easyJet Airbus 319 LGW F/O
 

Good Morning,

I would love to hear from anyone who has recently been through the Type-Rating with easyJet on the Airbus 319 and now based at LGW.

What was the whole experience like from application through to Line Training? I am about to commence training with Cabair at Cranfield and am very interested in applying for this scheme upon completion.

Also, what are the starting salaries after joining easyJet through this route?

Any information would be great.

You seem to be committed to a £70,000 training spend without having done much research. You're by no means alone in this.

Good luck,

WWW

Don't try to run before you can walk !!

TJ

Like you say, no doubt I will run (or walk) in to a big brick wall at some point after I have graduated :ugh:, but Law of Averages surely suggest that getting a job has to happen sooner or later!

I have done research and to me the statistics showing employment from similar Integrated ATPL courses seem to be reasonable at the moment, besides I have wanted to do this for as long as I can remember and I wouldn't stop for anything.

I am really trying to get an idea as to whom the best operators are.

People from Cabair seem to be getting into BA at the moment but I'm not sure if that's for me?

Thanks Guys.

FMSData - I don't wish to be unkind but it seems possible that you are yet another lamb who has wandered into the wolves enclosure.

Are you aware that a great many people who attend an Integrated flying school never achieve their goal of airline flying?

Would you be able to hazard a guess at the numbers?

Are you aware of how hard it is to find a first job when you have less than 200hrs?

Would you be able to afford a Self Sponsored Type Rating?

Please do use this forum to gather information to inform and assist you in your pursuit of becoming a professional pilot. It is a uniquely valuable resource. But please understand that you seem to have selected both a career and a training path based on alarmingly flimsy research.

WWW


(not that there's anything wrong with Bedfordshires largest flying school)

No disrespect mate but you should grab any first job with both hands! Only if you've got a few offers can you be a tad selective. I'd hate to think how many wannabes would snap BA's hand off for a job!

Just my 2 cents worth. Good luck at Cabair.

Cheers

S

WWW; could I ask what your current situation is in the industry, are you an enthuiast or current pilot? I assume you had great difficulty getting a job, if so could you tell me how long it took?

Cheers.

scruggs; good point, I'm sure I wouldn't give up an offer from any airline. What I'm trying to understand is where is the best job out there? And from what I've read easyJet appears to be where most pilots sing their praises.

Cheers.

I'll take you're advice by shutting-up and keep looking.

Sorry Everyone

Don't beat yourself up about asking what you might see as reasonable questions. Harsh words you might get on here but that's the nature of a faceless internet message board.

Keep your eye on the web you'll be surprised how much info is out there. Go and look at some schools and be confident that you can make an informed choice. But scruggs (when is scroggs back I wonder) presents a valid point - take what you get. I'd pilot a flying carpet is someone paid me for the priviledge.

Horgy

Just a reality check!
 

You won't be coming out of any course and choosing who you work for - you'll be coming out of your course and desperately hoping to get a job without having to fork out another £20k for a type rating.

For what it's worth I did the Oxford Integrated route, averaged first time passes at 87%, Passed all flight tests first time (partial IR) and it took me 18 months to find a job on a turboprop (and I had ten years working for an airline in Management as staff behind me!)

There are few professions with such a massive oversupply of candidates to jobs even in the good times (acting and being a rock star are the only two that spring to mind as probably worse!)

Desk-pilot

FMS Data,

Just with regard a couple of points you have made:

"People from Cabair seem to be getting into BA at the moment but I'm not sure if that's for me?" - If you look at the link below to the Cabair employment statistics on their website, you will see that only 1 graduate has gone to BA this year.

http://www.cabair.com/careerpilot/graduates.htm

Also, regarding your query on Easyjet, I believe you have to have 500 hours multi-crew experience, and even then you have to pay for your type rating. See the link below:

http://www.easyjet.com/EN/Jobs/Pilot...hipscheme.html

So this may be a reality for your second commercial airline.

If you are going to Cabair then your most likely destination would be Flybe. They have strong links in to this airline, although you would have to perform well in groundschool (ave. over 85%in exams) and acheive first series passes in your flying exams. Also, just to make you aware of reality, if you do acheive a position with Flybe, you would have to be prepared to fly from any of their bases....

Hope that's helped open your eyes a little.....

Please close thread. Gone down the standard PPRUNE route.....:ugh:

Actually I'd like this thread to remain.

If the Wannabes forum had but one purpose in life it would be to act as a reality check for people whose only source of information and advice is OATS/CABAIR/FTE and the rest of the Vested Interests that sell flying training.

That in this day and age people still wander into the world of Wannabeeism, order some brochures, then decide to spend £70k at a school because they think it will get them into BA actually staggers me.

I put more research into which type of ballpoint I buy next week.

For the most recent year (2006/7) the UK CAA issued 1146 new CPLs (Aeroplanes). We can assume that each one of these was to someone aspiring to become an airline pilot. More than this number of course start a CPL course but some people give up along the way.

Lets say that every one of these newly minted CPL holders gets all their exams and their IR and MCC and enters the job market in the UK.

You have 1146 CV's being added to the pile on each Chief Pilots desk.

There are 15,477 pilots holding UK CPL or ATPL (Aeroplanes) licences and 204 of them are currently aged 59 and likely to be retiring next year.

