gbotley, thank you very much for your informative response and also your positivity as like you said there is much negativity on these threads! That's absolute madness about the additional start up costs, is it really appox £4000 or like you suggested more like £2500? How comes BBVA would not lend you the entire loan?? How was you possibly able to find the extra 23,000?? Also how are you considering paying for your type rating fees, will they lend you that money or is £70000 you maximum?? I will certainly read your blog on this matter as this is a considerable risk which will worry me every day! I'm so pleased you are enjoying your training and the placement/employment after training sounds very positive. Thank you for your response, Danny

I think the last few posts have been pretty informative.

I just wanted to give you my thoughts now 4 years on from training.

The loan repayment is tough. I got a job with a large Irish loco a couple of months after finishing my integrated course. Seeing the numbers on a spreadsheet is one thing, seeing them come out of your net pay is another. Mine were roughly 800 during the reduced payment period then 1200 2 years later for the remainder. (That includes £24k for type rating).

As I've said, it is tough, but it is workable. Just be under no illusions as to what you'll potentially be left with each month and do your research. Asking questions here is a good start but plan for the worst case scenario, 6 months, a year? maybe 2 years out of training without a flying job? maybe longer. Things can and do go wrong throughout training that can seriously impact your employability, including just bad luck.

Things may be reasonable in terms of job prospects at the moment, but will they be in 1, 2 or 3 years from now? No one knows.

It is a huge gamble. I spent 3 years with the loco I mentioned and now work for the U.K. Flag carrier earning a pretty decent wage. £1200 out of my net pay still has a pretty significant impact. It worked out for me, and most others I guess. Would I take the gamble again, possibly not?

Do with this info what you will. Just trying to give some perspective on what living with these loans is like. This is based on a reasonably decent salary, do you have a back up plan to make the repayments if the worst should happen?

Excellent advice. Plan for the worst, anything better is a bonus. I've done that and IMO, for an integrated scheme without some sort of loan guarantee, the numbers don't add up. I'm not saying others are wrong, just less risk averse than me.

Also worth mentioning that my negativity on here is not based on any perception of their training, by most accounts they produce excellent pilots.

My views stem more from their acceptance (some could even say encouragement) of airline cadet recruitment practices which show no regard for social mobility and would probably be ridiculed in any other industry. The major flight schools are by no means alone in this and it's unfair to blame them entirely, but they certainly don't help in my opinion.

@dannybuckley8,

Well BBVA's set fees are nothing more than this:

• Application Fee: £650+VAT
• BBVA Legal Fee: £950+VAT

But they are variable on a case by case basis. If they need to conduct additional checks on your property these fees will of course increase given the lawyers they use are based in London which is where the £3000-£4000 comes in as everything must have VAT included that could soon add up.On top of this I also paid around £450 + VAT for our own solicitors / financial advisors to go over everything. You can't simply skip the latter part out as the entire BBVA contract requires the signing to be conducted in front of a registered solicitor of which they must also sign and stamp as witness. This is not a quick loan for car finance you're applying for, it's a mortgage.

Being 23 and having not long completed by BSc degree in I.T. (my fall back plan) there was no way I could put up the security myself as I don't own a home - let alone one with enough equity. Thus, guarantors are required and in my case they are my parents with the property being that of my grandparents. Some may laugh at how stupid that sounds in that i've put everyone at risk with this, but we didn't just jump straight in.. we spent months evaluating everything.. we visited open days.. with spoke with current cadets and past cadets to see how they're managing repayments etc before even contemplating applying.

Once we had, we needed to submit financial information etc to BBVA on the earnings and outgoings of all guarantors. BBVA aims to establish if the guarantors can meet the repayments if you as the trainee can not. In my case, with my parents still having a mortgage and committments of their own, BBVA did not wish to put them in a situation they themselves wouldn't be able to afford. In fact, BBVA wouldn't be allowed to do this by law! As such, the repayments on £70,000 were the maximum in such an eventuality. I initially thought that was game over given the course cost of £93,800, but my brother and parents kindly offered to fill the gap left after my own savings had been considered. I'm very thankful for that to this day - especially as I never asked them to do that.

JulietSierra6 offers some good insight in to the end scenario. It ultimately boils down to how you will live at the end and BBVA know this all too well given the amount of trainees they've now helped. When doing your maths, don't just factor in the repayments. Take an average starting salary for a pilot of about £30,000-£40,000, if not less after tax, and factor in living costs for rent, car, insurances, mobile phone, etc etc as living in places such as London Gatwick won't be cheap either.

