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-   -   BEA / BOAC Training 1960's - 1970's (https://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/343720-bea-boac-training-1960s-1970s.html)

blind pew 19th Oct 2018 18:26

Deferred ATPL
 
That only started with the third or fourth course that started in 1970..prior to that we had to do the whole lot bar air law again.
in BEA there was a small chop rate on initial type course on the non Hamble guys around my time whereas the Hamble guys got through.. part of it was the higher chop rate at Hamble and the older age of the university graduates who generally didn't go through Hamble.
I will add, which I believe is relevent, is that BEA believed everyone could be a captain on any aircraft with the result that we had a few blokes you wouldn't trust to fly you family with.
I met a pilot in postmans park in the city a couple of years ago having recognised his flight bag..when I mentioned my genisis his reply " another Hamble mafia" wrt many of the management jobs that our lot got. Not always the best place for some of us..

Meikleour 21st Oct 2018 16:28

Chris Scott,
I was on one of the BEA/BOAC graduate courses at Oxford in 1970. We did indeed cover the full ATPL but did not get any credit for it. If you recall, one had to have a certain minimum hours to apply to sit the exams which came after about two years on the line. One could then be a SCPL ie. able to command an aircraft up to about Viscount size but more importantly enabling one to progress to full F/O. The full ATPL was issued with more flying time and NO practIcall test!
My course ran a 20% chop rate and many on the course were exUAS hence 100+ hours previous experience. No graduates failed airline conversion despite blind pews assertions as to our dottering older age!

Base training on Vanguards was extensive probably due to the many deficiencies of the sim. I truly believe that the older style of training produced a more confident pilot however money versus risk will always trump. I feel sorry for the new modern captain who may have to learn that simulator fidelity is not always good!!
But, as they say - for me, the war is over.

Airclues 21st Oct 2018 17:07


One wonders what the reaction of today's ba beancounters would be to the concept of training their own pilots on an 18-month course!

And what would their reaction be to the amount of base training. After the two weeks and forty landings mentioned in my post number 3 we were issued with a "landing card" which allowed you to fly a sector by day only, when flying with a training captain. It took a further three visits to either Shannon or Bedford to be issued with an unrestricted landing card. Add to that the cost of training all of your pilots to navigate (the full Flight Navigators Licence) and taking them off line during the nav training.

The beancounters must have had heart attacks.

blind pew 21st Oct 2018 18:03

meiklieour
 
perhaps you would remember one of your lot who got chopped and joined Cambrian iirc got a command and jumped several years up the seniority list..although it could have just been the FO date which is what the common seniority was based on and took us 4 years.
I was lucky transferring onto the VC10 as I got from the outset a full landing card and P1 in my license. I cocked up my final check whilst flying or rather spending most of the trip on the karsi with salmonella poisoning and after waiting more than a month for the local public health authorities to give me clearance to go back to work I was given an aircraft out of base to go and have an hours circuit bashing at Stansted. Unfortunately the ex hamster instructor wasnt a lot of cop as he didnt realise my problem..the iron duck trimming system trimmed the stick into the neutral, central position unlike anything else I had flown. Eventually twigged doing a night approach into Beirut on a chop flight. never looked back after that

Meikleour 21st Oct 2018 22:19

Blind Pew,
If "by one of my lot" you mean one out of 350 graduate entry cadets - then, no I do not remember him!
what I do remember is the shameful manoeuvring by BALPA over the creation of the common seniority list in order to place everyone from the old BOAC list above my course - ironic since my course had been allotted to BOAC and then stood down and placed with BEA.
After leaving the corporations I flew with many of the exBOAC old guard. And enjoyed their company!

Airclues 22nd Oct 2018 06:10


what I do remember is the shameful manoeuvring by BALPA over the creation of the common seniority list in order to place everyone from the old BOAC list above my course
I find this very hard to believe. I have in front of me the entire BA/BCAL joint seniority list which was produced on 8th January 1988. If you PM me the DOJ of your course, I will see if any BOAC pilots went ahead of your course. The list is 39 pages long so I haven't checked it all, but from what I can see it was done on date of joining for the BEA/BOAC pilots.

EDIT;

Meikleor

From your other posts I assume that your course joined in 1971. I have checked the list for 1971 and the seniority was done strictly on date of joining. If you want to give me your email address (by PM) I can scan and send you the pages. It is sad if you've been labouring under a misapprehension for all these years.

blind pew 22nd Oct 2018 11:38

Airclues Meikleour is correct although you have the wrong dates.
 
It was the joint seniority list made at the creation of BA in 76?
My course which joined around the time the vanguard made a smoking hole near Ghent was the first course after the last Hamble/Oxford/Perth cadet joined BOAC, which was supposed to be the demarcation line for cross bidding. Unfortunately our BALPA rep was as desperate as a lot of others to leave BEA which had a dreadful accident rate and changed the date by two years so that he got onto the jumbo. There was a proviso that no BEA copilot would be senior to any BOAC pilot..iirc wrt to bid lists.
The guy did me a favour as I got the iron duck.
It wasn't unknown of BALPA REPs as we had a famous scumbag who sold us out after papa India and the next day joined management ..known by the bomber boys as that #### ####ing..inventor of the silent cockpit.
I had two of my course mates, one chopped and the second ex court line, victims of BALPA and the Dan Air merger which was to be done on seniority but at the last minute was done on those on the bus. One lost one won.

