that was for screaminlemmin!!! or infact ne one who has done phase 4 on 737

cheers!

globalste,

Interesting e-mail. I bet the CTC guys will be a bit miffed that you posted the entire thing here though. :}

Anyway, my actual concern was about your medical rejections. I also have astigmatism of the eye and while the optician I went to see said this shouldn't be a problem for being a pilot, what you said makes me worried. Did you ask CTC at all if it would be a problem? I'll e-mail them tomorrow though to hear it from the horses mouth. I'm really concerned now.

pmrsmiffy,

It's not CTC you should be asking about your eyesight, its the CAA; you can get the Class 1 medical requirements off their website. Believe astigmatism has to be less than 2 dioptres (should be on your glasses prescription) for initial class 1. And they've recently loosened up the renewal requirements, which is good news for the visually challenged like me.

If you can get the class 1, you can get on the course (provided you pass selection) :}

If its marginal, you can always fire off an e-mail to the medical boffins, I know a few people who got deviations for the eyesight requirements until they got a PPL :hmm:

Astigmatism
 

My understanding of the astigmatism was clarified by my optician recently. When I queried the parameters for astigmatism as detailed by the CAA, she advised that having an astigmatism that rendered you unfit for a class 1 medical would also result in you not being able to wear contact lenses. If you can wear lenses that sufficiently correct such a condition, you should be fine, so I'm told.

My astigmatism became too high for RAF flying, however what was mentioned about astigmatism and contact lenses isnt strictly true - quite a lot of people wear contact lenses and by that i dont even mean the special torric ones!

The problem i had with Aer Lingus was they had their own medical standards - they wouldnt allow anyone with eyesight worse than -1.25, this is quite easy to have if you are astigmatic.

As far as CTC are concerned it is Class 1 medical which you can get from the CAA's website. If in doubt you could go along for one but its going to cost you £400(ish).

I thought i would post my feedback up because I saw a lot of posts saying "no feedback" etc. It was quite comprehensive, but i felt it was contradictory eg. they seemed to focus on my only getting 5 C's at A-Level 10years ago, but didnt ask about me getting a 1st in Mechanical Engineering, an MBA or becoming Chartered. They said i didnt show committment but i said i would give up my cycling career and travelled all the way from Stockholm.

I dont know if i can re-apply to CTC, but at the same time Im not sure whether i want to now. I live with my SO and am a director at Brambles Group so Im comfortable in life, it also means I can easily plan my social life as a semi-professional cyclist (something which i told CTC i would give up to show my committment but it didnt seem to effect their opinion).

My comment to people would be that your career is reflected by the people that know you the best. People will think this comment is arrogant, but I had a lot to offer and the interviewers somehow missed half of what i said and focused on what i felt were trivial insignificant things.

I just checked the CAA standards and it does indeed have to be less than 2 diopters. My glasses don't have my correction written on them but I can see fine without them and the glasses don't appear to make much difference so I guess i'm alright

Alex: The guy tells you 3 or 4 different pitch/speed/engine power combinations during the briefing. I think he told me during the excersise which to use at the beginning, but towards the end i have completely forgotten and ended up having to make large corrections as i was guessing at the combinations. Its easy to fly when you keep to these combinations using small inputs, but gets hard when you stray from them.

Yeh cheers Rich,
As long as it wasnt like 10 combos that would have been horrendous at 7am.!!!

So have you had your medical yet? and sorted out the finance?

Alex.

No dont worry there isnt lists of them
Medical is booked for monday, no idea how that is going to go!
Ive spoken to HSBC about interest rates etc. and worked out approx how much interest to pay back- almost had a heart attack (not good the week b4 a class 1 medical!)- and the insurances come to about 1000 :ooh: . Interview with HSBC on friday.
Passport also had to be sent off to the passport office, 'cos it expires jan-08. Lets hope it comes back b4 apr 4th! Also means i may have problems getting a visa, if at all- stress!
Im getting well psyched for NZ though, guna be awesum!

hehe, yeh 1000 smacaroons for the insurance,,,, thats more than i expected!, if you dont mind me asking... is the interest on that hsbc loan comical??? unsecured loan, young lad flying planes for the first time in a mountaneous region...... hmmmm.... catchingggggggggg $$$$
I had to update my passport too.... it should take 10 days turnaround so you should be fine!! 72 quid for that too tho!! its already adding up!

