Oh come on, tell me you are joking :ugh: :ugh: :ugh:

At the end of the day we are the customer, we were sold the whole concept of the AQC, we had choices at the time.

Cough up 20k and buy a type rating, with a 90% chance of a job in this current climate at the end of it...or pay CTC 6K, accept a loss of earnings for 8 months with a guaranteed job at the end of the term. Biggest drawing card was the fact that the pool would be empty by Nov '06 :mad:

However the pool never emptied but grew, and grew and grew! With the possibility of some Wannabees spending possibly up to 10 months in the pool, who knows – maybe even more.

Now with hindsight would you have still spent the 6K or have done the TR instead? Everybody will no doubt have differing opinions, some for and some against. I certainly didn't recieve the product I was sold, but thats tough and I'll grin get over it and bide my time in the pool, fortunately I can continue to earn money and pay the mortgage, etc. Not so for some others in our swimming class is it?

But please don't tell me that the cadets have every right to move and be placed ahead of us - holy smoke we are the consumers here – why would you just roll over and play possum!

CTC hold pool
 

Austrailian Goose

Good post mate, hope we're not swimming much longer, when did you arrive in the pool?? i have been in a number of months now.

I cant agree that we were miss sold the product but what i would have most liked to see was a constant supply of information from ctc which has not been forthcomming. The last we heard was a group email in october with the promise of monthly updates regarding the state of play ie recruitment and placement (but heard nothing since) Have you had or know anyone who has had more regular updates.??

We are im sure still in the strongest and most admirable position in the industry ie being in the hold pool of ctc, but after seeing two friends before me visit the holding pool only for a matter of days the swimming is now hurting my legs.

And yes i dont ever remember being told that the cadets would have priority over us and dont agree with this position at all as we still have upwards of 60/70 grand invested in this career.

Dragstrut:ok: :ok:

All of the delays centre around easyjet's lack of training capacity. Back in July, I'm sure CTC, believed that EZY, would snap up their ATP and Cadet pilots as fast as they could train them. With 400+ pilots as EZY's 2007 recruitment target, it's no wonder they believed that. I did! Then came EZY's capacity crisis. Pilots were leaving so fast they were having to charter work out, which hit their profits. Worse still they had lost many line trainers so they couldn't even train enough newcomers to satisfy demand. Along comes a new Managing Director, who kicks butt over the capacity crisis and heads roll. Since then they've recruited more line trainers and made efforts to try and retain pilots for longer. They are still VERY tight on training capacity from what I hear though. The CTC, guys take double the number of line sectors to train, have the longest time to command and in the past have been the hardest to retain. Is it any wonder the new management are concentrating on the SSTR pilots recruited from other airlines? Have EZY fallen out of love with CTC Cadets and ATP'ers? Or is it just a temporary blip? Time will tell.

I reckon that recruitment in the next 2-3 months will come from Monarch, Jet2 and Thomsonfly, all of whom are adding airframes in the very near future. Problem is that all three have been doing a lot of recruitment themselves recently. Between them they could hoover out the hold pool very fast; if they don't though it's bad news all round.

And the issue of favouring Cadets over ATP pilots? CTC have invested serious time and money in their NZ and Bournemouth training facilities. They have to use that capacity to make money out of it and they can't easily turn off the tap of cadets coming out of the system.

On the bright side I'm sure they'll find jobs for everyone in the pool; even after 9/11 they still managed it, so it's just a matter of time.

I'm with Oz Goose. During my AQC we were told by an overwhelming majority of CTC employees that the ATP hold pool will be emptied in very quick time and we can be fairly certain of starting type ratings within months.

Alas, this was not the case.

I am fully prepared to accept that CTC (and indeed all of their partner airlines) perhaps don't know themselves what recruitment plans are to be implemented, if indeed any.

What's so furstrating however, is the lack of contact that is forthcoming from CTC. Promises of 'e-mail updates in the near future' is simply not good enough, not least because they're so infrequent.

On completing my AQC, I was full of praise for the way in which the course itself was conducted and pleased to say that it met, if not exceeded all of my high expectations. Unfortunately, the after-sales service has, in my opinion, fallen short of acceptable, leaving me feeling disillusioned and moreover, far from (to coin a phrase) 'In the loop...'


GD.

When I was at phase 2 Lee Woodward, the Head of CTC Wings, held the introduction. Among other things he told us that he was working for Monarch part time. Next he said that CTC only gave the best pilots to Monarch, upon which I laughed out laud….and this wrongly because he was dead serious :oh: . At first I really thought he was joking *ha ha*, I must have seemed stupid. Anyway, this might answer a few questions.

DragStrut: My latest update was the 8th of December where Lee Woodward told us, via an email from Jo Ward, that 14 people were going to EZY within the next 2-3 months and that 6 were going to TC.

