Training in Spain

[madman1145]

Hey there;

I'm an Airmed student - as I have written times before, I choosed Airmed because they seemed to be a good place (visiting them and asking around in the Business) and even that I was tolled by people that Aero Madrid is a good well-known school (incl. from Airmed themself), I cancelled them due to lack of answers within resonable time - I'm now tolled that has changed - fine ..
Aero Madrid has no former experience with English ATP classes, something Airmed now has and something Aero Madrid has to go through now - it's alot of money to spend guys ..

Also they are not situated in an Airport with serious commercial traffic "to mingle around with" during take-off and landing procedures, no ILS and stuff like Valencia has and something that we are using or will be using / being affected by everytime we fly - a big pluss in my eyes ..
One can also choose here what kind of flying one wants within short distance - ocean, flatland, mountains ..
And I've seen your Airport because I visited Aerofan backthen ..

Regarding MCC course - comon - we are talking about MCC, not Type Rating - one can get that different places - the one Airmed has fullfill that purpose - 6-axes, full-motion - there is at Airmed a former Airbus engineer - he stated that Airmed's MCC simulator is close to the same as a Type Rating version - it's his words, don't know why I shouldn't believe that ..
And again - it's MCC course - it's being done on a Jet simulator with 6-axes motion (A-320) - and if one wants a Type Rating after completing the ATPL course, there is many places to go ...
And by the way - how many hours is it you get at Aero Madrid in your Level D A-320 simulator ??

And about the ground teachers at Airmed - have nothing to complain about - in general they now their stuff very well and what they are talking about and several of them has a solid background in the subject they are teaching ...

And practical things - how long distance is it now that the students has from where they live to the Airport at Quatro Vientos (in time/minutes) ..
From what Aerofan showed me it looks like a nice long walk ..


Best Regards;
madman - a happy Airmed student

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Lets get a few things clear.

1) No British airline cares what Sim you did an MCC on. Its not logged anywhere, MCC certificates are often just run off a schools bubblejet printer, you could lie and they would never know or check. THEY DON'T CARE.

2) A lot of you are talking about a Jet Orientation Course being secretly what an MCC can be if you go on a big fancy Sim. Tosh. There is plenty in the MCC syllabus as it is. Its mostly about how to run a checklist and how to liase with another pilot. You could have the motion and visual switched Off for all that! MCC isn't a JOC course so stop pretending its a mini one.

3) If you wanted to prepare a bit for Sim assessments then here is the best way. Do a VERY cheap MCC - say £1,500. With the money saved over a big fancy one - I've seen £3,500 advertised but lets say you save a Grand - you wait until you've actually passed an interview and been offered a Sim assessment. You find out what its on - NOT hard - people often ask here "Does anyone know what the XYZ sim assessment profile is"? You then ring around and find just such a sim - maybe even the same one. For a Grand you should easily be able to afford a couple of hours on it. Why not combine your efforts and money with someone else also going for the same assessment? Great idea. A couple of hours practicing the actual rumoured profile used by the people you are trying to impress a week before you are trying to impress them. Thats a HECK of a lot better than doing an MCC on something vaguely similar 6 months ago.

4) I wouldn't train anywhere in Spain where the instructors and the students didn't all work in English. And it would have to be pretty good English. The course is hard enough without the slightest language barrier.

5) The MCC is a load of old Tosh anyway dreamt up by a committee in answer to a question nobody asked. And the airlines were supposed to pay for it after they hired you.

6) Bah, humbug.

WWW

[moggie]

WWW - way off the plot on your first few comments, old chap.

For example, those airlines that sponsor cadets all insist that their MCC is done on a jet FNPTII - not a King Air.

Most of them are combining their MCC with a JOC (BA, MyTravel, Britannia to name a few) - and if they are so keen on jet FNPTIIs and you apply to them with a turboprop MCC behind you you are giving yourself one disadvantage that your contemporaries who have done jet MCCs and are applying for the same positions do not have.

