Job prospects after modular ATPL (UK)? Loan or secure a job?

[Chris the Robot]

I don't have a wealthy background. Bang in the middle really. I am also 39 with two kids so am fighting it the hard way but I went to a lot of schools looking at my options and I will be 70-80k all in by the time I have finished. Mine is half "modular" and half integrated. I am doing the majority of my hour building at my local airfield which is cheap @£130 an hour and is 20-30 minutes from my home. I am also doing my ATPL theory at home (Oh the joys of that ). Then the last part will be integrated for all my ratings and hopefully an interview and type rating. I am doing my theory with BGS which is what a lot of these integrated schools will use. If anything the ability to take in and learn information without having your hand being held is a positive in my eyes at least.

I was earning good wedge managing 100+ people in a Factory then at the end of 2020 the company lost a contract and boom my job was gone and the factory closed. No job is safe regardless of how you are trained. No different to no guarantee of a job with flying. I have never felt so positive about my chances in the current climate. Brexit did a lot of trouble to the UK but one thing it did do is make the job market a hell of a lot better for people in the UK. Hence why loads of companies with EU registered planes are discounting courses to get pilots trained plus the English ones cannot just pick students from EU countries to fill their needs.

Yes the majority of those on integrated courses costing 100+k do come from rich families but if I could go back 20 years to when I was twenty and living with my parents I would be getting a HGV licence. Max out my overtime and earn 60k a year. Within 3 years you would have enough to fund a integrated course and be in the right side of a narrow body by mid twenties. That is available to anybody who is willing to put in the graft regardless of background quite easily. I wish I had my head screwed on a lot more when I was younger in that respect!

HGV driving would possibly be a good career for people starting out of school looking to fund flying training these days, as it is I started driving for a living in my mid-20's, albeit on rails. The challenge is that the railway is a very stable employer which excellent T&Cs but very difficult to return to after leaving, so whilst I could self-fund integrated without debt I'd be totally stuffed if a recession or black swan event occurred during training. I might come across as lacking passion or motivation, however from what I've seen it's important to be quite emotionally distant in making decisions regarding training. If I could change one thing it'd be the fact that I was fixed on airline cadet schemes whilst I should have started the modular route earlier, if only more of them took people with ATPL passes! Admittedly I originally didn't think ATPL theory around full-time work would be possible but I'm currently doing it anyway.

I'm currently doing ATPL theory with BGS and so far they've been very good. Module 1 went well, I still have Module 2 exams followed by Module 3 left to complete. I've got a night rating/aUPRT booked in before the spring and I'm hoping to do the CPL/ME/IR phase over the summer followed by an APS-MCC course in the autumn. You're definitely right about Brexit preventing the labour arbitrage situation that used to exist whereby English being the international language of aviation enabled people from all over the EU to apply for UK jobs despite many carriers using the language barrier to prevent the opposite from happening. I can sense the economy turning a bit though, so I don't think recruitment will be as strong over the coming few years as it was 2021-2024.

​​​​​​​personally I’ve done a lot of safety pilot jumpseating for cadets under line training in the last 12 months and have seen a number of modular students, I’m not sure I see a correlation between modular and being of a lower quality but I will say the most at sea cadet I came across was a significantly older (over 40) man who had done a modular course, he seemed dramatically behind the curve and anecdotally I’ve heard from trainers we are failing a lot more people in line training and or doing dramatically more than the standard line training footprint since Covid, take that for what it’s worth.

Out of interest did you notice any correlation between previous career and performance on the flight deck? Did those with previous safety-critical shift work have an advantage? It would be interesting to see if the airlines are drawn to particular professions when it comes to modular recruitment.

[AdamSt205]

Originally Posted by Chris the Robot

HGV driving would possibly be a good career for people starting out of school looking to fund flying training these days, as it is I started driving for a living in my mid-20's, albeit on rails. The challenge is that the railway is a very stable employer which excellent T&Cs but very difficult to return to after leaving, so whilst I could self-fund integrated without debt I'd be totally stuffed if a recession or black swan event occurred during training. I might come across as lacking passion or motivation, however from what I've seen it's important to be quite emotionally distant in making decisions regarding training. If I could change one thing it'd be the fact that I was fixed on airline cadet schemes whilst I should have started the modular route earlier, if only more of them took people with ATPL passes! Admittedly I originally didn't think ATPL theory around full-time work would be possible but I'm currently doing it anyway.

