Having achieved a “gentleman’s degree” in Aero (or a Desmond, depending on your era), I have had a successful career as an airline pilot and a parallel career as a commercial flying instructor. The degree has not been especially relevant for the most part and wasn’t a requirement to apply for the job.

The ATPL certainly wasn’t easy but it wasn’t degree level in terms of academic study.

rob_ste97

Well that's a good start but you don't know what you can achieve until you try it. As a pilot you'll be tested every year of your life, in the simulator and in the air as well as written exams. It's not degree level stuff but you need to apply yourself at every stage of training and not give up when the going gets tough. Most of the people who really want to be pilots will achieve their aim, those who think it'll be 'too difficult' probably won't. Get your PPL post lockdown and move forward from there.

This makes no sense... A fATPL is WAY cheaper than a degree. You can certainly do it for £35-40k.

To get a degree you're looking at £9250 per year for 3 years = £27,750 not including living costs. If you work full time for 2 years you can take your £27,750 plus whatever you've managed to save and easily afford to spend the third year getting licenced.

rudestuff

You can’t get a student loan for an fATPL, unless your parents are willing to/able to put their house up for it.

rudestuff

It depends where. UK tuitons are amongst the HIGHEST in all of Europe (and the world other than the US for that matter). Studying a degree in many European countries is peanuts compared to the cost of flight training. I studied a 5 year MSc level engineering degree, the combined tuiton of all those years cost LESS than my PPL. It's perfectly possible that many young teenagers want to be pilots but study for a degree instead because they can't afford the flight training.

On the other hand, 35-40k for a frozen ATPL is rather optimistic. That's what I paid for the CPL/IR alone, not accounting for PPL, time building, medicals, ATPL course and exams etc. A more realistic figure is 60-70k.

Have not seen this above yet:

The trade skills of a professional pilot in the upcoming 40 years are not going to be based on engineering aptitude or formal technical education. As much as it is a bitter pill to swallow for many of us who did their little fragments of "hardware" science back in the day. For quite some time, that does not make one more appropriately qualified.

Some of that still is and will remain a core must, and as such is defined by the scope of ATPL syllabus and its pass rate limit.s If you have passed the degree, you possess the necessary intellect and mental capacity to pass the ATPLs too.

kintyred

Show off! I got an 'F' for my A level Maths and O level passes for my A level Physics and Chemistry. Hamble had said that I needed two A level passes and I was in..............fortunately the RAF had said that my 'O' levels would do provided that I could drink 6 pints a night and not fall over. Several thousand hours later I'm still glad that I was so lazy in the 6th form :-)

I have a BSc and an ATPL and can assure you that the academic content of an ATPL is nowhere near Bachelor Degree level.
Your biggest problem if you do get into aviation is that you might be bored :mad:.
The real question is ; do you love flying ?
Thats all that matters.

Ahaha there is no relationship whatsoever between one’s academic capabilities and being a pilot. In fact quite the opposite almost. You need a decent understanding of the theory yes (not even close to an engineering degree), but more importantly you need to quickly use it within a flight operation, within a specific timeframe and in coordination with a number of people from different countries. As you very well understand this has little to do with how well you can solve a logarithm.

Now if the original question was, rubbish state of the industry any alternative career..well then...

rob_ste97

You're kind of missing my point I'm afraid.

Let's at least agree that a degree takes 3 years and flight training about one year?

That gives you a 2 year headstart to get a job, preferably two and start saving. With £20k in the bank and good behaviour you could easily borrow the last £15k with no security, or split it over multiple credit cards at 0%

And yes, it is ENTIRELY possible to get an EASA fATPL for £35-40k, you just have to think outside the box

PilotLZ

I have never even put the grade obtained on my resume. I put the qualification acquired but omit the grade. Never once been asked what grade I got.

rudestuff

I think going down either the modular or integrated route for the next 5-10 years is extremely risky right now. For years to come there is going to be a glut of pilots on the market and landing that elusive first job is going to be tricky.

highflyer40

Agreed, however... It doesn't take long for a glut to turn into a shortage, and as it's almost impossible to predict when that will happen the only mitigation is to be ready for it.

Yes, there's a huge glut because we in the middle of a pandemic - but how long will that take to solve? And when it is, how long will it take for normal service to return? The pilots exist, the planes are parked up so the only thing missing is customers - and I'm sure loads of people will be gagging for a holiday. A great deal of guys in their last 5 years will simply never return to flying due to changes in t&cs, loss of seniority or status etc, plus don't forget 3-4% of pilots retire or lose their medicals every year anyway it's not too hard to envisage another shortage looming, especially if people aren't training.
You can't catch the wave if you aren't in the water - and let's be honest, if you really want to be a pilot you aren't going to let a little thing like competition or pprune stop you...

Very much agree.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't listened to anyone and just did what I wanted. I don't regret having gone to engineering school, but it's been a lot of time and effort which could have been redirected towards becoming a better pilot.

rob_ste97

I have a 2:1 BA and 2:1 BSc and ATPLs. I found the ATPL’s by far the most challenging, however I suspect this was due to me completing them in a relatively short timespan and aiming to achieve a high average and first time passes. The subject matter isn’t challenging, as everyone else says it’s the volume of information you’re required to retain which is the tricky bit.

