Student Loans and Pilot training

[flyboy-nz]

No more flying for me

As much as I want to be a pilot and having put myself through great deal of trouble I have decided to discontinue my training.

I have been convinced by the lack of positive feedback about the shape of the industry and after recieving feedback from many pilots have decided to call it a day.

I have a ppl now so I guess I got something out of it.

Now here I am 20 and looking for guidence in life. I just gave away the one thing I lived for because I know that even if i pump gase for the rest of my life I wont have debt hanging over me.

I guess I have to start again, decide what to do with life

Thanks to all those people who have helped me out making this decision

Happy flying to the rest of you

flyboy-nz signing out

[anti-skid]

good grief

fb-nz,
Remember being a pilot is just a JOB which eventually
has low hours and pays well. GA guys tend to be a
little grumpy as they are on low wage, high hours!

However good things come to those that work hard
and wait. We all get despondent from time to time-
dont give up, you'll regret it one day

[anti-skid]

Jack Sprat,

Any idea which school/schools have recieved the
letter? Any new info?

[kev2002]

flyboy-nz

You don't have to have a student loan to get your license mate. Do what I'm doing. Work your butt off and pay for it. Extremely rewarding when you get that ticket in the mail (even if you are a little older than the Ardmore crowd). It'll also motivate you to pass your exams first time because you know full well how much it will cost in time and money to repeat any.

You talk about how your parents are not in the greatest position financially. Tough, neither are mine. You're 20, take responsibility for your life and work for it yourself.

If you want it bad enough you'll do it. Without wanting to sound too harsh I think you need to grow-up up a bit and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

The rest is up to you.

Best of luck

[flyby_kiwi]

anti-skid,
Having originally thought the rumour was complete B#$@%T, I have now been told by more than one person that there may be some truth behind it. Apparently there will still be student loans but they will be limited to an unknown amount - maybe 5k maybe 10k?
NOTE however than this is across the entire tertiery board so Av. students will be in the same boat as Med. students and commerce students regardless of wheather it is a Tech/Uni etc. Having said that I would have expected such news to have been in the newspaper so maybe the goss is not all that credible afterall - I would suggest it would be a case of watch this space for now.

[skidbiter]

here's Steve Maharey's contact details if someone wants to attempt to get some answers:

Email: [email protected]
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

[currawong]

I'm with Kev F Boy.

We are not all rich kids or ex-military.

Do it the old fashioned way. Get to Oz and work in a mine or similar for a year or two and get cashed up.

Then if the climate is right jump in!

Call it phase one of the selection process.

If you really want to work in this industry, you will work in this industry. If not, you won't.

Remember, some of the folks doing the hiring did it the hard way too.

Good Luck.

PS Keep hold of some of that cash - entry level pay is not great.

[jamup]

The Idiot loan

Ohh This loan susten is a waste of money ,, cant beleive evry Tom dick and harry wants to be pilots, everybody wants to be C cats build up Hrs and go abrod, they think its easy ,,, My A**,,, even the people who havt got there 10th grade wants to be pilots , just look at the nZ flight schools, lots of timewasters, you look at them ,,, even the Instrutors know and the Senior staff knows,,, but the college had to do because this is on eof the way to get the money ,, end of the day NZ government will get screwed when these people leave the country with out paying the loan even now Young Kiwi kids say that they leave ,,,,, and guess what The Aussis start comming to NZ because of that ,,,

[anti-skid]

Yeah,,, some,, dnt,, evin, ,have,,,, basec,, grammir,,
, skills! yu must ned ,,thit ,,too be an INSTRUTOR!?

[stillalbatross]

But you have to take your hat off to the likes of AFS. The govt changed the rules, they have been in a prime position to make an absolute killing and if the 38 million is even remotely correct they must have pulled 10 or 15 of it. Remember when flying clubs/schools in NZ continually struggled to make ends meet and the whole thought of turning a tidy profit was unheard of? The current climate has probably made multimillionares out some shareholders. Be interesting to look at a graph of the statistics of loan numbers approved and amounts. I wanna start a flying school. It is a little peculiar in that unlike say, a vet, there is a lot of money involved but the time and effort required isn't proportional. What about a student loan for a racing drivers course? How much further on in the lots of money required/small window of opportunity field is that? Plus flying doesn't have any basic level of education required, so you could start when you were 15 if you wanted to (ppl at 16 etc.)