Try to enjoy your time while swimming!

HC :ok:

ctc hold pool
 

Fair Weather Flyer!!!

where do you base these interesting**** assumptions!!!! ?????????

That is completely the opposite to all the evidence I have and all the related articles relating to CTC trained pilots who have shown above average aptitiude and above average commitment when given the chance to progress to the big jets ...

interestingly negative post from you bearing in mind that this thread is populated with CTC's excellent pilot end product!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:= := := := :=

I wasn't questioning aptitude or commitment. You seem to have got the wrong end of the stick. I'm in the pool myself.... Was it my line about needing double the number of line training sectors that you found offensive? That is part of the deal with the airline and CTC. You WILL get double the number of line training sectors that the direct entry SSTR pilots get, whether you need it or not. That is an increased training burden for the airline that they cannot accomodate at present.

Perhaps you have another suggestion as to why EZY cancelled the TR courses for CTC ATP'ers recently and why they are giving priority to experienced SSTR pilots at present?

Dragstrut....

What colour is the sky in your World :rolleyes:

Fair Weather Flyer has hit the nail on the head :D

EZY is a business model, a LCC built around happy shareholders and healthy profit margins, a business model that is designed and managed by businessmen, not pilots.

So no matter how great a pilot you feel you or the rest of us are, the facts are there that CTC pilots do take double the number of sectors and therefore training capacity than an SSTR guy off the street. In the long term we will take more time to reach a command and cost more money.....who would you go for given the option?

It's common sense, we are all in an extremely fortunate position at the moment but lets not assume that that makes us invincible!

AG ;)

i Agree
 

i agree with the start of theis page about the whole wings over atp guys,

some wings guys have had to wait months to get T/R's upto 4 months, so its not all roses for them either, what would annoy me was if they just tried to get rid of the backlog of wings in one hit leaving ATP guys holding for upto 10/11 months.

i also agree that the communication from CTC has been absolutly rubbish, a supposed newsletter every "month". no idea when in the month , maybe only when enough people start pestering them.

would i have done this or a type rating, well hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Yes they did get guys jobs after 9/11, ten months after if i remember rightly, well thats what the famous brittania pilot/ actor said. but he also told one lot of phase one appilcants in october or whenever it was that 13 people had left the pool for jet2.com, which as far as i am aware and those i've spoken never happened, marketing perhaps.

but nether the less , i'll swim in this pool and make the odd pointless comment on here till i leave, then hopefully i'll be so busy i'd have forgotten all about this site, except jet blast(which is a good laugh) and that thread about who wears hats and doesn't.

Night

FB:zzz:

ps 2 guys from the july(start) course left and then the rest of us,

Don't Think So
 

Just to answer the comment of double the amount of training slots for CTC. Having just joined EZY from the CTC hold pool I can tell you that I will need 46 sectors on the 737 (they write it in your training file). I have 250 hours on either PA28 or BE76. Other people that have come in via TRSS are being put down for 20 - 25 sectors. These people already have a full ATPL and one was a Flybe Q400 Captain. I've no idea how many sectors a SSTR entrant would require if indeed EZY actually take SSTR, but I would be certain they would need a significant amount more than a Q400 captain and I suspect probably the same amount as me.

To the guys in the pool, hang on in there. I was in the pool 8 months but it is well worth the wait. Things would have to get a lot worse to make me buy a Type Rating.

Chocks, sorry to hear you got passed over, I guess that means you're just waiting for the next EZY placement. Let me know when you get the call

SW

Skywave...

We are talking about one and the same thing, to qualify for TRSS/SSTR (!) with EZY you need a minimum of 1,500 hours of which 500 multicrew. Therefore they have more experience than most of us and require half the sectors.

Thanks for clarifying the above though :ok:

OK... time for an element of perspective I think!

This is how I see it:

1) If any of us would have failed selection at any time (including the AQC), we would be very p*ssed off and would be envious of those in the pool.

2) I understand that CTC have always managed to place successful candidates and so we will all be employed some day.

3) Would you rather be applying for hundreds of jobs right now and getting nothing back, not even an acknowledgement?

4) How about paying thousands of pounds for a type rating followed by no hours (or very few) on type and no guarantee of a job? Combine that with the possibility of seeing it lapse after 12 months!

As wannabe’s, we are in one of the best positions to be in with nothing more to worry about other than keeping current and waiting. How many other pilots are there that wish they were in the same position? You only have to look at the other forums to find out!

So, a little update from CTC would be useful and then we can all get on with dreaming about the day that we WILL sit in that right hand seat for the first time.

Remember, CTC said that easyjet want 450 pilots of which a third will be from CTC with most of those being ATP.

I don’t know about you, but after being in the pool since the summer, I’m still very excited about that!