MCC may be a minimum standard, but who says you have to aim for the minimum? If you do your MCC with a good FTO with a reputation for providing good JOC training (I could name a few but wont!), then your certificate will carry more weight than one from a school using an "upturned orange crate with a few dials in it". This is because the MCC course was conducted by the same instructors on the same equipment as used to provide those respected JOCs.

Basic MCC of 15 hours is laughably inadequate, but that does not mean that it is not valuable. If you do a GOOD MCC course, you will learn a lot in those 15 hours that will be invaluable when you go for selection. You do not learn as much as a BA or MYT trainee on a JOC but they have 44 and 52 hourse respectively. But you are allowed to do more than the basic number of hours.

Think about this folks - the MCC course aims to fill 15 hours with the stuff that a 44 hour JOC contains - you will experience it all, learn a lot but never achieve a real degree of fluency and familiarity. However, spend a few extra quid at the end of your MCC on buying a few extra hours to get some manual flying practice, with the motion switched on, practicing flightdeck management under high workloads and exploring more of the skills needed to be an effective airline pilot and you WILL do better on that selection sim ride than if you just did the basic MCC - the rules of which require it to be flown on autopilot.

Question: how many airlines do selection sim rides? A: Most of them.

Q: How many do it on jets? A: Most of them.

Q: How many let you use the autopilot? A: None of them!

Q: If you should end up doing that sim evaluation on a prop, how much spare capacity do you have if you have flown the procedures and holds at jet speeds but are then evaluated at turboprop speeds? A: Loads - as a mate of mine has just found out on his Flybe selection (he got the job).

Further suggestion: even if you do your MCC on a TP, jet some synthetic jet handling time in somewhere as well.

[youflyturkey!!]

Does anybody have an email address for Aero Madrid? I've been trying to use their contact icon via the website but I must have a fault with my email and it won't send.

Want to do the Modular course as have to combine working with paying for the course (far too skint to afford £40,000+ for the integrated course ) Do these schools let you do that? I'm planning on going over during my annual leave, flying like a mad thing when I'm over there to rack up the hours and do the ATPL learning module via ditance learning.

p.s. anybody got the websites for Bournemouth's and Bristol's ground schools?

[Chuffer Chadley]

For bournemouth try GTS:

www.gtserv.co.uk

I hope that WWW and moggie can kiss and make up soon!

Ciao!
CC

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Airline Cadets are going to be on a type rating course next week - no wonder their sponsoring airline combines an MCC and JOC course on a fancy jet Sim. That no good reason why poor self sponsored Joe Bloggs should part with thousands of pounds of his own money trying to emulate them.

Sure sure we'd all like to go to the biggest shiniest school, use the nicest newest big sims, perhaps do the CPL on a twin for more multi time etc. etc. BUT WE CAN'T AFFORD IT CAUSE ITS SO BLIMMIN EXPENSIVE.

MCC is a prime area where cost cutting won't hurt you.

All this talk of being good prep for a sim assessment is a total red herring. As I have outlined above there are better more pertinent ways to prepare for an airline sim assessment than by doing an expensive MCC months or years before you ever even get an airline interview.

You could pass an MCC by watching an ITVV 'from the flightdeck video' 20 times. How you operate a checklist, how you do a brief and how you crosscheck everything with the other guy - all shown in digital stereo colour for £11.99 from Transair.

Its not rocket science. People used to quite hapily jump into airliners with 200hrs and no MCC and manage quite well thank you very much.


WWW

[despegue]

WWW,

What utter nonsence!

1)Britain is only a small part of the JAA , don't focus on your little island, it's time to start looking European. Most carriers on the continent now DEMAND an MCC on JET and at least 20h.

2) As a native Brit, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about when dealing with language barriers. The course is given in English , at Airmed by Spanish,British and Italian instructors. I can honestly say that a lot of International students have more problems in understanding the UK instructors than the Spanish/Italian ones. Why? We as "foreigners" always aim to use the most simple words possible in an explanation. No slang, no proverbs Europeans have never heard about, but understandable, clear International English. By the way, put a person from Liverpool, Aberdeen and Houston together, all native English speakers, and let's see if they understand everything they say from the first moment...

