FTE/Flybe MPL 'Part Sponsorship' Scheme 2010
 

Flight Training Europe Jerez

New flybe MPL 'part-sponsorship' is open for application (through the above link) for 6 students starting 25th June 2010. Closing date for application is 28th February.

Good to see an airline willing to invest money in the future of its potential employees rather than imposing slavery contracts on them!

Shame you still have to pay £76k and i dont have that kind of money, otherwise i would of applied!

This is not a sponsorship scheme. Let's be clear on that! You pay 76k for an MPL. You take all the risk. You have no promises from Flybe. All that happens is they monitor your progress, and if you do well, and if they have positions available when you finish, then they will 'sponsor' your type rating. They then take this 'sponsorship' back out of your salary (25k) for 5 years.

So you earn 20k for 5 years, plus increments, and you have to service 76k debt. Some deal!!

This is yet another example of schools and employers manipulating the facts to get wanabee pilots to shell out huge amounts of money, for a licence you can purchase for half this amount if you do your homework.

Caveat Emptor.

If you try to do this with 100% debt, it probably won't work out for you. If you've got £20-30K cash to invest, it's a damn good deal and a great airline to end up with. Because it is part sponsored, it might lead some into a false sense of financial security, so run the sums.

I am not slamming the programme, as I think it's a good one. I am saying you need to put in a chunk of cash for it to be manageable.

Flybe pay for the Type Rating and don't collect this back, so they are loaning £20K at zero interest and funding probably £15-20K in Type and Base Training expenses. This is a very good deal nowadays, but since they only pay £25K, it's the only way it can work for most wannabes. At least Flybe are realistic about it!

Do the math for the 100% debt option as follows:
Calculate the loan payments on £56K (I have subtracted Flybe's contribution from FTE's £76K price but it is a zero interest loan, just not from a bank). Hopefully you can get a 10 year loan or longer on any bank loan you may need.

Calculate then subtract the tax and NI from the £25K salary. Your net pay will be about £1600 pcm. If you have a UK Uni student loan, deduct £75 pcm.

Next, deduct Flybe's £330 pcm loan repayment then the bank's repayment on the £56K loan. I am not providing an estimated bank loan payment because I don't know what terms you might be able to get.

Deduct rent, car running costs, food, insurance, household bills, etc. You probably won't get to the end of the bills before you reach the end of the money if you used £76K of debt (£56K from a bank and £20K from Flybe). The fact that Flybe don't charge interest is great, but the five year repayment period means a larger payment than you'd ahve on a 10 year £20K bank loan, which more than wipes out the net effect of Flybe's zero interest.

If you run the sums again using £20K cash and a £36K bank loan along with Flybe's £20K contribution, the numbers come out very manageable. Put in £30K cash and you'll probably be able to buy a decent new car in the second year of the job.

Flybe have been profitable throughout the downturn, they have drained the hold pool and taken all of the previous year's cadets into type and line training and they have kept recruiting cadets throughout the recession, so the downside risk is probably less here than for any other option outside a full scholarship.

Dr. Eckener doesn't quite have the facts correct. The year one salary is £25K. There will also be a few £K worth of flight pay. If Flybe don't take you on, you do not have to repay their £20K contribution. The salary goes up several £K each year, as per the chart shown if you read the T&Cs in the link on the application page.

I think you need to look at this again. The candidate pays all the 76k. Flybe pay £19,800 in 'additional sponsorship' - ie TR. They then take this 20k back from you over 5 years.

There really is no genuine sponsorship on offer here. You will be servicing a 76k debt with 20k salary. End of story.

Dr. Eckener,

I think you are wrong, but I see how you could read it that way. This is not how they ran it last year and they are one of the few honourable airlines left, so I doubt that they have just raised the cost by £19,800. If they have, they should expect that the successful candidates will withdraw once they crunch their numbers.

A quick call to Flybe or FTE tomorrow should clear this up. In previous year's they paid the £19,800 to FTE/OAA/Cabair, etc., so it definitely wasn't for the type rating.

If I am correct, you still repay the Flybe contribution, therefore the statement that you pay £76K is factually correct, while still confusing.

Furthermore, I submit for consideration the fact that Flybe have never charged for type training, not even when they hire self-sponsored wannabes on the back end of their course. They use a three year decreasing bond for type training, but they have never done SSTRs.