All i can say is hang on in there guys ( and girls ), you will be plucked out of the pool at some point, CTC want their investment back believe me so they will place you. Shame they're not more forthcoming with info, but i guess the answer to that it that they're prob a little unclear as to when the flow will pick up.

I can tell you that we seem to have a much larger number of guys coming through at the mo than in recent months, such has been the training backlog, many of who are from the ATP scheme. The past couple of days there's been groups of 5-8 guys in the crew room about to go off and do base training...look at all those excited/nervous ( delete as applicable :E ) faces!

Lots of guys doing famil flights on the jumpseat as well, prior to base trn.

P.s. required number of sectors seems to be variable depending on experience, ATP/Cadet guys seem to be getting about 50 prior to line check, if you're ready for it earlier then it's possible to have an earlier check, but above all easyJet would like you to pass it the first time around so even if you're ready most people seem to do the full amount, just to be sure.

WBV

The recent ezy pilots newsletter confirmed we are recruiting 500 pilots this year. Thats a lot of people! As has been mentioned the sole problem is training capacity. Bear in mind it isn't just new guys taking up the TR/Line training slots, current ezy pilots are undergoing training onto the A319 as current 737 bases convert to airbus bases and new bases are opened in Europe. Madrid and Milan are the two most recent additions.

My base started converting to Le Bus' in early summer and we are only just finishing the last few guys training. So thats over six months of reduced training capacity with all the guys at my base alone requiring 20 sectors line training each on completion of the airbus conversion course. They are now going to be concentrating on getting as many of you guys in before the summer madness begins - last summer was a debacle due to crew shortages and they are very keen to ensure it doesn't happen again.

Keep the faith, I can ensure you the light at the end of the tunnel is worth the wait. Hope to see some of you guys at ezy ;)

I agree. Its human nature to become accustomed to being in a relatively 'good' situation, and then find other things to complain about. I think those in the pool would do well to try and find some interesting or fun short-term work and concentrate on enjoying the small time we will have to wait before going to TR.

If its half a year then so be it - but don't crowd that time with moaning and complaining, when there are hundreds of others out there with absolutely no response from airline HR depts. We are all in a good situation in the (...to coin a phrase) 'big picture'.

Looking around my AQC there were no spoilt-brat style characters - we should be careful not to present ourselves as such on this forum. Even if the flow of information from CTC could be better (and I think it could), its not our train set; we cannot affect decisions being made on our immediate futures.

What we can do is shift our outlook - I'd say the one above would be a fitting template - and try to enjoy life....when we all get stuck in to our 900 hrs/year there may be some looking back to the time in the holdpool thinking...."that wasn't such a bad time after all"!

Sorry about the slight thread creep.....back on course now....I'll look forward to more info anyone has on airlines, and possible recruitment plans :)

Stay positive! :ok:

Lee Frost!

I couldn't agree more, mate!

It's very easy to see things negative, even in a relative positive position as we are in.

Lets stay positive and hope we get some good news from CTC soon!

EZY Boeing T/R'S??
 

Am I right in thinking that as from Feb. onwards, EZY are no longer running B737 conversion courses? I seem to remember hearing this fairly recently- which may help explain the current lack of (or at least reduced) throughput from CTC to EZY.

This is obviously understandable, I'm sure the company are prioritising base/ internal conversion courses before introducing more people to an already saturated training programme.

Please correct me if I'm wrong....

GD.

Go-Detent

I find it hard to believe that easy are going to stop 737 conversions. The fleet may be small compaired to the busses but is still going with 30 aircraft. The trainers are all still there, the facilities (okay just 1 sim at Alteon now with the -700) are all there and I don't see any busses coming to NCL, BFS or LTN anytime soon!

I'm pretty sure the delay for you all treading water is mainly down to the training problems at easy. As I said in an earlier post, easy are concentrating on DEP's and TRSS guys and gals who need 20 odd sectors line training and can get online ASAP.

All the best.

Splashdown

Saying that there does appears to be a rumour that EZY are looking at options on 22 Saab 340's for July delivery for some new domestic routes on the mainland.

This being the case then one would expect that the ATP guys would fill the slots for the Saab as the trainers appear to be coming from Logan Air...

At least this would dry out the pool all in one swoop :O

ctc holdpool
 

fair weather flyer and Austrailian goose

thank you for the information you provide as from the posts it wasnt clear initially that the comparison was between ctc pilots and prieviosly employed and experienced pilots which was the basis for my origional post.

I fully agrree that nothing we could do would affect the overall picture at easy or for that matter anyother airline.

AG: dont know where the Invincible reference came from!! i for one take nothing for granted in this industry.. ha ha ah:ugh: :ugh:

hope to see you all on line in the near future...

Dragstrut :8 :8