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

1) I will focus on this little island thanks. By far the bulk of traffic here is UK focused. The UK also has the largest aviation sector of any country and many many times larger than Spain. Debate on other EU countries is welcome nonetheless. If airlines on the continent are requiring 20hr MCC on Sims then that is curious. The MCC was never ever ever designed to be type specific. Generic medium cost FNPTII's were outlined as being ideal at the outset of JAR training regs.

Just why a "Jet Efis" sim with a bit of motion is thought to be superior to a - say - Kingair sim is illogical. A little Bizjet sim with centreline thrust, care free FADEC engine handling, quick spool thrust and simple push button anti-ice etc is a piece of piddle to tool around the ILS. In case you hadn't noticed Jet speeds these days and TP speeds out of the cruise are just about the same. Everything is 250 below FL100 as per SOP's. Turning onto localisers etc. wil be about 190kts for a jet and maybe 170 for a TP. Hardly cosmic. The days when a TP was a HS748 and a Jet was a VC10 are long long gone.

Any airlines stipulating a "Jet" MCC have obviously not taken the time to understand much about JAA training in the third millenium.


2) As a native Brit who was a commercial flying instructor at BAE Jerez who taught French, Scandanavian and Spanish students for their CPL/IR's I have an excellent insight into language barriers in training. Thank you.

You actually prove my point. When you are not both of the same first language then training communication is constrained. You have to use absolutely standard phrases otherwise misunderstandings occur.

Subtle intonation and helpful use of tone are lost. You end up with a jilted text book manner of communication. I believe things are even worse on the groundschool side of things - you NEED colourful expression of ideas so they stick in your mind until the exam. I still remember today half my ATPL Met through the rude songs and dittys taught to me by a walrus moustached Yorkshireman who had the class in stitches half the time.

That doesn't happen when you have to keep everything clinical so the mixed class of Brits, Italians, Spaniards and Whoever can all follow whats being said and take notes.

Which is why I advise people to train completely in their own language.


WWW

[moggie]

mmmmmmmmmm...... jet speeds = turboprop speeds.

Lets see, Beech King Air - 230kt cruise, 140kt hold and 110kt approach.

Jet (all): Cruise 250kt below FL100 and 280kt plus above. 210kt hold and 130kt or so on the approach.

Yes, 250kt max below FL100 - but in your jet it is worth going above FL100 and exploring some of that 280kt plus stuff which actually gives groundspeeds of 450kt or so (or even more!!!).

OK, so which TP will climb high enough, fast enough to cruise at M.74 between Manchester and Aberdeen and in doing so strecth your capacity and improve you flt deck management?

Remember, Andy, you went to Go! (Go Orange!) with many, many hours under your belt and as far as the handling and capacity was concerned your MCC was probably as waste of time - although I trust that you still learnt something about working as part of a crew, rather than being the master in the RHS.

This will not be the case for most pilots with a licence that still has wet ink on it.

I personally had no trouble making the transition onto my first airliner (RAF VC10, a particularly quick aeroplane which was certifed to M.925 and which I have hand flown at that speed, FL430) - because I had trained at jet speeds in the RAF system. However, an MCC type course (well - actually a JOC) would have been damned useful in making the difficult transition to that airliner's multi-crew flightdeck.

Remember, folks, that although an MCC is most definitely NOT a mini-JOC, a few extra hours tacked on the end can go along way to making it so.

Some figures: between 1996 and 2001 when BA were pumping as many pilots as possible through the training system, they calculated that the JOC courses saved £1.25million PER YEAR on remedial training delivered to cadet pilots on type conversion/line training (even after paying for the JOC). BA insisted that the simulators used had to be jets, ideally with EFIS - or no contract (motion was an additional plus point).