Finding the extra £20-£30,000 will be something I'll think about at the time. BBVA do offer type rating finance although there have been issues in the past with those whom already have BBVA loans so i'm not sure what'll happen there. We've explored finance options or the £30,000 prior to me starting which -- again -- involved remortgaging. However, there are many airlines which now part-contribute or completely fund type-ratings and that is becoming more common place over time with Thomas Cook being the latest to join that bandwagon so... one can hope.

Again, hope that helps you!

All in all, I'll quote a previous cadet whom helped me loads in my own endeavour to join CTC, "You need to be in it, to win it. It's the risk you have to take and sure I hate the repayments, but work hard, play hard and boy is it worth it."

gbotley, Thank you very much for your response. All the best with training and your future of course. Happy flying.

hey everyone. hoping this is the right place to post this..
i sat my CTC assessment in the december just gone and passed everything but PILAPT where i only failed 2/6 tests.
id used sky test to practice for PILAPT, but just not enough.
I was wondering whether anyone can give me a definitive answer as to how the crosshairs you fly in the test are set up.. i believe they are like a normal aircraft's controls (left is left, right is right and pulling back on the joystick makes the horizontal crosshair go up, pushing away from you makes it go down). i think where i went wrong was using skytest, where it appears to be inverted for left to be right, right to be left, and pushing away makes it go up, and pulling towards makes it go down..

any help is really appreciated guys as i just wanna cover all bases!
also happy to answer any questions about the selection for those who havent been yet

Goodyear Incident
 

Bit OT but news in today from Goodyear that a CTC DA40 on a solo flight crashed soon after departure while trying to make a forced landing across irrigation lines after an engine failure. Good to see student was well, usual media hype.
But even more proof that ultimately people need as much handling skill as you can get! Get as much flying as you can before/during CTC. You never know when it might come in handy.

CTC's website has now been refreshed as part of their re-branding to become L3. In the section explaining the security bond there is now this new phrase:

I wonder if there is a legal reason for them stating this so clearly?

As I understand it (also, the explanation here), the security bond is:
a) paid to a subsidiary of CTC/L3, the company who conduct your training
b) 'transferred' to an airline if/when you're placed from the hold pool
c) not guaranteed to be repaid, but might be if the airline chooses to
d) if it is repaid, it is likely to be in the form of a tax advantage (essentially an increased personal allowance), your gross salary will not be increased by the security bond amount

In summary, you pay CTC/L3 the security bond. CTC/L3 never directly pay it you back and you might not get it back at all. There might be some financial wizardry which means its not technically paying for training, but it is about as close as it could possibly get. Hence my confusion at their clear statement that it is not.

Is it a mechanism to avoid VAT, which would otherwise have to be charged?

Airline Partners.
 

Hello all,

I'm just curious as to what the hiring situation is currently like at CTC and at which airlines students are currently being placed. I'm aware that patterns change permitting recruitment needs.

With Jet2, TCX and Ryanair all having their own cadet graduate schemes it'd be nice to know if they still take on a fair number of CTC graduates. If not, which airlines are besides EZY and Flybe?

@Maverick97,

Since I started here cadets have been placed with easyJet, FlyBe, AirTanker (A330 commercial charter operations for the likes of Jet2 and TCX long haul), Norwegian, Aurigny and Aegean to name a few.

The bond has recently come under scrutiny from HMRC, affecting at least one airline. Be careful as it may not be available down the line. Be under no illusion you're not sponsored and you pay the full price for the course. The "bond" is just a tax advantage for the individual. If you are based outside of the UK then you cannot claim the tax advantage.

It certainly used to be able to be transferred between participating airlines and I know of several people who have worked for 2 carriers, both repaying the "bond"

Any one attanded the assesment day at 2.6?

did u manage to get the answer? is it the same as pilotaptitudetest.com?

Cadets haven't been placed.
Cadet applied, and got an interview, that is different..

Does anyone have any recommendations for pre-course reading?

I have six months until I start with L3 and have been given access to my Padpilot ATPL iBooks. Do any current or previous cadets have any recommendations on particularly hard topics/ concepts that would be beneficial getting my head around before starting.

I would be in the same position as you Benshaw. I don't have a PPL so might be behind the curve to begin with.

Does anybody know when CTC might be sending cadets to Portugal?

Already started. I believe it's generally Whitetail cadets being sent there over tagged.

benshaw, when do start / what course are you on, I start in about 6 months too?

If I pay for my Integrated ATPL with L3 and then pay for my Type Rating with easyjet for example, will i then have to also pay for line training?