Wee Weasley Welshman

The lax credit bubble that allowed CTC to offer a range of schemes has now gone.

CTC have a number of cadets under training who will soon be, or are, seeking employment.


WWW

xbilz

rik, I will email ctc this week to confirm the date in november. I cannot believe that there is £100 fee for re-assessment. good luck.

EvelcyclopS, rik did not go to stage 3 but he is lucky enough to be called back for re-assessment. Many are not. I myself still confused as to why I have been asked to resit phase-2 just because I failed a group exercise... but never mind. I loathe paying £100 re-assessment fee.

WWW is right with the HSBC loan scheme. I guess it will also effect the number of wings cadets who had hoped to secure this loan as the only funding opportunity for their training. In turn, it will definetly effect CTC. I myself seriously considering the modular route .. as WWW suggested earlier to "go slow, go modular" so that you go along the market trends. There won't be any job guarantees at the end of the training whichever school you go to. I am tempted with CTC because its full-time and better reputation. I might just do modular on fast pace and complete training in the same duration and save £20000. Will see !

Day_Dreamer

CTC

Dont put your hopes in CTC they like all training providers will have great trouble in placing their cadets over the next 18 months.

With their connections they might and I say might place a few, but so will all the training (integrated) organisations.

The biggest problem will be raising the funding over the next few months.

All the establishments are looking for a reliable financial institution to provide the funds, so watch this space, but dont hold your breath.

CTC have had their heyday and until the flooded job market empties and the credit crunch eases they will be on leaner times.

EvelcyclopS

i think interest rates will be a lot lower in 6 months time.. things are bad right now, but the market is weeding out the gamblers right now, in 6 months time we will have reaped the benefit of low oil prices and high crop yields to reduce inflation by a significant margin. Add to that a steadying of the US housing markets and i think we will be on the road to recovery.

I hope.

PAJ

I think HSBC are right to pull these large loans from a strategic business perspective (although I know it will make flying training incredibly tough for many people - I could never have afforded to train unless HSBC had been there). HSBC are a business and offered a very unique product at significant risk, hence they want the large interest return as an incentive. The markets need this crash as credit has been given out far too wrecklessly for too long. Once things stabilise, I would have thought some sort of similar financial scheme may be made available. I know cadets who have the £60k loan, a further £15k for living costs and Foundation Course, then have £12k in student loan from uni plus other debts. With interest, that will come to about £130k and that is a huge huge financial responsibility for someone who might only be 21/22! We'll have to see how things respond but CTC cadet intakes will surely drop over the next couple of years, although I think CTC have managed to fill courses well into 2009. There are about 280 cadets in the system at the moment I think and getting all these guys into jobs will be a massive massive task! That includes the guys who are not due to be ready until 2010 but still, no mean feat!

barrybeebone

Hi all

I am not a pilot but I am looking for jobs in aviation at the moment. I have experience in project management in aviation, mainly security and safety projects and I can speak Indonesian. I am looking for work in Asia or Middle East but am open to other places. I realise this site is mainly for pilots but if anyone can direct me to a forum on this site or elsewhere that has jobs you think may suit me or you know would help non pilots, plese let me know.

Cheers

no sponsor

280 cadets currently in training is a massive number. To put this in perspective, my airline (Jet2) has just over 300 pilots in total. XL had 200 pilots.

CTC's business model is now as ropey as an all business airline wanting to fly from London to New York. It is premised on new aircraft arriving, and pilots leaving their partner airlines for pastures new...

MajorYaw

There are not 280 cadets on the ground in NZ/UK right now. That's a number from PAJ apparently including whatever he has heard about future CPs yet to begin. CTC could cut them before they got here if they so decided. There are a lot of us in the system though, including the guys still waiting in the UK and those going through UK stages.

As for CTC's business model - if there's x number of vacancies for cadet pilots from a variety of FTOs, the placing of cadets will come down to the quality of the individual, the quality of the organisation and the relationships between client and FTO. If any FTO pushes hard and their cadets are consistently good, there's reason to think that there's a better chance of airlines being willing to consider their cadets before others. I think this is essentially the recruitment principal that Easy were applying - all their cadets were coming from the CTC route for a time, as per their site. And anyway, getting placed is still not a guarantee of a job. The airline can cut you if you're crap at anytime until you are made a full employee. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. Yeah.

Numbers quoted to us by CTC about cadet pilot demand from certain airlines suggested, four months ago, that the airlines had greater forecast demand than CTC could meet. Obviously, that was then, this is now. But also, cadet pilots are one of the cheaper blokes to put in the right-hand seat and everyone needs some new blood.

I think we're all expecting to be swimming in the pool for a while from this point on. Meanwhile, CTC seem to be trying to break new markets for recruits and potential airline clients. Have License and debt, will travel! Have License and debt and girlfriend and life, probably will not travel!

rik2204

Xbilz, yesterday i sent an e-mail to CTC to ask for a new assessment date ( in november); veeeery quick answer!!, they told me to wait until the 1th of Nov and then write them back to select a new date
ps
how do you know about the £100 fee for a re assessment?

Ciao

sarah2001

what is the current HSBC agreement (i am aware it is stopping but am interested in what they were offering).

does anyone have any alternatives in raising finance from other banks/loan agreements with the same option of not starting repayments for 2 years?

thanks

EvelcyclopS

HSBC offered a professional student loan which covered the bond, foundation course and living expenses of a CTC student on an unsecured basis - meaning you wouldnt need any capital (house) to get funding.