[despegue]

At Airmed, we did not only learn how to work as a
crew, but we also learned how to handle a jet (raw data flying, steep turns,thrust/attitude, speed/attitude), how to manage/program the FMS, Autopilot,EFIS, and handle it's malfunctions (MCDU failure at take-off,...). Fly by wire problems, protections were covered.
We did engine failures before and after V1, Fires before and after V1, Decompressions at cruising altitudes,Flight director/autopilot runaway's combinations of pilot incapacitation and Engine failure after rotation at Pamplona (notoriously difficult N-1 procedure!), LOFT exercises, low visibility procedures, icing, contaminated RWY, crosswind, visual patterns. 40h of bloody hard work, never studied so much but the most fun of all my training! (thanks to the sublime Iberia instructors teaching the Airmed MCC!)
I am sure that Aeromadrid offers a similar programme. In short, we got a JOC with all the trimmings. I doubt that any pilot can disagree that these things will greatly improve one's chances in securing a job and/or succeeding the type-rating.
Yes, MCC can be a waste of time and money if you don't do it properly. Just as with everything in aviation. MCC is the most important phase, it is the transition between a piston flier and an Airline pilot. These are the words of my MCC instructor, who is the Chief Instructor/examiner A340, B757 at Iberia, spending his whole career in training. (thank you, Capt. J. Fons!)

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

OK, so which TP will climb high enough, fast enough to cruise at M.74 between Manchester and Aberdeen and in doing so strecth your capacity and improve you flt deck management?

Dornier 328 will do that.

I think JOC courses are great. But they aren't MCC courses. To blur the distiniction serves no purpose.

To draw on my limited experience I have seen how both Go and easyJet operate a B737-300. Same aircraft flying same routes to same airfields. Completely different SOP's, whole different philosophy in who does what, different checklist, different calls made at different times.

And hardest of all is to change from one to another.

Makes me wonder if the average 200hr Joe Bloggs would be better off arriving at his first airline without ever being taught any type of commercial SOP's i.e. no MCC whatsoever.

I maintain that the cheapest Certificate is the best and the money saved deployed in other ways to help you pass that Sim assessment.

If Daddy's rich then by all means do your MCC on a Cat D 744 at Cranebank.


WWW

[moggie]

Of course, in an ideal world one of the following would occur:

a) You know which airline you are going to so the multi-talented instructors on your MCC/JOC can train you in the appropriate SOPs beofre you get there, easing your path through the type conversion. This is what we do for BA, Brit, MYT, Aer Lingus etc.

b) Your airline will give you your one and only MCC as part of your type rating - although the airline must be specifically approved to do this and not too many are.

Failing that, you try to find something which is typical of the industry - from my experience, for example, most of the charter type operators have similar SOPs.

BTW WWW, last time I saw a copy of the Orange SOP it was almost identical to the BA SOP with the monitored (split) approach removed. How did GO and easy compare?

[FougaMagister]

WWW, you might be the Wannabees forum moderator, but your comments only serve to show that you seem to know close to nothing about what low-hrs. guys (and gals) are going through these days.

If we want our CV to stand out from the rest of the stack (and believe me, it's a helluva big stack these days), there is nothing wrong about that. We do not want to suffer from a "comparative disadvantage" at that point, and a jet EFIS MCC is one of the ways through which we can make our CV stand out from the competition.

It's all nice and easy to stand there pontifying, but you badly need a trip into REAL wannabees land to GET REAL!

Enjoy your flying - at least you are doing some!

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Moggie a) Joe Bloggs self sponsored hasn't a clue which airline may offer him a sim assessment in the coming years. b) Virtually all self sponsored guys do their own MCC.

Fouga - I know a heck of a lot about what low time wannabes are going through thanks. I still have my instructors ticket, I am involved behind the scenes in recruitment, I talk to dozens of aquaintances in exactly that position and I have been moderating this board for 4 years. You wanna tell me who has a broader perspective?

If you think a £4,000 MCC is going to give you a worthwhile edge over a £1,500 MCC then my friend, good luck. I would advise the money savable on a cheap MCC can be used more usefully. That is all.

WWW

[ECHIE]

Despegue........CONGRATULATIONS!!!! I hope to follow you soon!

About flight training in Spain, it is a very good option. The training given in Aeromadrid and Airmed is of a very good quality. For me who has been to both schools Aeromadrid is better in my opinion, but both of them are excellent!!!

