Czech - got to be good :)

There are JAA FTOs all over JAA-land. I did some research on it. But most won't handle foreign students.

To get the "volume" business you have to set it up properly, with English speaking instructors, etc. This was done in Spain, and to a lesser extent at Egnatia in Greece.

So if Cabair in all its guises and bases has gone for good, what proportion of the UK's training provision does that represent?

And leaving aside the poor souls who have lost money, what does that do to the balance of supply and demand.

Could it be a meat & poison moment?

SGC

The main issue for the CAA is that there is one less organisation to charge their exhorbitent fees.
They were quite happy to see a phoenix Cabair, because they got money for the approvals. No doubt they will be happy to approve the next phoenix for money.

I guess this is why I haven't seen any of the cabair diamond stars and twin stars flying over my house lately.
Sad news for the students losing so much money!

Less than 1%, and that will be replaced in a few weeks. Whilst it is unspeakably awful for the 20 or so individuals whose lives have been devastated, the fact is that the effect of the demise of Cabair on the UK flight training industry is negligible.

As for the responsibility of the CAA, the Authority is required by law to approve any organisation that meets the published requirements. The only requirement related to finance is that, at the time of the approval, "A FTO shall satisfy the Authority that sufficient funding is available to conduct training to the approved standards" (Appendix 1a to JAR-FCL 1.055). Since the 'new and improved' Cabair was approved to conduct training, one must assume that this requirement was met at the time the approval was granted. Any subsequent issues related to the marketing and financing of training courses is a matter for Trading Standards and not for the CAA.

Nothing that has happened has any implications for the safety of flight training and, therefore, is not and should not be the responsibility of the CAA's Safety Regulation Group.

If it is just 1%, who are the other 99%?

If 1% is 20, then the other 99% is 2000. Were there really just 20 ATP cadets in the entire Cabair sausage machine, and are there really 2000 of them in the UK pipeline?

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/175/Flight...rch%202010.pdf

There were 1287 cpls issued last year and 20 of that is 1.5% which sounds not alot.

But when you look at that type of training

Oxford can likely manage about 25-30 a month. Call it 300 a year

FTE 20-25 a month Call it 250 a year.

CTC 20-25 another 250

Cabair wanted 100 this year to survive but could have taken 200


Which is 20% of the capacity for that type of zero to hero training.

There is obviously a new start coming along which has forcast that they can make a go of it in the current market.

The fact is Oxford arn't running anywhere near capacity and neither are FTE or CTC even when cabair were taking next to nothing off them. I doudt very much if any of them are over 60% capacity.

There really isn't enough customers for that particular product type. The modualr trainers are in a similar situation but don't suffer the same large overheads that the big boys do.

Also most modular trainers also have revenue streams from trial flights, PPL training, IMC courses, tailwheel conversions, and aircraft rental - which the integrated providers don't by and large.

G

And don't forget the infamous trial flight revenue.

But to be honest most FTO's doing CPL/IR's and the like don't tend to deal with that side of GA training.

Correct, but that was not the question. "The UK's training provision" is not the same thing as "The UK's zero to hero training provision". If you want a specific answer, you need to ask a specific question.

And to answer peters question there are more than likely over 4000 pilots currently going through the system to come out at the other as CPL/IR MCC. Not all of them will complete.

How many out there with sub 1000 hours and no type rating your guess is as good as mine.


Currently there are in my estimation less than 400 jobs per year being created in the UK and the Irish market. As soon as the loco's fleet purchases have stopped that will drop.

BillieBob,

After your eloquent post, I'm tempted to ask you:

Which organisation is the economic regulator of civil aviation in the UK?

What is the purpose of such economic regulation?

(I'm also tempted to ask how much good economic regulation turned out to be in other areas of business, but this isn't Jet Blast).

Billiebob - I agree with you that the SRG should not be responsible for the trading standards remit, but I feel the CAA (writ large, don't care which department) has a responsibility somewhere within it.

They prescribe where to train for a CPL/IR, there is no competition. I feel there is a moral imperative if nothing else.

Yes, with the CAA having strapped down the training options so tight nobody can move, they cannot really say with a straight face that they are not responsible for a hypothetical FTO being run by a bunch of shysters.

OTOH I can't see what they can do that would be useful. You cannot regulate business practices. The institution of a Ltd Co is now centuries old and despite it being a hugely popular vehicle for incompetent / dodgy business practices of every kind (as I well know having been in business since 1978) nobody has done anything about it. Only in the most blatent cases can Directors be disqualified, and then you just get your wife / brother / cousin / son / etc to run the next incarnation.