A grand for insurance?! :eek: That's gone up a little bit from last year... when I took mine out in July it was around £600 for everything I needed.

Dont tell me that keates! the spare 400 could have gone towards the medical...
The loan is 2 3/4 above base, so 8% currently, Variable rate. Assuing u r guna take the whole loan, the interest alone is greater than 45k :* over 7 years. Thats un-official though, its a figure i came up with in Excel and not from the bank its self, probably completely wrong knowing my maths skills!

yeh brambles told me it used to be about 600.... oh well just put it on my tab!!!
Its strange to think that if all goes well, i've got being owned by HSBC to look forward too!!??

theres no way the interest on the loan is going to be 45k surely!!!??? so we are going to have to owe over 100k in total!?! well, i spose its not rly us paying for it if we get a job with an airline, just gona be tied in for the 7 years!! i am right thinking this arent i??i wasnt rly sure how the finance thing worked, we put down the 60k bond, and then when we start flying with an airline they pay it bak for us to the bank??

My understanding is we pay 60K to the airline effectively
The bank charges us interest at 8%var (including 8% on any interest owed)
Airline pays back 1000pm to us for 7 years = 84k
we continue paying the loan for a few years after that untill we personally pay 46k[total interest]-(84k[airlines]-75[total loan]k)=approx 37k :hmm:
Oh well, keep telling my self 'itll be worth it'
Or maybe 'my calc.s must be wrong, ignore it'

As i said, these are only rough calcs, I'd probably w8 till we get the HSBC interview where they will hopefully show up the repayent sched.

From what I understand. The airline pays you back your bond so that you can then pay it back to the bank. The airline doesn't really loose out on it though because you will be on reduced pay for those 7 years.

The whole thing is very confusing and it's hard to understand who exactly is holding the money at any specific time.

Interest Rate
 

CTC said the interest rate was around 4% at the Stage 2 presentation, but this has probably increased with the recent base rate hikes.

Worth finding out from CTC whether the Airline's repayments are to cover the entire 60K + Interest then? If yes, then that would be fine, no sweat. If the repayment's fixed at £1000 per month, that's a different deal.

I am assuming here that if you take the 4k for the foundation plus the 10K living for two years, you'll be paying compound interest on the whole lot. On joining the airline and commencing repayments, you'll then personally have to pay back the 14K + interest. That's just like being a student again.

Which branch of HSBC do you have to go to for th loan/interview?

I can't believe you guys are signing up for this without fully understanding the finances!!

You borrow the £60k, plus additional if you need to.

You pay this to CTC...

When you complete the course, the bond is then transferred to the airline.

The airline pay you £1000 a month for 7 years, adding up to £84k, which is roughly the £60K plus interest, but obviously as interest rates have gone up recently and may fluctuate in the future, the airline's payment may not fully cover the interest. Anything additional you borrow is your problem, not the airlines.. so you will have to pay that from net salary.

So you get an extra £12k a year on top of salary. But, taking easyjet as an example, cadet starting salary is £24k... direct entry salary is £36k, difference being £12k... so makes no difference to airline.

This is not far removed from what I understood the deal to be. And it's not a bad deal. Compare this with having to have a secured loan to get into FTE or OAT or whatever. There's loads of us who can't secure a loan.

Sure there's risk in the deal, but you takes a risk walking your doggy (cliché number 1!). Everyone who enters aviation these days takes risk and pays money.

7 years is a long time but like any loan, if you can throw in an extra £100 a month from your own money you'll save a lot on interest over the period, and the airline keeps giving you £1000 a month on top. If you manage to repay the bond earlier than the 7 years this way, you'll be accessing your direct entry salary earlier. Short term pain, long term gain (cliché number 2!).

The long term view is a reason to be extremely careful about how much you borrow/spend on top of the 60K, but now I'm just stating the obvious.

One more thing to mention for those who are just graduating uni with debts before joining CTC, is to do a little future forecast of how much they'll need to repay on their student loans once they start as an FO in 2 years' time. I dunno how the new scheme works but that nasty repayment could really cut into your funds. Best to work it out beforehand and know what to expect.

I was talking to a guy on my stage 3 selection yesterday who knew a girl who had flown out last weds, apparently the loan w/interest works out at £104,000 in total, that was including living costs as well.

Dont take this as gospel though, just what i heard.

I wont worry about it yet though, gotta pass stage 4 first lol