Not for an MPL, you can't. Maybe an ATPL.

The wording is:-

"students will undergo a fully Flybe funded Q400 Type Rating course.

In addition to the support outlined in the above paragraph, those successful for the Partially Sponsored Airline Scheme will receive an additional sponsorship from Flybe of GBP £19,800.00," (my italics)

ie Flybe pay for the type rating and give the student an additional £19,800 towards the FTE fees of £76,000. At least that is how I read it.

You missed a bit out.

Seems fairly clear cut.

As I stated - no risk to Flybe. You pay, they merely 'watch'.

OK, so I might have missed out a bit of flight pay on offer, and granted over 5 years the base salary rises by 7k, but it is still poor value.

Who wants an MPL? Useless for anything if Flybe change their mind!!

Although I agree it is badly represented on the website, in the previous year of running the MPL at Jerez the cost to the student was £56k, flybe contributing the remaining £19,800. This is then repayable over 5 years from your wage. So in actual fact you are paying £76k in total, but the amount you will have paid after leaving training is £56k. The remainder is paid back in the form of a reduced wage for 5 years. The type-rating is also fully funded by flybe (provided you don't leave them within 3 years).

Anyone wanting to apply is well advised to very carefully crunch their numbers to make sure they can afford it, following the helpful advice given by Adios. In my personal opinion, £56k and a reduced wage is a pretty reasonable deal from an airline for a licence and a type rating these days. It is not without risk however, there are still large amounts of money and debt involved so anyone applying should give this a lot of consideration!

Pretty accurate analysis.

You pay £56k, they pay £19,800. I would say that for 6 students flybe have taken a risk of nearly £120k. It's not exactly peanuts.

Up until you get an unfrozen ATPL at 1500 hours perhaps, but how are flybe going to recover their investment in you if they do change their mind and cast you aside?

Eckener, you have STILL got it wrong. Dear John has it right.

I enquired today and was told the £19,800 offsets the £76K price of the training done by FTE. Flybe pays it directly to FTE just like last year. They also fund the type rating, which they deliver at their own training center and this need not be repaid unless you leave before 36 months service.

Last year Flybe required the FTO to guarantee conversion to CPL/IR if the CAA or JAA withdraw approval for MPL or if Flybe goes to the wall and can't type rate the cadets. I haven't seen mention of this so far this year.

Eomni,

After your training, you will graduate with either a CPL or a MPL, depending on which route you choose. Both licences eventually mature into ATPLs. Be very careful about muddling up a CPL and ATPL - they are not the same thing.

How would either route affect your future career? It all depends on how long you would expect to stay at Flybe, or any other operator, before you planned to move on to the next stage of your career.

After you have achieved approx 1500hrs and met the eligibility criteria to upgrade your licence (whether MPL or CPL), you will have the ATPL exactly the same as every other pilot. Once you have the ATPL, most operators are only interested in your experience and aircraft types, not which route you chose for training. At Flybe, under 'normal' circumstances in a healthy aviation marketplace, gaining your ATPL would take between 2 and 2 1/2 years on average. Regardless of your chosen training route, at this stage you would still be bonded to the airline.

If the MPL interests you, research it carefully. If all you desire is an airline job in a multi-crew environment, then it may be the licence you wish to pursue. If however, you wish to have the opportunity to indulge in single pilot ops (whether commercial or just for fun), then you would have to conduct additional training and testing in order to qualify for the necessary ratings, which are granted automatically with a CPL. Given that you are having to borrow 100% of your funding, I very much doubt you would be able to afford any such indulgences as private GA flying anyway.

As to the respective risks associated with both schemes, at present it is probably 6 and two 3s. The MPL comes with a commitment of training support and as close to a guarantee of employment anyone can get in the current job market, but at the cost of limiting your employment options in the short term to one type. The CPL leaves more doors open to you, but at present, there are no jobs behind the vast majority of those doors, unless you wish to buy a type rating and place your trust in the hands of some very unscrupulous operators.

It is possible to convert the MPL to a CPL at any stage, for a cost, and the training providers should all be offering this as an option.

Eomni,

Any one who takes an MPL course and would like to be able to fly single pilot for pleasure can do it pretty easily. The CAA will accept ATPL theory exams in lieu of PPL exams, so adding a PPL after completing MPL would be fairly easy. If the MPL syllabus includes a 150NM cross country during the single engine phase, I would imagine a PPL skills test with an examiner is all you'd need.