Now the economic slowdown is upon us, it is no longer wise for HSBC to be offering such dangerous financing (very difficult to retrieve loss if repayments canot be made)so they are ending the unsecured offer.

It is now awarded on a secured basis, meaning that you need to have a significant amount of capital to raise that amount of funds ( e.g. a house worth approx 100k i would imagine) so that if you mess up, they can get their money back in kind.

The difficulty for most people going through CTC is; most will be either 19yrs old fresh out of college with no capital and 21/22 yrs olds fresh out of Uni, with a dodgy credit rating and 12-15ks worht of debt already. and no house.

so getting finance basically rests upon your parents, whether they will put their house up as collateral for you to fly. i know mine wont, so its a really tough issue where funding comes from otherwise. Perhaps finding a personal investor is possible, but in this climate, i'd imagine it would be difficult.

PAJ

Majoryaw, my figures were based on a rather crude calculation on the assumption of an average of 12 per CP, which is about right. There are currently (to the best of my knowledge, based on the assumption that the latest course in NZ is CP64) around 250 who are actually in training or who are waiting for type rating. 280 included the next few CPs due to be out before Christmas. A few are going through BA selection, but nonetheless, it is a very significant number.

Tommy_uk

Does anyone else feel that it is pointless applying for ctc at such a time considering the economical climate? I have a University degree in Aerospace engineering and not sure which path to follow :uhoh . I know everyone will say only you can answer that question, but if you were in my shoes what would you do? I have the majority of the funding available but what is the best route to take to become a pilot these days?

Geetea

Probably modular mate, get yourself a job with your degree and do the ATPL's and hour building slowly and affordably

MajorYaw

There is now no official age limit to CTC applications. It used to be 28 or something. There are plenty of people here over that age. If time is on your side, surely it makes a lot of sense to pursue education and a career of some sort that may or may not be related to aviation, and spend some of your hard earned on learning to fly for fun. That way, you get to work out whether you really enjoy flying, you earn cash you can save towards training (however you end up training), and you build up a big protective net to cover your backside should you need it in the future after taking the plunge.

As for CTC's future plans, it's pretty impossible to say how long the Wings scheme will be around. It's existed in some form since around '97 I believe (based on recall of meeting a former trainee who was involved in the recrutiment assessment process when I went through), but iCP cadets are coming through now and the whole thing could switch over one day. Or not.

If the rumours are true, it's so much cheaper to train in NZ who knows how long the programme will remain economically viable. Your sixty grand goes a long, long way in NZ and integrated guys (should) only do a handful of sims and flights in UK on DA42s before their AQC, so your bond really might cover a lot of of your CTC training. Add on top the interest on the debt capital provided by cadets as an income stream for the business, and, delays and unforeseen circumstances and what not considered, the programmes may not be that dependent on full cadet placement to hit black. There must be sizeable margins/contingency built in. Wings/iCP is not the company's main business anyway, and the company structure is such that the bits involved with them are separate companies and could probably be wound-up/jettisoned without sacrificing other operations.

Possibly one way of looking at it is this: if you sign up and two years after starting, you still haven't got a RHS, HSBC will be knocking at your door asking for at least £1100 a month repayment. More if you needed living costs and foundation. What's the average graduate wage take home these days? What's the average sub 25-year-old non-graduate take home? Either one of those gives little change out of £1100 if at all, after deductions. You could be working purely to service a debt, with nothing left to live on, which is effectively bankruptcy. Kiss goodbye to your credit line for seven years after declaring yourself financially bummed out.

The less you have to borrow, the better. Full stop. But then again, everything might be sthweeet athssss and you get a job straightaway and it all smells of roses. Who knows.

MajorYaw

And IMO, anyone who's parents are willing to secure their one and only family home on their kid becoming a pilot wants their heads examined! Get the money from somewhere else, like granny's collection of golden teeth, family heirlooms and antiques. There are literally loads and loads of grannies out there!

akindofmagic

I have stated before in this thread: if you decide to go for the CTC scheme and do not get a job at the end, you will almost certainly not find a job in any other industry that pays you enough to allow you to pay off the loan.

To be brutally honest, I think that unless you are already a qualified doctor, lawyer, accountant or other similar professional BEFORE you embark on the course (and note I said "qualified" and not just a trainee/ graduate), you will NOT be able to pay the loan off at the conclusion of the course if you do not get placed. It is a fallacious argument to talk of having a good back-up plan. For example, I am a law graduate, but there is no way I can even contemplate a career as a barrister or a solicitor, as I can neither afford to take the BVC/ LPC, nor can I afford to spend another year in education without earning.

jb5000

The job is not worth £100k of debt. The risk is too much for what the career actually involves.

How many of you actually truly *know* what being a pilot is like? Warts and all?

My advice to you would be to forget it for at least 3 years, unless you can do it without getting into any debt.

If you are filling in a loan application in the near future, think back to this post.

You are making a mistake.

Kerosine

What a ray of sunshine jb5000

jb5000

People need to be aware that going through CTC is not the guaranteed job that it used to be.

Let's be honest here - it's not sponsored.

You may be left with 100k of debt and no possible means to service it.

IVA? Bankruptcy?

The risk of doing that to yourself is so high now, especially as CTC now do the iCP and have huge course numbers.

In my opinion the job simply isn't worth it.

Listen to yourself if you are disagreeing with me on the last one. Going bankrupt just for a job is never worth it.