There are some I know who have no academic qualifications beyond GCSE and did exceptionally well at ATPL, others who were on paper far more qualified and didn’t do so well.

I suspect if you even manage to scrape a pass in Aero Eng at degree level then you will likely breeze through the more complex ATPL theory. Much of it is learning by rote and is in many cases an exercise in verbal reasoning more than anything else.

Good luck in whatever you decide to do, certainly don’t write yourself off based on your performance in what I understand to be a demanding degree level course.

Flying and degrees
 

I have a first class honours degree in engineering (aeronautics major). It was my intention to join the RAF to do my National Service and learn to fly, as I had also passed all the aptitude tests etc at Uni when I applied to get into the Air Squadron. I didn't get in to the UAS, (my legs were too long for the Harvards they were flying at the time - dates me!) but I got a chit which would have had me sent straight to Cranwell when my call up came. Alas, I joined Rolls-Royce on graduation and they trained me as an aircraft engine designer and I was placed in the Conway design team. I was then told that I was now exempt from NS (the Conway was a military engine at that time) and would be serving out my time at R-R and I could forget all about the RAF.
Long story, short - One of my colleagues on the Conway at R-R was a glider pilot (an instructor in fact) and he took me gliding. I learned to fly and eventually I also became an instructor. My engineering degree came in handy when I was made Club Technical Officer and had to look after all the ground kit like winches, vehicles etc.but it was little help for flying. I enjoyed gliding so much that I never bothered to do any power flying apart from odd two seater rides in the Tiger Moth tug on weather flights. I had a long happy time teaching other folk to fly, and flying all over the country in my own glider. 2200 sorties and no prangs. Lots of interesting cross country flights with field landings mostly, and I sent lots of people solo and made lots of friends. My degree was no real help in learning to fly. My skill as a motorcyclist was much more use. If you want to fly for fun, and it is the best fun you can have with your clothes on, I wouldn't want to be a modern airline pilot. Sounds like a very boring job to me.

Oh! and I would't worry about the class of your degree. I had several different careers as an design engineer and I was never ever asked to produce my degree scroll in forty years. I finished my career as a Chief Engineer (on laser guided weapons) with GEC, and that was fun too.

I loved this comment because in some ways it is true. You will often meet undereducated, degree-less, uncultured pilots who have had a perfectly acceptable airline career. You'll also meet some of the brightest, well educated, and cultured pilots. What all, bar a very few, will have is a great attitude to life and work, a natural intelligence which presents as practical problem solvers and a resilience which is becoming hard to find. Which is why some forward thinking airlines are ditching the HR test and qualification selection for something closer to what it was years ago where the Chief Pilot or DFO would look at the entire person and decide if he fitted their criteria for being the right person to employ. Please finish your degree, but don't judge yourself by it as the airlines could be missing out on a really good candidate. this speaking as BA Hons. Fail and 16000 Airbus hours.

Primary degrees really test your exam taking skills, and not much else. It took me five years to get a really weak general degree in science, it should take three. But since then, I've got two MSc's, and a PhD. Don't read to much into how you are doing on your primary degree.
Get out there, and get flying. If you really want something, it will happen, and I firmly believe that grit and persistence is more important that out of the box smarts.

If it makes you feel any better, I got terrible GCSEs. So bad infact my school prohibited me from even applying for A-levels and kicked me out of school. Ended up going to college and did quite well. Got onto a Degree course that was way over my head, and despite resitting my final year, still only walked out with a 3rd. Somhow managed to convince to head of dept to let me do an MSc (I was paying after all). I was oddly offered a PhD even though my MSc wasn't great, but I declined as I didn't particularly enjoy number crunching in a windowless office for 15 months and couldn't bare the thought of doing it for another 3 years.....plus the rest of my life. So I decided to give flight training a chance before it was too late. There were a couple of ATPL subjects my brain just didn't understand, but with PPL knowledge and a determination to get through them, they're not difficult. I ended up teaching ATPLs for a few years after I finished which I loved, and now sit happily in the RHS of a shiny jet. The vast majority of my collegues dont have degrees, they're not needed, unless you want something to fall back on in the future. But given the current market, falling back on a practical vocation is better than any degree.

The biggest problem I see with an airline pilot pursuing a non-flying job is persuading then that you want to be there, and that you aren't just waiting for another airline job to come along...

"Which is why some forward thinking airlines are ditching the HR test and qualification selection for something closer to what it was years ago where the Chief Pilot or DFO would look at the entire person and decide if he fitted their criteria for being the right person to employ. "

LOL! I had to interview replacements when I was leaving a large company in Bristol as its Chief Pilot, and they all went through the psycho test as part of the human remains nonsense - I wouldn't have picked any one of them, subsequently proved right.

To the OP - don't worry too much about degrees - many of the most influential movers and shakers in this world don't have one, which makes them more able to think out of the box. The only time I found anything like that actually useful was in dealing directy with the type of customer whose brother was a crew chief in Vietnam and therefore knows everything - in those type of countries (Canada, USA on the oil patch) a PhD really kicks butt. Otherwise, they are arguably useful for management positions, but reread the first sentence! Most HR departments put something like that in as a means of weeding people out.