The MPL doesn't tie you to a single type or to a single operator (for example, most of the Sterling MPL's got picked up by Ryanair when Sterling failed), though the bond will achieve the latter. Last year, Flybe required their FTO's to guarantee that they would fund and deliver training to single pilot CPL/ME/IRMCC standard if Flybe went to the wall. I don't know if they are requiring it this year, but FTE's web site makes no mention of it this year.

Paying for a job is pathetic.

wonder will these mpl'ers be chosen ahead of the atpl'ers(non sponsored) that flybe have sitting in their hold pool...

Why would they sponsor them if they had no intention of employing them?

I don't think Flybe have anyone sitting in a hold pool at the moment. They just typed a group in October and another group in January.

Flybe definitely still have pilots in the hold pool.

And yes, the MPL students, along with any other Flybe-sponsored or mentored cadets take priority over any other pilot in the Flybe hold pool.

ya partly guessed, I am in the non sponsored hold pool for last year...i knew that it was going to be a wait, but the thought of another year is depressing...working a crap job with most of my money being spent on hold pool currency hours....with no definate outcome :\
That aside still counting myself lucky to be in flybe hold pool :ok:

Ben,

All though not directly related to the thread, I hope you have a back up plan that doesn't just just rely on being in the flybe hold pool.

Over the last seven or eight years flybe was, to a large extent a "training airline", pilots would join, do a few years on the dash 8, unfreeze their ATPL (or get a bit of command time if they had the hours), and then be off to the RHS of a jet with the likes of Monarch, Easy, Thompson fly etc.

That route, with the down turn in the industry and the growth of flexi-crew has effectively now stopped. I left them in 2006 and the month I left they had 30 resignations - at the time that was about ten percent of their pilot workforce in one month. Now, with sixty something turboprops and fifteen embraers, no where else for dash 8 captains to go outside of the company, and training appointments - because of the huge jump in pay - now being dead mans shoes, it is unlikely that they will need thirty pilots in a year.

They have a vested interest in the MPL scheme graduates and will almost certainly take them first. At the risk of upsetting you (and the majority of the rest of the low houred fATPL who read this) I think they are correct. In my opinion the Colgan Q400 crash would not have happened if the F/O had been through an MPL scheme on the Q400 sim, as the greater familiarity with the aircraft and it's systems would have helped in recognising the problems that were occuring.

However, that isn't the point. The important thing is to make sure there is something else you could do. Why not call the people in charge of recruitment and see if they would accept your doing an FI course as meeting the currency requirements. Once you had done it (if you can stretch to funding it) you can keep current whilst instructing, improve your own standards and skills, and also gain hours towards the time when you might be of interest to other operators as well as to flybe.

Is Flybe any good though?
 

I fly every 2 - 3 months with Flybe, and I always take an opportunity to try and talk to the Pilots. The last 2 crews I met weren't very encouraging.

The last one I saw however was the worst. They had a big grim on their faces when I entered the cockpit. Although I was very joyful (as I always am, willing to ask lots of questions), I just wanted to know how the Job was and how they liked working for Flybe because the dispatcher wanted me to get off ASAP!

Both pilots agreed that I should certainly not do it for the money, and they also said "I guess it's ok" to work for Flybe.

This didn't make it sound like I ever wana fly for Flybe, considering I'll might doing Southampton - Manchester - Leeds everyday, isn't exactly the most exiting trips.

You'd think that if you have to fly **** routes in mostly **** weather, you'd get paid more to stay well concentrated and aware that a crash is only around the corner of a C-nimbus!

I'm sidetracking here, but my main point is does anyone think flybe is an ok company to work for, or they just have good PR people that make them sound good by, for example being "so green because they put little stickers next to their doors saying how much CO2 they produce"!!!

As I come to my final year at Uni, I'd like to attempt my luck at with something if I don't get a graduate job straight away, but is flybe really the way to go?

and I have one more question. At what stage would it be still acceptable to dash out the application process without making a bad name for yourself? For example if you're selected, can you say on the 24th June.. "oops sorry don't wana do it in the end"?

