blackred1443

When we are scrapping the bottom of the career barrel which is what ryr and ezy have become i don't think saying one is safer than the other is appropriate.Both are hopelessly appaulling and to be honest anoyne that signs up to either at the moment deserves all they get. Let the buyer beware.

Hence the quality of candidate now being attracted, note davids post above wondering is now a good time to start training. Daaaaaaah!!There are unborn children in their mother's womb that probably realise training to be a pilot right now is not an wise decision.

The zombie army are alive and well. I think i might start taking the ferry soon!

DavidG88

So i should just give up? What if in 2 years pilots are needed? what if the economy booms? Nobody has any idea how the next two years may turn out so why be negative?

Zippy Monster

I agree... the underlying point of that comment being even that is better than the CTC FlexiCrew deal at the moment, which is really saying something.

x933

FFS. You really haven't bothered reading any other posts on here.

In 2 years time...you'll be a 250hr pilot sat in a big global hold pool with a good few thousand pilots that are typed, experienced and far more employable than you. It's boring the number of speculative phone calls my company gets from people just like you.

If you *seriously* *absolutely* *must* start training now (And other than it being a dream there's no good reason to), do a PPL and for gods sake enjoy it. Get 100hrs (or however much else you want/need) doing something fun - touring around europe, aerobatics (which will teach you a damn sight more about flying than burning holes in the sky flying navigation exercises - which is mostly lots of mental maths and making sure the aircraft does nothing but fly in a straight line, which is pathologically boring) or air racing. Doing a night rating won't harm, it'll mean you can spend more time on it and that in turn will make *You* a better pilot.

THEN see what the market is doing. If needs require you can bash out the ATPL exams, a CPL and IR in 9 months and I can guarantee the market won't turn that quickly - not a hope in hell.

Countless friends have gone through the mill at CabTEford and have had precisely no support upon graduation - regardless of what the bumff says when they sign off your IR/MCC you're on your own. The flexi-crew deal is garbage and the other eazyjet stuff they were generating didn't pay enough to live off.

For reference - I went to uni, didn't get into the RAF, failed selection for CTC (How lucky was I, this was 2007), took an office job in Aviation to bide my time and now earn pretty much what your common or garden F/O does, live in London, get to play with some seriously cool toys and *still* have enough left to be able to play with a Warrior / Chipmunk when I feel like it, go on holiday and pay london prices for stuff. I still love flying, and maybe one day will do the whole CPL/IR thing. And i'm far less stressed than I would be if I £1500 of my income was being burnt every month.

blackred1443

David i seriously doubt there will be anything approaching a boom,remember the uk is now seriously debt stricken as is most of the euro zone. As for there being a pilot shortage anytime soon, im sorry but your being seriously deluded. To be honest i'm now starting to think maybe your trying to wind people up. Look there is a seriously long list of bankrupt airlines over the last 3 years from Zoom,silverjet, globespan,Excel the list goes on and on, do a little research. Thousands of unemployed pilots with lots of experience, 200 ctc cadets threading water in the "pool" which is very stagnant now and more like a cess pit,many of the cadets im told have gone bankrupt.

The ryanair deal is now being described as "better", "better" means you are slightly less likely to get properly canned after six months.The ryr deal has no sick pay, no holiday pay ,pay for your own uniform, no pension, no loss of licence, pay for your own id, pay for your own hotac, pay for your own lpc/opc, no guarantee of any hours, you are a contractor not permenant staff, no crew food, no tea/coffee.This costs you 34k by the way. Rumour has is there is now a drop in the hours these ryr newbees get. The best thing for you to do is a little research. Open The Times tomorrow and see if you see anyone writing about a "boom" in 2 year. I don't know what brand of glue has you thinking about booms in 2 years but i reckon you need to go easy on it. Do your homework its going to cost you if you dont.

go around flaps15

Ryanair SSTR has been going on for years. It has worked out for alot of people. Myself included.

In two or so years Ryanair are set to stop expansion. So as an option for you(David) it( Ryanair SSTR) might not be an option.

Even if it(Ryanair SSTR) was still going the chances of (A) Getting a call for interview are slim. (B) Chances of being succesful at interview even slimmer.


Those are things to think about.


Makes me laugh that some people think that anyone who has 30k and a frozen ATPL can just walk into the RHS of 737 with Ryanair.


Eh. Eh.

Ronand

just a stupid question:
Is it really that bad for those who went bankcrupt while the CTC loan was still unsecured? I mean your credit record will be crap for a few years but after all you got your licence more or less for free?

@DavidG88 If you really dream of a Pilot career there is one last thing you may try: Take a year or so to learn german and then apply for the Lufthansa or Airberlin cadet scheme . I met a guy from the UK who really went to germany for a year to learn german then applied for Lufthansa cadet scheme and made it threw the DLR selection. He couldn't speak a word german when he moved there....

x933

WWW Wrote an interesting post on this a while ago. I've got my own oppions on this which will probably get me banned.

I hate flying Ryanair as Michael O'Leary is a spud faced chancer and I hate fuelling his empire (not to mention I don't like his on board product or the way in which he does business). I'd rather fly easyjet as it doesn't push the fact that it's cheap and built down to a price, and their product is better. But at the same time, Do I want to be flown around by a low time wannabe with pockets of depth inversely proportional to flying skill that may or may not have flown much in the last xx months/weeks...

Sod it, i'll get the train.

go around flaps15

No arguements on the EZY product. I used them once in the past and was very happy with what I paid for.

x933

Spesh moment, meant Michael O'Leary. Duly edited. I prefer EZY...but this is a thread for CTC Bashing and not loco bashing

Zippy Monster

We're at risk of thread drift here, but this is a point that's been brought up repeatedly over time.

