks

As a wannabe I often read that its going to get tougher and tougher to get a job with the airlines. It's pretty bleak at times. Many people suggest with companies such as CTC McAlpine, the modular wannabe is going to find it even harder.

My question is this: with the expected growth in air travel in the coming years (and I really do hope it will boom) can CTC McAlpine and their ilk really provide every airline with pilots they need?

[Go-Around]

I don't think that CTC McAlpine can provide all airlines with all pilots, but what it can do is provide them at comparitively low cost.
What do you think the low-cost operators will go for?

[Splat]

GA,

What can be cheaper than a self improver, self funded, who pays for their own type rating?

I'm starting to wonder if all this boils down to the ability to select the so called right people. There are plenty in the above category out there to choose from.

My four cents worth

Splat

[JOSHUA]

No. I believe smaller airlines will always seek to recruit self funded, self improver guys, we just need some movement in the employment market before this happens to any extent again.

[Go-Around]

I think that airlines wouldn't be too keen to take the "risk" of employing a self-funded modular, self-funded type rated guy or girl when they could take a CTC cadet.
That's not my view, and I don't think that's how it should work.

CTC-McAlpine takes the risk out. Trains them, type rates them, and if Easy or JMC don't like the end product then no deal. It does make good business sense, as frustrating as it is.

[El Thermidor]

CTC may take the risk out, but it isn't altruism. It costs the airlines to "buy" cadets from CTC.

By selecting CTC grads, Easy et al are getting pilots who are bonded to them for seven years. Now that's a long time, and will hopefully take us out of the current employer shortage. I get the impression that, should the majors expand, there'll be the oft-mentioned "hoover effect", and quite a few of the LCO boys and girls will be off. Which means more recruiting. Tying people in will help insulate them from having a whole bunch of new (to the ailine) pilots who don't know the system, and allows the LCO to get their money's worth.

I'm not saying this is the major effect, but is gotta be at least a beneficial side-effect.

On the plus side, CTC won't supply all pilots. There will always be room for the self-improver, as ther will always be recruiters who were self-improvers.

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

I get the impression that, should the majors expand, there'll be the oft-mentioned "hoover effect", and quite a few of the LCO boys and girls will be off

easyJet and Ryanair *are* some of the majors these days. BA will need to recruit but leaving another airline to go to the bottom of BA's seniority list is not a route I can see great swells of pilots following.

I think the CTC scheme is symptomatic of the streamlining that has occurred in industry over the last decade. There simply aren't the staff to organise and run an in house selection process for significant numbers of FO's. Like many HR functions if it can be outsourced it will be. Which is what CTC is doing - providing a specialist HR service to airlines.

Also there are far more people out there looking for jobs these days.

WWW

[millerscourt]

WWW Whats wrong with the old fashioned method of a 5 minute interview with the Chief Pilot and the a quick telephone call to the CP of new pilot's present company and the job is yours.

Have things improved with Personnel now called HR getting into the act with all their weird and wonderful tests etc etc?? None of which any of us who have been around for a few years have ever taken ,yet alone those in management positions.

[scroggs]

The evidence from the DFOs of a reasonable selection of UK airlines suggests that there will be around 400 posts annually for new pilots over the next couple of years. That's not a lot, really, but it's far more than CTC-McAlpine can produce. However, factor in OAT, Cabair, BAe and others, and those numbers are quite easily provided by the major schools. Unfortunately, considerably more than 400 fATPLs will graduate annually from all schools combined, so - as has traditionally been the case - many will be disappointed.

Scroggs
Virgin/Wannabes Moderator
[email protected]