Also, how come the MPL is £ 81k if you go through FTE directly, and not 76k like advertised on the flybe specific scheme? Is it to do with the Type Rating Flybe are paying for that makes the 5k difference?

Thanks a lot

Checkxp, theres no point even begining...i think what everyone is forgeting is that if you want to start a career as an airline pilot right now what else are you going to do?? This is just about as good as it gets right now. Flybe are a good company, what ever problems you have with paying for training etc. what else are you going to do??

I'm graduating (hopefully) in June, so I can get a job with a starting Salary of 25k - 30k. My big worry though is my age. I don't want to work for 5 years, to find out I'm too old then to start training as a pilot.

The thing about flybe is though, to my perception they're worse than ryanair at coning you to stuff (I'm talking as a passenger now). With Ryanair, you pay for what you get. With flybe, there's always some hidden something, like a ****ter bag allowance, or nearly no cabin baggage allowance, but also other stuff like claiming "low fare carrier" when their fare are very high, even without the added extras such as bags.

I'll try to do the same comparaison from a pilot's point of view. I think again with Ryanair you money, and you pay for everything regarding to training. When flybe starts to pay for stuff that you have to pay back but still call it a scholarship, that's just taking students for a bunch of donkeys with a carrot in front to get them going. Sorry for the metaphor, but is it really much better than going straight through Oxford?

By the way I'm not trying to put down flybe, but this is from personal experience, and I want to be careful and know the field in which I want to lay a foot on before committing big bucks!

Thanks for your quick response though.

"Both pilots agreed that I should certainly not do it for the money, and they also said "I guess it's ok" to work for Flybe."

- Maybe they'd had a **** duty, tech probs that day, wx probs, tired, etc etc ????? I love my job (not Flybe), but I'm based abroad on reduced percentage at the moment, so even though I love flying commercially, I too would also say "I guess it's ok working for my mob"...

"This didn't make it sound like I ever wana fly for Flybe, considering I'll might doing Southampton - Manchester - Leeds everyday, isn't exactly the most exiting trips."

- Be nice to have that luxury of choosing your airline based on the more glamourous routes. Good luck with that one!!!!

"You'd think that if you have to fly **** routes in mostly **** weather, you'd get paid more to stay well concentrated and aware that a crash is only around the corner of a C-nimbus!"

- Really???

The reasons I reply here is primarily to question your "vision" or general understanding of the reality of airline life, regardless of it being Flybe or anybody else? Given the nature of some of your statements, it just made me wonder do you really know what you are getting into, with such vast amounts of money at stake.

You take any airline you MIGHT have a shot of getting into (i.e not Virgin etc), more the likes of Ezy, Ryan etc etc, are not going to be too dissimilar to Flybe. Routes aren't too dissimilar, pay (or whatever the airlines call your "remuneration" in these days of PTF schemes) isn't going to be great wherever, so yes you've mentioned your concerns with Flybe (and I appreciate you are not putting them down), but your concerns surely will be relevant to any outfit you as a low houred newbie pilot will be eligible for.

Just a thought.

Rgds, FMS.

"Both pilots agreed that I should certainly not do it for the money, and they also said "I guess it's ok" to work for Flybe."

CheckXP,

Ask lame questions and you often get lame answers. Asking a pilot how the job is seems to me a lame question, but given the naivete Frankly Mr. Shankly is calling you out for, it was probably the only question you knew to ask.

It seems to me that what you need to do is formulate a list of decent open ended questions. Here are a few to get you started:

What is Flybe's typical roster pattern?
How long on average does it take a 250 hour newbie to unfreeze their ATPL with Flybe?
What are the top three things you like about working for Flybe?

If you came on Pprune and asked "Is pilot a good career and how do you like your jobs?" what kind of answers do you think you'd get? I think there is far more negativity here than you'll encounter on most flight decks, so why come here expecting to get bucked up?

As for your last question; if you are this wishy washy about it, you probably can't bluff your way through an interview with Flybe's HR manager, so there is not likely to be an offer for you to turn down on 24th June. It would be a really shabby thing to do to the other lads that have a far more positive attitude about Flybe and this opportunity and it would get you black listed at Flybe and FTE (for making them look bad), so don't bother applying unless you can get considerably more excited about it. This is a very small industry and you don't want to alienate anyone before you even get a foot on the first rung.