[flyby_kiwi]

Without jumping into the defence of schools vs schools, profit organisations vs non-profit, bear in mind there are some school(s) that have had full funding loans for years, once it became avaliable for alot more organisiations more schools started to appear presumably based on the ability to generate buisness from the loans. AFS Im lead to believe were actually one of the last schools to adopt the idea of full funding.

Some one asked the question a while back on this thread or another... Could the loans be the saviour of smaller schools/clubs?
Possibly.

Remember that at the end of the day...
1)Everones out to make a living.

2)Like a mortgage the student loan is intended to be paid back even if it does take 25years.

3)Its the individuals choice to take one out.

4)Med. students etc go off overseas leaving thier debt behind.

5)Med. students etc rack up a huge debt with no job offer at the end.

6)Points 4 and 5 therefore are not only unique to av. students.

7)Aviation student loans ARE too easy too get and THIS is what the problem is.

(The writer of this message does not own a school/work at a school/have a loan )

[flyboy-nz]

Student Funding pulled

I have heard about and seen documents supporting the fact that the student loan scheme covering pilots has been pulled from the shelves.

The story goes .. A flying school in NZ was unhappy about the fact that schools like AFS are now able to provide full funding for there students.

This particular school/establishment complained to the goverment and subsequently it has meant that ALL funding has been pulled

My understanding is that students already within the scheme are able to finish there courses but they will be excepting no other students from Jan 2004

I have heard this is not only effecting Aviation , but Medical and Law

Well Well Well.

What will become of the industry now .. Good or Bad .. ?

****************************************************
Disclaimer..

I can not be held responsible for my comments , they are based on what I have seen and heard and may not infact be the true or correct. This information cannot be duplicated without the permission of the writer.
****************************************************

[anti-skid]

I wonder why other fields (med & law) have been affected?
As far as I understood, med students had to- if school leavers
have excellent school grades and pass an interview!
i.e very different to flying schools!
I did read in the herald that the govt were introducing an enrolment cap of 2002 figures +15% for tertiary providers,
not canning loans all together.

All a bit interesting really

[currawong]

So where does this leave you F boy?

Are you in or out?

Are you going to make some other rich or are you going to take charge of your own destiny?

Would hate to think you are all talk and no trousers.

Just a question. Would like to think the current crop are as keen(and broke) as I was, thats all.

Good luck.

[stick_&_rudder]

Flyboy nz, Get your hand off it! Best you keep pumping gas mate, the industry has enough #@$!heads in it already!

[Cypher]

easy, easy lads..

I've just heard the same rumour too now, from fairly reliable sources outside PPruNe that the student loan scheme is being pulled from 2004 for pilot training...


Anyone care to confirm? This will surely deeply impact the NZ industry...

[Luke SkyToddler]

Right

A lot of headless chicken type behaviour going on here.

What's happened is: the government has announced in the latest budget a 'fees maximum' policy effective as of 2004, that will limit the maximum amount of fees that polytech's / universities etc can charge their students for the privilege of attending. This is a blanket policy that doesn't just cover aviation, but EVERY course at EVERY university & polytech in NZ.

There are slight variations in these maximum fees allowable rules, but generally they have been set at a maximum of $3500 to $5000. There are a couple of exceptions for medicine / vet science etc which can charge up to 10 grand per year or thereabouts.

Obviously, aviation fees run massively in excess of these 'maximums'. As it stands at the moment, it seems that unless the flying schools (or rather, the polytech's & the university who are in charge of the actual funding), can persuade the ministry to make an exception for aviation course fees, they will either have to

a) cross subsidize aviation courses, from fees charged from other courses (fat chance of that )

b) run aviation courses at a massive loss (fat chance of that either )

c) get out of the aviation training / student loan providing game altogether at the end of this year. (Most likely outcome, unless they can persuade the ministry to let them charge what the courses are actually worth. Steve Maharey is apparently fairly philosophically opposed to that idea because it'll set a precedent, and he has also almost certainly got a pretty fair idea of the massive excess of wannabe commercial pilots in this country already, from the previously mentioned ministerial-review-of-aviation thing.)