I'm currently doing ATPL theory with BGS and so far they've been very good. Module 1 went well, I still have Module 2 exams followed by Module 3 left to complete. I've got a night rating/aUPRT booked in before the spring and I'm hoping to do the CPL/ME/IR phase over the summer followed by an APS-MCC course in the autumn. You're definitely right about Brexit preventing the labour arbitrage situation that used to exist whereby English being the international language of aviation enabled people from all over the EU to apply for UK jobs despite many carriers using the language barrier to prevent the opposite from happening. I can sense the economy turning a bit though, so I don't think recruitment will be as strong over the coming few years as it was 2021-2024.



Out of interest did you notice any correlation between previous career and performance on the flight deck? Did those with previous safety-critical shift work have an advantage? It would be interesting to see if the airlines are drawn to particular professions when it comes to modular recruitment.

A bit like you I was in a specialist job role which in all reality was dead mans shoes. Once my company lost its contract and closed down it was going to be incredibly hard to get to the same position again. I tried a few similar places but it was like being in the Somme during WW1 most days. I retrained for HGV work as it was relatively quick and cheap. 4k all in for my licence and the gear to go with it. I do shift work but only work 3.5 days a week so plenty of time to study and fly. I take my laptop, calculator and wizz-wheel to work every day. Some days you have several hours waiting to be loaded and unloaded so in essence I get paid to train. I cannot think of a better job to pair with modular training. It also prepares you for handling large heavy equipment and being safety critical in thinking too It took me 8 months to get my PPL and I am hoping to get my ATPL theory done in 9 months and my CPL and ratings started towards the end of July. Hopefully around the 2 year mark from start to finish. If I was single and living with parents I could have done it much quicker too which does make you wonder how integrated courses take so long to complete.

I too think the economy is starting to turn. TUI just announced they are not doing cadet schemes this year and it will be interesting to see how the others will respond but like you if I am successful then great but it is no loss if I am not. Not trying at all is the only thing I would regret.

Good luck with your studies.

[Ver5pen]

Originally Posted by Chris the Robot

Out of interest did you notice any correlation between previous career and performance on the flight deck? Did those with previous safety-critical shift work have an advantage? It would be interesting to see if the airlines are drawn to particular professions when it comes to modular recruitment.

I don’t have any insight into recruitment so i couldn’t tell you what they have looked at to get past assessment but I assume they have a pretty neutral view of it and the questions are the same regardless of background and if you can’t pass a sim you can’t pass a sim so really the metrics have to be in the same ballpark at least.

[Ver5pen]

Originally Posted by pilotchute

You basically said it was his age. Most of this is all anecdotal evidence anyway. I have sat with many low time people of both modular and Integrated and found that the amount of aviation knowledge (not flying) is a good indicator.

Can you tell me the difference between an A330 and A340? We got told a Saab 340 was infront of us and FO asked me what that was.

This is anecdotal as well but I think works better than modular Vs integrated cause I have had great from both and awful from both as well.

fair enough, I’m not saying age was the only factor- I think it’s more than fair enough that someone that has had other experiences and learning may not be as engaging with the process as someone who is in their 20s and has gone through integrated so breathed it for years.

there’s plenty of captains I fly with who had late career changes and a few that have done it modular and you can’t tell that at the backend obviously.

I was only trying to explain why airlines have typically take a certain view on modular but I don’t have any data to back up their view but they are the ones with the money on the line so I expect they have something to support their assertions.

I do agree that motivation is a big leader of success, more than a couple who really struggled in training (and I can’t say what became of them as they weren’t there at the end) for one reason or another weren’t there because they were passionate. Motivation will get you a long way that’s for sure

embarking on this career when I have other commitments going on isn’t something I could ever fathom so I have nothing but respect for those that can and think that makes their process even more impressive id just be very interested to learn the data from the airlines to see if any serious correlations exist between different factors and training failure as one thing that is consistent from conversations I’ve had is there has been an undeniable uptick in failures and expanded footprints post covid, I doubt we will ever get a analyses of why (but the bigger airlines’ training departments will have good theories)