Thanks for your replies. The reason I don't have a good attitude to flybe is partly because I fly with the rather regularly, and they're not very customer focused, and more like ryanair where you're a bunch of cows in a herd, except that you pay 3x more than on ryanair.

BUT also because I think that the Pilot job is becoming a less and less prestigious job. As someone posted on another forum this video: "YouTube - US Airways Pilot Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger Speaks to Congress: "My Pay Has Been Cut by 40%" that the industry are making the wrong moves, and decreasing salaries is not a good thing. As someone mentioned earlier on this forum: , and that's because you have to refund Flybe the 19.8k they lend you out of a 24k salary (BEFORE TAX!!!), and the rest to a bank which you probably won't be able to start refunding until 3years at flybe (so 5years after you took the loan), with all the interests that you will incur isn't exactly a good plan.

So I know that I would really want to become a Pilot. Everytime I fly as a passenger I'm excited (I fly quite a lot, about 30times a year), and for many other reasons, but as I also was a student for 5 years, I don't really want to live in more debt, always worrying about money!

I hope you can understand where I'm coming from, and I'm not coming here to get "bucked up", but to find out really a way that's viable for me to do get into the industry of my dreams.

And as you said, I didn't apply this time yet because I want to clearly identify my options first. So yeah, if anyone has any advice or any comments on my attitude, please fire away, i won't take offence.

Thanks

CheckXP,

Nothing at all wrong with your attitude, and after all you're looking for advice/opinions etc from here like alot of us did when starting out so good on you.

The main point I was making was that alot of these schemes out there now require some kind of pay to fly lark in some form or other, so the actual "way in" (and rewards) at the moment is not too different between various operators.

But just to make sure your understanding of the industry you are prospectively getting into, "warts and all", on a daily basis, is well researched and you know what to expect i.e it becomes a job like any other in a way , and there will be a point where you say "yeah this outfit is ok I suppose" just like the Flybe guys.

Anyway, good luck with all.

Rgds, FMS.

You seem to be saying that paying back the loan "BEFORE TAX!!!" is poor arrangement. Actually it is far better than paying it back after tax. To pay back, say, £4000 per year before tax you have a salary reduced by £4000. To pay back £4000 after tax (and NI contributions!) you would have to earn something like an additional £5500 or more!

Are you sure!

This usually means you get a reduced salary which equates to paying the loan before tax ie you are not taxed on the amount of the loan repayment.

Does the CTC scheme not have some clever tax so that it's effectively paid pre-tax?

Anyone received the email for the next round?

I still can't work out whether this is a good scheme or not as £80k is a huge amount of money to pay (post tax)!

cheers

I'd disagree.

Back onto the scheme, the whole subject of this thread, does anybody have any idea about any previous experience hours restrictions? I'm aware that in the OAA flybe mpl, candidates could not have had more than 60 hours flight experience, but there is no mention of any restriction on this particular scheme.

I'm on stage 2 of 4, haven't heard anything back after submitting my answers, but applications only closed on sunday?

Groundloop:

I know that paying back before tax is better, I was emphasising on the fact that the 24k are before tax!!! And that's quite a poor salary if you ask me. That's all I was saying. Obviously paying back something before tax is good, but in this case, it's written nowhere that that is the case. For all I know, you would need to pay it out of your wages after tax was deduced.
I'm sorry I know I didn't express myself well on that, but I was quite tired when I worte it as I work 8 until 19.30 everyday in a Lab these days, so I'm a bit tired when I write stuff at midnight.

Put1992:

when you say stage 2, you've just submitted the small online form, or did you have an extra thing to do already?

Stage 1: Is The Small Online Application, Asking Your Personal Details Etc.

Stage 2: Is The Set Of 7 Questions Asking About Your Life Experinece(I.e, Give An Example Where You Where Undepressure, Etc..)

Stage 3: You Fly Out To Exeter And Do The FTE Assessment And Interview

Stage 4: You Fly Out To Exeter Again And Do Another Interview But This Time With Flybe Management Crew.

Apparently when this scheme was last open at OAA, candidates who got through to stage 3 did not have to complete the school tests again if they had recently done the skills assessment with the Oxford independently..does anyone know if that applies here?:confused:

Yes, this should apply here (it has been done before) but I think you would need to contact FTE to arrange this.

I submitted the online form, and then got sent a username, password, and link for the questions of stag 2 the next day.