Assuming the average professional pilot starts work at 25 and finishes at 60 he has a 35 year working life and therefore 15,477 divided by 35 means there is a likely replacement level required of 442 new pilots each year.

Yet each year around 1,200 are churned out by the flying schools.

Ah! I hear your cry, but what about expansion?

Indeed, some airline are expanding and adding more aircraft to their UK fleet. Next year you might see EZY and RYA add 10 more airframes to the UK fleet and possibly the same from all the other operators combined. With 12 pilots needed per airframe that is (20 times 6) 240 new jobs to add to the 442 retirees. So with 1147 newly minted pilots chasing 682 jobs you can see that competition is tough indeed. And there are already unemployed pilots out there.

And then of course, the elephant in the room, the European pilots who all speak English and would be delighted to get a first airline job in the UK. You are up against all of them. By way of compensation you are of course able to apply for any flying job on the continent as long as your German/Swedish/French/Spanish/Czech is up to the required standard. Which it isn't.

So.

As you can see, just taking the most basic 15 minutes with an internet and the back of a fag packet we can prove that an awful lot of people who pay an awful lot of money to learn to fly NEVER EVER manage a career as a pilot.

This is not something that I have ever heard or seen pointed out by any flying school.

Quite the opposite in fact.

Good luck,

WWW


ps The job market now is as good as it generally gets and will probably deteriorate. However there have been much worse times to consider starting commercial training.

WWW thanks for the reality check, but I'm going to continue my training as an Airline Pilot.

Like you've there are lots of unemployed pilots, mostly with good experience behind them. But would applying for a TR with CTC to enter their hold pool be just as bad to get an interview/assessment for?

Worst comes to worst I could pay for a TR, which has has its problems of course (what a/c) but I know Ryanair do a Self-Sponsored TR. Does anyone know how much attention this SSTR gets at Ryanair - are their lots of pilots prepared to pay for TR?

I know I started the thread abit poor, but I have done my research - the problem was is that it was mainly the level of exam and IR success that made me choose where to go, as all the main schools showed reasonable levels of employment.

PPRuNe is the only place I have found that this sort of information. Getting this information is great but I had no idea at the levels of unemployment.

Please continue to post as I'm grateful for help.

PS. Anybody have a different method of obtaining a job? - hour build until 1500 hours etc...

You might want to make absolutely sure that you have examined the Modular option in enough detail. The savings can add up to the cost of a SSTR, ie around £20k.

How are you getting the money for this training? Will you be in debt or will the people you borrow it off be in trouble if you can't repay them for many years?

WWW

welshman, ur fag packet maths is excellent! :D
If only we'd all seen this at the start of training. So it would seem that just under half of all wannabes never get there. What a sorry tale indeed, the only winners are the flying schools.

I've been looking into training alot for the past few years. Towards the beginning the flashy OAT brochures etc would sway me towards them and make me think they are the "gods" of flight training. Now slightly older and more wiser. I read the posts on this forum, many of them from people like WWW, scroggs, "the usual suspects" who have first hand experience of the industry.
Going modular you could complete everything in the same space of time but with 20k saved, then start looking for jobs, then if you have no luck, maybe look into a FI rating, and worse comes worse a type rating. I reckon all 3 of those would amass to an integrated course with OAT or FTE.
Some people go integrated some modular, some get jobs, some don't. Hard decisions again for me :ugh:
Good luck :ok:
Once I finish uni I should have around 20k saved up, mostly consisting of the student loans i took out. So i will need another 20 odd k, my family are supportive and are willing to assist.
The loans have to be paid back when I earn over the 15k threshold, so I won't have banks chasing me left right centre, the money will go when I am earning some, whether it be flying or not.

Its not easy :{

The cost of my training is around £55,000 with a £6,500 budget for living costs. I have a lot of money that I have saved during my time in IT at Scottish & Southern Energy, and from money my parents have put away for me, which means I only need a £20,000 from the bank; the loan has a 2 yr deferral on it which means I don't start paying it back until October 2009 which is 1 year after I finish my ATPL. Its a 9 year term with £300 a Month resulting in £12,000 interest (so paying back £32,000).

I still have the luxury of living at home with my parents when I have finished my training and have no other responsibilities; except my girlfriend - so my expenses will hopefully be low during the hunt for a job. I most likely be getting a temp job in IT soon after finishing my ATPL to help raise more money towards a potential TR etc..

I managed to raise 20k myself during my youth and fulltime employment (selling everything in my bedroom too!) and had 10k from parents, as they good clearly since my dedication, and 10k from my grandads property after he died when I was 5 I think!

I haven't got a 70k loan hanging over my head with £800 pm repayments paying back 100k like some of the guys on here! So this does affect my decision to continue as my potential risk of going into debt is reasonably low as I think I could manage a £300 pm with a temp job. Obviously I don't want to just throw away my cash!

I have worked hard and spent very little money to get this opportunity and it would break my heart to give up now!

Cheers for the continued help and guidance.

Best of luck all.

226 FI rating for aeroplanes were issued by the UK CAA in 2006/7.

It was 266 the year before that.

There is somewhat of a shortage for FI's at the moment though the season is soon to be over.

Good luck,

WWW