By all means, if you want to work for FR that badly, go ahead. If you value 738 hours that much you won't find an easier airline to get into at the moment. I suppose they make a pretty penny on all those in-house TR too.

My personal issue with FR is this; you're working for free and losing out on income. You pay for the TR, you pay for various miscellaneous things, and you lose out on income while you're on reduced pay or not paid at all. If you plan on leaving after 18 months, you won't get close to breaking even with someone that for example went the turboprop route. If anything, I just want people to project their income ahead of time and compare the options!

A personal anecdote: A colleague of mine during the MCC course already had a job offer on an ATR, bonded TR, due to start in 3 weeks later, as a regular employee earning an honest salary (36k€ i believe?). Instead, signed the dotted line with FR and is now waiting for the TR. Apparently he values 738 hours an awful lot! After those 18 months you mentioned, He would have had more money in his bank account, a solid amount of TP hours in his logbook and actual IFR handling experience flying in the thick of it. I am not convinced that 738 hours are the only valuable commodity in this industry.

To each his own I guess. But as long as there are alternatives, or if you're clever and got another education besides flying, I don't think people should be so keen on flying for FR!

It is a fact that 737 hours are more valuable than ATR hours as recruiters in Europe, ME and Asia require hours on type or on Boeing aircraft to move to bigger aircraft.
Same with Airbus.

There are many TP pilots that write on here that are stuck on turboprop aircraft and wish to move to the big irons.

I am not saying 738 hours aren't valuable. I'm just saying they're not the only valuable currency in the industry.

I also don't think TP pilots are stuck per se in terminal positions. Pilot movement has been stilted for years among all experience levels. I could just as easily point to Virgin Australia Regional and Qantaslink, two TP operators flying feeder routes for Virgin Australia and Qantas respectively. It is pretty common down under to work your way up to jets through TP ops.

I am however urging people to consider the long term effects of their choice. Far too many people have shiny jet syndrome and are spending obscene amounts of money to 'jump start' their career, taking piss poor T&C contracts because they hope to move on to emirates or lufthansa for example. Please consider the pros and cons of contract work, the massive opportunity cost involved with FR's scheme, and pink goggles of 'moving on to the desert in x years'.

By all means, if 738 hours are what you want, you won't find an easier opportunity out there. I am not here to bash on FR; There are other threads for that.

Take my opinion with however much salt you feel it needs. I just want to make at least a couple of young pilots here think this choice through properly. 40k€ is a lot of money, on top of an already substantial investment spent on training.

PS: Final thought about something that is nagging me a bit: You are absolutely entitled to disagree and I welcome an open debate about this job opportunity. But I just have to put my foot down on one thing: You are not signing a training contract; Flying for Ryanair is not training. You are a 100% qualified pilot performing the exact same duties as any other FO for any other airline, and you deserve to be remunerated accordingly. Ryanair is not providing you a great training opportunity, they are providing you with a job. There is a massive difference between the two and you are only doing yourself a big disservice by considering yourself a trainee.

Just returned from assesment. I think, that everybody who even think about TR with FR know what they are doing. All of us, want to choose the best option for ourselves.

Few words about assesment in Dublin.

8 people, first all of us had chat with guy, who was our assesor. Nice relaxed chat, a lot of fun. He told us what we are there for (to have a job ;)) and gave us charts (East Midlands). Than we were paired. We returned to other room, and had some time to discuss charts. In the other room, there is a model of 737 cockpit. So it's good idea, to have a train of every phase of flight in SIM before you go. I had interview first, later SIM.

Interview:

HR questions - no good or bad answers, they want to find out, if you will be good capitan, and if you will be able to pass TR. In my case it was around 10-15 minutes of chat.

Tech:

1) What is that? (he pointed socket in the wall) ;)
2) Segments of flight (why we do calculations, not what segments we have. We do calculations to make sure we are clear of obsticles in case of 1 engine failure)
3) Why we do loadsheet
4) What is a Jetstream
Others had questions about Swept wings, high lift devices etc. Most of those questions was already in this topic.