My advise to wannabees: go to Spain and visit the Airmed and Aeromadrid. It is a lot of money you are going to invest and now a days a trip to Spain with Easyjet is not to much and a good investment in your future. Have a look around these schools and say honestly to yourself if it is worth to pay 20.000 euros or even more for an education in England.

With kind regards,

Theo

[FougaMagister]

WWW - just for the record, my jet EFIS MCC cost £2,800 not £4,000. So much for your "broader perspective", hey?

Happy landings.

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Hope you Jet EFIS time time stands you in good stead.

WWW

[moggie]

Moggie a) Joe Bloggs self sponsored hasn't a clue which airline may offer him a sim assessment in the coming years. b) Virtually all self sponsored guys do their own MCC.

The point I was trying to make was that IDEALLY you would target your MCC to the appropriate airline or have it done by that airline on your first type conversion. I am well aware that most self-sponsored chaps/chapesses have to stump up for their own.

However, I beg to disagree that "changing SOP is harder than learning the first". By and large, SOPs are broadly similar (although some do stand out, the rest are pretty closely grouped). As I said, last time I cast my eyes over the EJ SOP it was a near complete copy of the BA one - and all the others that I have seen in the last few years (Emirates, Icelandair, MYT, Brit, Air Malta) have been VERY much alike. If they were not, we as instructors could not flip flop from one to another several times in a week. the BA SOP is also used by GB Airways, of course.

But, that first SOP you learn is 180 degrees out from the way you fly in obtaining your ATPL/CPL and that IS a challenge. After that they are variations on a theme.

Now, try going from VC10 multicrew SOP to instructing on Harriers - that is a challenge and a half!

[moggie]

Further to the above discussion, anyone considering an MCC should read the attached survey before committing their money.

Whilst a JIC is not the same as an MCC, an MCC plus some extra hours will get much the same result.

http://www.gapan.org/career/survey.htm

[PPRuNe Towers]

Notes from the Towers

It's a long time since I've seen so many transparent agendas coupled with so much willy waving in one thread.

Simple version for the text messaging generation: Re Read the posts by the Welshman - he is the only one giving the unvarnished truth and thinking of your debts!!

Now for the tricky bits with long words in like 'wheelbarrow' and 'marmalade'.

You are being sold a crock of crap in this thread especially by the entire Spanish mob who are now beginning to make the Floridian's look like amateurs.

1: Human nature is such that most people will always justify a large outlay they chose to make as being considered, wise and ultimately worthwhile.

2: Much of the time you are being written to by people making their living from you and they are not telling you this. They are pushing their 'brand' desperate to get recognition. They are desperate because they have such a short time to establish the brand with you. The half life of a wannabee is a short and fragile thing. Once you've signed for a school it's all over because they know and we know that the day you get your licence the school becomes a fading memory.

3: You are not getting advice from anyone with more than 3 years in an airliner seat.

4: The qualified are not getting jobs because there aren't any. If you are a captain though there is work if you can manage to walk to the aircraft unaided. This will change - again reread what the Welshman says and not what someone who has courses to fill up tells you.

5 They rely on you being impressed by just a few school names with supposed airline connections. They rely on you getting all wet and moist over a sexy sounding sim and they hope they can sucker airlines into looking at them again when the market picks up a bit.

Still with me? Now here's the truth from the airline side of things. Cut and paste this onto your desktop to read everytime someone wants your money.

Airline Secret Number 1:

The airlines don't know who the hell the schools are. The only ones that might impinge on their consciousness are the ones like CTC that invite them for an annual free pissup! They want someone with a full licence, bags of enthusiasm and who they reckon their skippers can put up with for many hours a day. That's it - they don't have the time to look at schools - they don't care. It's the CAA they have to keep happy and therefore you have an entrance ticket - one the CAA - not the damn schools - guarantee

Airline Secret Number 2:

The airlines know that the MCC is supposed to be provided by and funded by them. The schools have leapt in because it wasn't specified that they couldn't. They joined in because it gives them the potential to keep each student in the system longer during lean times and thereby continue the revenue stream - from you suckers!!