That's the state of play at the moment, I can tell you that it's come as a bombshell to most of the CFIs in the country who are involved in this student loan gravy train, and I imagine that many of you at flying schools around the country will have noticed lengthy absences from your management staff in the last couple of weeks, because they've all been at some big meeting in Wellington, trying to figure out how they can get themselves out of this one

That's as much as I can work out from having just spend a couple hours on google typing in various combinations of 'aviation' 'fees' 'loan' 'maximum' 'cap' 'government' 'policy' and similar words, you guys go see what you can dig up.

The ministry of education has a lengthy document which spells it all out, I can't seem to copy and paste the page link for some reason but if you go to www.minedu.govt.nz and type 'fee maxima' into their on-page search engine it'll take you there.

[anti-skid]

Nice work LS,
I wonder what certain flying schools will do with
so many instuctors/planes and so few students!
Fast forward two years and see whos left

[Colonel Blink]

An overseas perspective...

As someone for the UK (originally), and now an NZ resident and working in HE (and a student pilot!), here's my sixpence worth.

1) Think yourselves lucky! At least in NZ you CAN get a student loan to fly - you sure as hell can't get one in the UK. Sure, you can get on the BA or one of the other cadet schemes (many of which still require somewhere in the region of NZ$100K to be paid up front) - but you'll be 1 of literally thousands. And you'll only get on if a) you went to the right school, b) daddy is already in the industry or c) your parents have the wherewithall to fund you. Trust me, as someone who went for every scheme in the UK in the early 90's, I have been there at the seminars where the promises of the school re. assistance turned to custard, but the young kids, with the mum dripping in gold and dads Jag in the car park were courted and then accepted (but they could pay)

2) There is no equivalent method of getting a CPL or ATPL in NZ - Air NZ don't have a scheme - the RNZAF - how many places are there, not many.

3) Polytechnics - for each course dollar you pay (excluding flying time) they receive $'s from the Ministry of Education. They don't give a **** about you, so long as the $'s keep coming. My local flying school are seeking to become involved with my workplace - why? Because it is another potential source of income (and as they are just about bankrupt because of the Wananga, they need it)

4) Kiwi lifestyle - seems to me (from my limited experience) to revolve around two things - a) quickly paying off your mortgage and being debt free , and b) doing the big OE. I can understand why people get up tight about debt - remember, there are no pockets in a shrowd!

Commercial flying can open the doors to this, but there is no certainty. The NZ CPL is NOT a JAA licence, so the transferability becomes an (expensive!) issue.

As some reaching their mid-life crisis I WOULD consider a student loan to advance myself, even against the backdrop of the current world aviation scene (but my wife would be off and taking the kids with her). Possibly being a pilot means you remain an optomist.

Flyboy NZ - YOU ARE FAR TOO YOUNG TO EVEN CONSIDER GIVING UP MATE!

Anti-skid - are you related to Anti-skid-on??

[Luke SkyToddler]

For anyone still wondering what's going on, the latest issue of Pacific Wings has an editorial and article that pretty much spells it out.

It had to come to an end as far as I'm concerned, even before student loans came around the flying schools were pushing out about 10 times more pilots than there are jobs, the hour requirements for Eagle and Origin etc. have just been getting more and more ridiculous these last few years, it should never have been allowed to come to this in the first place.

It's just going to go back to the way it used to be : the vast majority of the massey and ardmore flying school muppets will end up working in pak'n'save, just like they were doing before student loans. The truly keen ones will find a way to get the money, will tough it out in GA for a few years and will eventually succeed, just like they've always done.

Hopefully, with the inevitable 60% or 80% drop in trainee pilots coming through the system, the hours required to crack into the airlines will go back to something a bit more believable over the next 2 or 3 years