SIM.
PF & PM role. Assesor let us choose who will be first as PF. My partner have Wallesey 2N dep, but after dep he have vectors (to the north), than towards EME NDB (need to fly QDM 100 to EME), from there approach as per charts. During approach smoke in the cabin (severe). He made G/A (good decision), and than, he was repositioned on ideal long final to rwy 27.
I had dep to 2m DME, than left turn 180 climb 5000, return to EME NDB and the same as my partner. Smoke in a cabin. Emergency and landing on 27. On last stage I had LOC and GS failure but was visual, so continued to approach. SIM is not as every other sim (in my opinion difficult to fly, as when you put more throttle, aircraft pith up, when you remove it pith down) so my path was faaaaar from ideal ;). On short final, I was to the left from LOC, and above GS, but still decided to land (because of the fire).

That's it folks - wish you luck.
Don't know what will be the outcome for me, need to wait 2 weeks.
GL to all of you.

That is in Australia and if you don't have the right to live and work there it is totally irrelevant. It works the same way in Canada and in the US, but Europe is a different and worse world.

And yes, Ryanair is giving an opportunity to current Europe based low hour pilots to get their career started on the most popular airliner alongside the Airbus A320 family. There are not many opportunities in GA in Europe if you didn't know...

If one's goal is to fly long haul one day or just fly a jet instead a turboprop, that person ought to take Ryanair's opportunity. Time on type is all that matters. It is a fact.

Hi all,

Someone I know who is currently doing his flight training with CTC is very certain that Ryanair take people out of CTC - directly! Anyone know if there is any truth behind this?

Hi all,
Just a quick question about the last post regarding the ryr assessment from fungi.
He mentioned a go around during the approach, after having been informed of a severe smoke in the cabin.
If i am stable on the approach what is the point of going around and waste more time before getting the plane on the ground?
Thanks a lot in advance

Telephone Interview CAE
 

Hey guys, can anyone give me some informations about the telephone call from CAE? What kind of questions do they have and how long does it take? I am really nervous at the moment because I have no idea what I have to expect. Tomorrow should be the date, so i would be really thankful for every fast answer! :ok:

The telephone interview is simple. They ask you the same questions as in the mail. Just to confirm I guess.

The are evaluating you're english skills. Simple test; she reads a text to you and asks you 2-3 questions about it.

Thats it. You will get a yes or no immediately.

@k738
I guess they also ask for ATPL results?
Can anyone give me a definite answer on the max amount of theory fails?
Appreciated

They ask if you passed all the subjects on first attempt..

Yes but people have been accepted with 1 fail, thats what I know.
Now, I have 2 fails, so if anyone made it out of the call with 2+ fails.. I would like to hear :)

The Call
 

Ok, it is as you explained in the last posts... And I was a little bit confused about that question how many tries I needed in the ATPL-theory test and how many subjects I had to do again... the answer was two. I hope that is not such a big problem. :(
How long did you wait for an answer?

@Aleking55, are you from Munster Ireland?? Hope the interview call goes well for you. Regards SAR

Nope, Münster in Germany... Thanks I hope so, too. :) But I've still no answer yet.

Now I have the answer of CAE. I'm invited to the assessment-day on 7th January 2015. So I think it's ok, when you failed in 2 subjects :}

CAE 1501 AMS
 

Hello,
I finally received today the confimation that I am booked in for the CAE 1501 TR course taking place at AMS with start date on 6th April 2015.

Would be nice to get soon in touch with future mates maybe opening a Facebook group;)

CAE 1502 AMS
 

I am booked for the type rating in Amsterdam on 20th April 2015!

People in the same course, please message me and start creating a FB group ;)

:ok:

Me as well :)

edit: in CAE1501

I have just created a FB group named

CAE1501! See you there