FTO Secret No. 1

The minute 5 of you said you'd got MCC to help stand out from the others it was game over - avalanches of money, trebles all round. You are doing it again with Jet training devices. The schools can't believe their luck, their jaws drop further at what a load of fashion conscious sheep you collectively become.

As you've now painfully worked out this means therefore that JOC's are simply new ways of taking more money from you because you don't have a job to go to. Please write this on your hand to remember folks. The airlines don't know what a JOC or one of the clones is. There is no requirement for it. Training departments at airlines would be extremely pissed off because they want you to learn their way. They waste a lot of time and money training the old stuff out of your single pilot IR/GFT skillset without it being added to by non company or type specific MCC's and other add on tosh.

FTO Secret No.2:

Jet sims - Spanish, UK don't give a stuff. They are luring you in with pretty toys. They are sales devices to impress - marketing tools. Spending more time on classic round dials are the most important thing you can ever do to ensure a long, safe career. Anything else is sales patter. If any one of the FTO folks argues otherwise just ask them why we had to use desktop Frasca's at a time when they couldn't produce enough pilots to fill demand and they were awash with money?

Stating you need efis skills is arrant rubbish because you have to relearn totally with each airfamer's product you move to. It's just like Windows, Mac and Linux users having swop machines. It looks familiar but it turns out that all you really know is how to get into serious trouble No ripostes on that point from any dreamers or sim fans. You've either got that real life T-shirt or you haven't.

Finally, check this thread again and especially any replies to this post that appear.

Use you new found skill and judgement to categorise each post.

Someone one step ahead of you justifying their immense spending decision;

Someone keeping a roof over their head by taking wannabees money;

or someone who has done everything you want to do, succeeded, paid off every penny of debt by working on a jet flight deck and is giving you cooly thought through advice from a proper, experienced airline perspective.

Finally, I've been flying since 1975 and I will tell you this for free. In your journey through flight training you will be very lucky if you even meet 5 people in FTO's with integrity and no other thought than helping you. With a very few honourable and legendary exceptions they will be career flying and ground instructors with no say in sales, marketing, premises or equipment.

Therefore the conclusion should be obvious - those with a say in the last 4 items should be held at arms length and treated as, at best, deeply suspicious until they prove otherwise and more often as utterly without merit. The wannabees motto is 'caveat emptor.' If your latin's a little rusty that translates to 'sales and marketing does attract some scum but the worst head for aviation'..............

Regards
Rob

Moggie,

My apologies for singling you out but I am keeping this response separate from my overall thoughts. You are giving considered and, what you honestly believe to be, accurate advice on SOPS.

However, I'm afraid you are wrong and you are wrong in every conceivable way purely because you are an instructor. It also proves the reasons for our vehement opposition here at the Towers to FTO's carrying out MCC's and all the other flim flam and scams.

The reason SOP's seem similar and easy to slip between is because, well err, you are an instructor - it's what you do, umm repeatedly, day in and day out.

As working airline pilots what we do is the same SOP's repeatedly - if fact more repeatedly than you can ever dream of. That's how they got their name not because they change them everyday. It is habituated learned behaviour - it goes deeper than you or any other instructor will ever understand.

SOPS are like breathing. One day, out of the blue an SOP call will come from your lips that is from a company ten years in your past.

The days after SOPS change at an airline are the most desperate, uncomfortable foul ones. The entire flightdeck operation becomes an uncontrolled, shambolic farce.

Ask the guys at easyJet - they went from the SOP's you describe to standard Boeing overnight - oh, and then they changed again recently with the adoption of many Go procedures.

I see the private forums - you don't. Without exception the greatest cause of operational heartbache on the line is new SOP's. Especially when it's just because of a new 'squadron boss' making his or her mark.

One of the many reasons Scroggs. the Welshman and myself step in and take the FTO's to task is because they don't have the faintest idea what an airline pilot's life entails in the important areas.

MCC's outside of the airlines are an entirely counter productive scam. SOP's to working pilots are totally different languages - often many in the same company.

I'm afraid your penultimate paragraph is the only correct one for an airline pilot. You care about what you write but it just proves why we constantly have to ride on the FTO's.

Genuine regards to you,
Rob