What I can see happening, one day, is a student suing the CAA for the money he lost. This is because the CAA is sailing very close to the wind with its FTO approval and charging regime, while not regulating FTO financial viability. The fact that the latter is, as I say above, impractical, is not relevant.

A related example of liability is the UK AOPA mentoring scheme, whereby (it appears) AOPA had to get insurance to protect itself because it is so obviously acting as an "introduction agency" and a "vetting agency" for the mentors - by requiring them to be AOPA members.

With the CAA's experience of the ATOL (Air Travel Organisers Licensing) scheme, which protects monies paid in advance by holidaymakers, I would have thought it easy to apply similar principles to Air Training Organisers.

Students' money would then be protected via a bond, ususally an insurance policy, and the training organisation would still have use of the cash.

Training organisations would have to submit audited accounts and demonstrate financial stability on an annual basis before a licence were issued.

Lysander (one time ATOL holder)

There is an economic regulation group in CAA, separate to the better known safety regulation group. I believe it's currently branded "consumer protection".

It is mandated to protect fare paying passengers, which is fair enough. That needs doing.

It isn't resourced or mandated to take any role in protecting student pilots (or to be fair student aircraft engineers, student dispatchers or anybody else in the community). I think that there's an unwritten philosophy that as prospective, embryo, or actual aviation professionals we're supposed to be able to look after ourselves.


The only thing that is going to change that view by the CAA is government action. That is potentially possible, if enough people write to their MPs and start making stuff happen. If you go back a few decades, this is exactly the sort of thing that got microlights regulated in early 1980s, which originally CAA just chose to ignore.



Now before we all start doing that, here's a question - would this really be a good idea. Is CAA likely to be the most effective regulator? And what will this cost - compared to other options?

And what are those other options?

- Nothing? Which in effect means leave communities like PPrune to gather and publish information about schools. This works after a fashion, but clearly not well enough, as evidenced by the number of people who have just lost out bigtime in Cabair II.

- Self regulation by the community. So, for example AOPA or BALPA setting up a voluntary scheme where schools provide evidence of their competence, minimum facilities, and financial viability, and provide facilities such as escrow or maximum holdings of student cash and a few other things from a list that could be cooked up quite quickly by a set of aviation grown-ups.



Personally I would not favour this coming from the CAA. It'll take years to get them to do anything, they'll not be particularly efficient, will only be accountable to parliament - not the flying community, and they'll be hellishly expensive - as they are in everything else they do.


If the aviation community get together and enable an organisation such as BALPA or UK-AOPA (better still, both together) to set up a "voluntary" scheme (that we can then all shout very loudly should be regarded as essential before undertaking any flying training) this would almost certainly be quicker to establish, cheaper to administer (and any scheme, sooner or later, will end up being paid for by the flying community), and more effective than anything CAA would, or could, do. It would also be directly accountable to the members of the administering organisations.

G

Not sure where this fits into the discussion, but as the CAA take fees and charges both from the ATOs and students does this create some type of responsibility?

And will this years increase be in line with inflation?

SGC

They are taking fees to fulfil the current responsibilities - which are for SAFETY regulation. Not economic regulation.

Add more responsibilities, they'll take more money. This is inevitable.

G

If they saw someone external starting up such a scheme they would take it in house as quickly as possible.

If you are running such a scheme you would have complete power over the commercial pilot production in the UK. The airlines would hate it and so would the CAA not having a hand in it.

Also as well that would be a serious amount of cash to be in charge of. It would have a through put of say 40k*1500 a year which would be minimum 60million and very well be over 80million. With a VAT content of over 12million.

And that is just the commercial pilot students not including the PPL's and engineers etc.


Which is why the schools need to continue running their pyramid training schemes getting the money upfriont. If they don't have it they will have to get money at the market rate and will fold.

You would also have something that nobody wants you to have be it airlines, CAA or schools.

You would have the true statistics about the flight training in the UK. How many people start, how far they get how much it costs. The CAA have for years been stopping that info coming out.

I believe it does.

Agreed. However, they approve a FTO using financial viability as one of the criteria. It is not unreasonable for a punter to assume this is a stamp of approval, however misguided.

I believe this is part of 'safety'. Cost is an important factor in decision making - if you can get into an airfield without having to do that extra circuit, might you cut corners? another six minutes... 0.1 of an hour... £30 maybe... 10 flights of the same... next one's 'free'...

Large transport about to push back, might you rush your post start checks in order to get past this monster to avoid the 10 minutes waiting behind at the threshold?