"Seemingly, at Leeds university you can do a degree in Pilot studies and get a PPL out of it. As a degree! "

Yes you can, but it will cost you nearly £4-5K by the time you have paid for all the extras like skills test, equipment, medical so it is not for nothing. And then you will have to put up with problems like the flying school used by the uni going bust, delaying your ppl and so your theory exams run out of time and you have to some of them again :mad:, some rubbish courses taught by staff that have never set foot in a plane except maybe when going off to meetings and so cancelling our lectures at short notice:=. If you can put up with all that then go for it!. Lots of thanks to instructors at CFS Teesside for sorting this all out this past year. Sorry to hear that the best lecturer we had on our course is also losing his job. Well done Leeds!:rolleyes:

Although with recent changes to the UAS meaning it is effectively an Air Experience Flight now, I would still bet on it being the best flying (at the elementary level) that you can do....

At least you will be taught properly by military QFIs.:E

Graduated from the management side of that course (basically the same but extra modules and no PPL) and can say that the modules are pretty interesting, and the vast majority are of "university standard". Some did leave a little something to be desired...

Massey University in New Zealand has been running degree courses for commercial pilots and industry positions for almost twenty years!

The weather would be a lot better than Leeds I should think, and it would be less expensive.

http://aviation.massey.ac.nz/massey/...ation-home.cfm

Question for those of you attending Leeds and other similar courses.

Are the modules all "soft skills" or do you get an in depth learning of aeronautical engineering, aerodynamics, electronic systems (avionics) etc. Are the projects all similar as those mentioned earlier or do you for example strip down and re-build a light twin or an old turbine engine, design your own ultralight or whatever.

The son of a Singaporean friend recently finished a masters in Aeronautical Engineering after a bachelors in computer science (software) and was snapped up by Singapore Airlines for a fully sponsored ATPL which was finished in a year and then straight to the right hand seat of a 777. Thats what I call career preparation and SQ obviously agree and feel those skills might be very useful to them as aircraft operations become more technically focused.

On the other hand if you want to study baggage handling and airport security maybe BAA and not BA might be interested :E

When i went through 2 years ago we did modules in aerodynamics, fluid dynamics, Piston engine operations and emissions, Economics, Marketing, CRM, aircraft instruments, combustion and fire/explosions. All with some quite involved maths!

As far as projects goes, my dissertation was about streamlining airport baggage screening to reduce delays and improve the passenger experience. I know people that designed their own light training aircraft and evaluated its flight characteristics in a simulator, there was a group that built a gas turbine engine and then emissions tested it, and some that designed and analysed more efficient wing sections.

After this course i was "snapped up" for a fully sponsored ATPL, and straight into the right hand seat of a turboprop - not quite 777 but its good enough for me! Others that i graduated with have ended up on the Cathay programme, some are with FlyBE, netJets, etc.

Its not a bad course, like so much i'm sure there are aspects that could be improved, but its done me alright. :ok:

Well that's interesting course, they seem to have replaced such things as:

Experimental Aerodynamics
Computational Aerodynamics
Classical Systems Engineering
'Heavy' Structural Analysis and Materials Science
Detailed Control system engineering
etc
etc

with:
CRM
Airport management
Airlaw
Management
etc
etc

Probably an useful choice if you're looking to go flying but not really an Aeronautical Engineering degree so probably not suitable to get a job at Airbus/Rolls/wherever.

Mind you if you can go flying after an Aeronautical Engineering degree...

... son of a neighbour is just off to NZ after doing exactly that. His first choice (sensible chap) was the RAF, but his "functional reach" fell short by several gnat's c%ck hairs, or possibly as much as a spark gap .... isn't that what go-forward levers are for ????

Anyway - you should see the size of his smile, no falling short there! :):)

Out of interest, these pilot studies courses have been running for a few years and thus would have produced a fair few graduates.

Whilst I imagine a number of these graduates are now professional pilots or are studying to that end, what are the other graduates doing?

Have they successfully found employment in spheres outside aviation? How was their degree valued by potential employers? Did these graduates gain a level of kudos against other applicants, by graduating from a pilot studies degree course or did it fail to set them apart from other graduates during the interview process?

These are all genuine questions as I´m curious to see if the pilot studies degree course is appreciated/valued/understood in the outside world.

As an example, there are people who read for an engineering degree at uni (mechanical/aerospace/aeronautical/electrical etc) with a view to becoming a pilot in the long run but, for whatever reason, they do not achieve this aim. A sizeable number then disappear off into the City or go through the milk round process and end up on graduate training programs for large companies because they have found that their degree is held in high esteem by recruiters. I´d like to know if this holds true for pilot studies graduates.

Cheers :)

Looked at Salford when I was applying. Seemed to be a copy of the Leeds degree which has been running longer, looked like a case of bandwagonning to get bums on seats. If Leeds aviation continues down its present route of loosing the best staff staff and courses :E, then Salford may well have the field to itself soon! A pity for those that will have follow us next year:(, the best staff have left. Why is not clear or what will happen to the course next year but at least it will not affect me :ok:. This could have been so much more that it was. The good bits were very good, the bad bits best put in the bin.

As to what happens to those that graduate or hope to graduate, many of us that want to be commercial pilots have secured further training places, but many have other plans. I do not think ther are many degree programmes where everybody gets a jod related to their degree and this one is no exception. I would guess about 15-20% will eventually make it if the experience of previous years is anything to go by.