Airclues 22nd Oct 2018 12:48

blind pew

You are talking about the temporary implementation period for bidding onto the 747. Once that period ended it was a free bid using their joint BA seniority. I trained many of these (captains and co-pilots) and they joined the fleet with their BA seniority based on DOJ. The list that I have was sent to everybody when we merged with BCAL. However the ex BEA and ex BOAC pilots are mixed and their position is based purely on DOJ.

blind pew 22nd Oct 2018 15:57

actually bidding on all fleets
 
remember the list going up ..48 pilots from BEA to be allowed to go to BOAC. vacancies 747, 707 and VC10..I bid for all three although I really only wanted a yank ship to get overseas as BEA looked down their noses at BOAC. I figured it couldn't be as bad as us as we had lost eight aircraft in my six years ..BOAC NIL although a few close shaves including a banana plantation at night.
Everyone had the same thought.
There had been a bid list for droop snoop but the amount of conversion failures, lack of flying and that it was apparently known as the masons fleet put paid to even applying.
With the threat of the duck being grounded towards the end of 78 and sending us back to the flat earth society I set about applying to uncle Tom et al. took the first one..nearly quit that one for CX and then offered sultan of oman but it's bad enough being Johnnie foreigner in Europe and as for the ex pat scene..

YLpilot 22nd Oct 2018 18:22

YLpilot
 
What was the difference between BOAC & BEA and what company was more preferable for students.

blind pew 22nd Oct 2018 23:17

Everything but nothing for students
 
Route network,aircraft, rosters time into rhs, time to command,pay, handling, concessions, time away,reserve duty having an engineer and in my time respect and professionalism.
.
After landing drinks different too; champers cocktail to be consumed after shutdown or brown milk whilst taxying.

Crumpet was the same and down the route antics just as naughty.

Course no different and only around graduation did you discover whether you got your wish. My course was offered Court line with a gratuity of £600 and no need to pay £1000 back towards training costs; which was a massive financial incentive then although when Court went bust one of my mates ended up working on a farm. Those that took it initially were viewed with suspicion but soon proved themselves and were far better off in many ways although they lost the quodos of being able to say that they were a Nigel at dinner parties (mixed blessing).

YLpilot 25th Oct 2018 06:18

As I understood Hamble was much more preferable to study, or after graduation from Oxford & Perth also it was possible to work for BOAC or BEA.

YLpilot 25th Oct 2018 09:25

Why and when European, American, etc. flight training become so compressed such as 18-24 months ?
I learned my PPL in Latvia, so most of my flight instructors were trained in soviet civil aviation schools, where training was a litle bit shorter, than 3 years
and flight time before graduation was only 100 hours.

blind pew 26th Oct 2018 04:35

It was all "new" at the time YL
 
Hamble was airwork services training until 1960 and prior to that the base of the ATA during the war who ferried the aircraft. The corporations realised that they needed differently trained pilots than those available from the military who had a diabolical accident rate and the 700 hour improver route.
It wasn't just flying training but also training young gentlemen managers as the responsibilities of airline captains (and their skills) were very different to today. Oxford and Perth were commercial operations which took on the overspill and as such didn't have the same level of financial commitment as Hamble. Their graduates were just as good imho although as Hamble catered for mostly grammar school boys I have the feeling that we were hungrier and more malleable which is what an employer wants. We put up with more of the bull****. But in the 70s BEA was haemorrhaging pilots.
100 hours! The Lane inquiry criticised our 225 hours as being too low. Nowadays 160 hours and no twin solo is deemed acceptable ( which doesn't include spinning). Of course we have a level of automatics, serviceability and information that was unheard of 50 years ago but when you look at Air France 447 you can see how horribly wrong it can go when you dont have crew with the required professionalism.

YLpilot 20th Jan 2019 20:12

In good old times ATPL exams also were as a Multiple Choice Questions ?
Many Thanks

Meikleour 20th Jan 2019 21:55

Definitely no multiple choice exams in the '70s ATPLs. All essay type answers or calculations shown type answers.

blind pew 20th Jan 2019 22:17

Standards
 
Twenty years after I graduated from Hamble I decided I would get a FAA ATP.
I had the FAA question answer book air freighted over and read through it whilst doing a 5 day short haul rotation then flew over to Vegas with my family. The book covered flight dispatcher, helicopter, jet and piston aircraft but didn't differentiate between syllabus. Pass mark was 70% and I got 96% which shows how high Hambles standard was. Eight days after arriving I had a multi engine FAA ATP.

YLpilot 21st Jan 2019 16:34

British aviation training always was great & superior
___
In `70s in Great Britain also was possible to learn ATPL via modular or integrated path ?
It was also recognisable in other european countries ?

Thank You, Sir

YLpilot 22nd Mar 2019 21:45

May I ask
 
There were any system prior to JAA or EASA in Europe in 1960s -1970s for recognition of pilots licences, or UK CAA CPL was valid only in Britain, French in France, German in Germany & etc. ?

blind pew 22nd Mar 2019 22:14

Swiss
 
Don't know the answer bar with the Swiss who needed special permission to recruit foreigners. The luftampt accepted SCPL and Atpl subject to a swissair course that included air law which opened my eyes as different to the UK law. (Germany and Switzerland mixed VFR and IFR traffic in controlled airspace which the Brits didn't nor did my old opos know).
At the time 23% of Swissair pilots were foreigners, mainly German and Dutch.
Crossair established their base in Basel Mulhause which was in three countries amd enabled to recruit worldwide including Russians which led to one total loss through misreading the artificial horizon (they indicated in a different sense).


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