Why is it always assumed that those who have the most money and therefore the financial clout to get on these courses, have the least flying skill? Why do the two have to be linked?

I'm sure it's possible to be a good pilot who happens to be minted, and I'm sure the converse is equally true.

The sad thing is that in the past, in the days of the unsecured loan and the ability to get it sorted simply by scrawling a big shaky X on a few pieces of paper, this wouldn't even be a discussion point on this thread. One big selling point of the CTC scheme was that it was accessible to all, without having to put up security. No longer - as the credit dried up, the course price has also gone up!

TFlexMax80

DJ,

I would say that both of your distinct schools of thought are correct at the same time.

Shelling out the huge amounts of money was always a gamble, no matter whether that debt was secured or not. Even if you had something to fall back on, that wasn't even in itself a cast iron insurance policy.

Even in the good times, one had to be mindful that the next downturn might only be just round the corner albeit there were the warning signs in mid/late 2007. The 100% placement guarantee could only ever be one of those temporary and variable things.

As for current potential cadets. Yes, the training is great. Yes, you'll have a great time whilst you doing it. Yes, the golden goose is now dead. It's a lot of money to pay to sit in an imaginary swimming pool full of other equally desperate people, when the brochure has sold you the heated jacuzzi filled with chicks.

kingofkabul

Hi, does anyone know of how many cadets have not been placed with airlines as at today?

I ask as I am considering CTC in the future - and by future I mean 3-4 years down the road dependent on T+C's, but am concerned by what I have read on these forums, and so thought I would do some digging of my own. I was recently looking at the annual accounts for Airline Placement Ltd for year to June 2009. Under "Stock" they list £17.826m as the "training costs of those pilots who have not yet been placed in employment with an airline". This is up from £12.056m from the previous period.

The £17.826m is similar to the £18.084m of creditors - bonds which represents the "security bonds deposited by pilots during training". Compare this to the situation on 20 June 2008, the bonds which had not been passed to an airline stood at £9.189m

If the "security bond" is £66,000 as I am led to believe, this implies that approximately 270 cadets were either in training, or had completed training and were in the "pool" at 30 June 2009.

...this figure of 270 seems a little high, and is double that of 30 June 2008. Can anyone confirm this is really the case, and if so how many cadets would there be ahead of me in the employment queue as of today?

Thanks for the insight,

KofK

kingofkabul

Hi, thank you for those replies, yes it does seem that the figure of 270 is not a million miles off.

I think it wise to avoid going down that path for the meantime - it does concern me that some others will go into a course now without having done the appropriate research. As much as it pains me to work in an office, at least its a job - and in an airline so can stick it out for a bit!

I wish everyone in the pool the best, it'll pick up eventually. I've heard that CX are developing an abridged version of their cadet pilot programme to those with fATPLs, could be worth a shot for you guys.

All the best,

KofK

alpha.charlie

roughly CP's 53 to 80 (?)

27 x 12 per CP (give or take) = 324 cadets ahead of you

placement for this year is essentially over for EZY, maybe another handful or so to leave the pool.

CTC have placed about 60 cadets this winter, at this current rate of placement if you were to start on CP81 it would take you about 5 years to be placed!


p.s. "placed" means offered the chance of paying EZY £10k for a type rating and then getting paid very little per rostered flight hour for 3 years with no contractual guarentee of anything after.

LaurentRobert

Hello All,

Just got a brief contribution to make regarding the hold pool.

I was due to start training with CTC last year, but decided the risk was too great to secure the cost on my parents house. This pprune thread had a lot to do with it, but I was also shocked that the contract I received stated that APL could terminate the agreement if the cadet had been in the holding pool for more than 12 months.

Now, even when CTC were trying to be optimistic they said I could expect to be in the pool for about a year! So I found the fact that they could cut anyone loose after 12 months very worrying.

Laurent

x933

I'd venture 50/50, DJFingerscrossed. Kingofkabul has the right idea, I feel. A companies accounts (Which are a publicly available document for the princely sum of £1 from companies house) will always paint a picture of what's going on at CabOxTE. Be wary of any big minus numbers. And if you don't understand them, give them to mummy/daddy/someone that does and ask for their oppinion. It will save you a lot of heartache if your throwing large ammounts of money around.

fastjetpilot

DJ,

You give CTC too much credit. This is not a "nice" gesture. A nice gesture would have been paying for accomodation for cadets or something along those lines. This is fully B, with a little bit of maintaining their OWN reputation - which by the way - they have pretty much destroyed in the last 6 months anyway.

And only guys up to the end of 52 have been offered a TR. There were 2 or 3 guys that were upcoursed from 54 that are now on 52 that got the offer.

mukoba737

Hi guys,

ok, I was one of the lucky guys who did see the scam in the CTC scheme.
Look, this thread goes all about how bad and what can be done better with CTC.

one of my former collegues had done the CTC thing. Poor him (personal opionion) however, he paid and is still waiting since like more than 7 months now.

No job for him from CTC so far.

Guys before spending this much money, try to apply with others such as Air Berlin, learn german for couple of months, try Sichuan Airlines ...they are expanding and recruiting, and there are many more.

I had my last interview a couple of days ago.

Next for me is Avico Aviation. link to them and sponsored program is here .
You see, other employ and give you the type rating....this pprune guys which tell you that there is no hope...screw them! Not everything is bad...I belive the CTC guys do a job and a pilot wanting to join CTC must read and evaluate the options.

hope I could help someone

m737

LaurentRobert

Could the 12 month clause be a recent addition to the CTC contracts? Or has it always been there?