Bucks Uni EFT or CTC?
 

Hi everyone,

I have viewed and searched these forums for years and usually find the answer I'm looking for however this time I can't. I recently gave up my place on the Bucks Uni Air transport with commercial pilot training course due to not having the required funds however I will hopefully have another place for 2015 when I have the money.

Anyway the course lets you choose from two schools for everything past the PPL stage.

These are either European Flight Training in Orlando, Florida or CTC training in either New Zealand or the UK.

My question is which one would you choose? Based on rough calculations the CTC option is about £10,000 - £13,000 more than EFT. I can see the advantages to both but after reading a lot of threads about both companies I am on the fence.:confused:

Thanks in advance!. :O

Why bother? Either do a full degree independent of aviation and then go onto EFT or CTC, or go direct without a degree.

These mixed studied aviation courses are seemingly useless, they don't help in securing a job outside aviation and don't help in securing a job within.

Only having the correct flying licence, experience and luck will have an impact.

The reason I have decided to go through Bucks uni is because as well as gaining your frozen atpl, you also have a degree which you can fall back on in case you lose your medical or another eventuality.

The student fees get taken care by student finance and only get paid back once you're earning over £21,000, so I think it's a good compromise between modular and integrated.

The bucks degree is worthless in the grand scope of things.

So you are pissing 21k into the wind which would pay for your IR.

Charlie940,

Thats the point I was trying to make, the degree isn't a good fall back plan unfortunately. You need a solid second career away from aviation, or at least not closely linked to being a pilot.

The Uni fee's go to the university, and the CTC/EFT fees go to the relevant training provider. Nobody is giving you a better deal through this scheme so whats the benefit to you?

I can see what you are saying, but surely a degree is worth something otherwise they wouldn't offer it?

If you lost your job as a pilot or you medical, surely your degree could help you get a job in another area of the airport such as a dispatcher or another job.

However I am starting to look at alternative careers away from aviation.

Thanks for the help.

Some degrees are worth it others arn't.

And education is a money making device like anything else. The fact that the product is worthless is neither here nor there.

"If you lost your job as a pilot or you medical, surely your degree could help you get a job in another area of the airport such as a dispatcher or another job."

Your CPL will get your dispatchers job.

I would save your money and only do a degree if you lost your medical. But then I wouldn't even bother with A levels.

I really wouldn't bother doing a degree in pilot studies or aviation with pilot studies or anything remotely similar.

The truth of the matter is that a dispatchers job these days is relatively low skilled work (most loadsheets are now prepared by a centralized load control office) and you really don't need a degree to do it - it's a waste of money if that is your back up plan.

Remember, as mad_jock says... the university are selling you a course, they are in it to make money!

Just my two pennies worth BUT,

I know about 10-15 bucks guys here at one of the schools mentioned.

Not one of them think it is worth it and you do realise that you have to go back to Uni for your third year which means having to keep current whilst finishing off your degree?

Its extra money that does not put you any higher up the list for jobs. Save up your money and go to one of those two schools independently

Charlie....

It is very hard to hear this, but you have been sucked in with brochures, hype and smooth sales talking from a person sitting in front of you who realises that you have a dream, and all he needs to do is tell you that it is achievable to get you to hand over 40 grand.

So before you spend any more money on integrated study and skills courses, take some advice from someone on the front-line so to speak.

To begin, let me tell you something, (and I am sure that most of the "now-out-of-training-and-have-been-flying-for-at-least-three-years" contributors will back me up on this.....

At some point in your dream of becoming a pilot, reality bites and you wake up to find that a job flying is definitely up there with the best of work on the planet....but it is not even close to what you are fantasising about.

I talk to wannabes on a regular basis here, and they all answer the "Why do you want to become a pilot?" question in the same way...."Great job!" "Always wanted to be a pilot" "Lots of respect and prestige" "Get to travel all over the world".

If I could record all these kids on video and replay it for them after a few years, the responses for most would be sheepish to say the least.

If you find employment at the end of your training, you will have a job that gives you all of the above but there is a trade off which perhaps as a youngster, you have no cares about, but when you find the love of your life and maybe want to start a family, you will see where I am going with this.....

You will have no real social life. Your main drinking buddies will be crews that are down-route with you. The world travel involves traffic jams, hotels, blackout blinds and buffet breakfasts. It gets old really quickly, and if you get a job with a lo-co in the UK or Europe, the only world travel you will experience is meeting fuel bowser drivers and flashing number cards out your side window at them.
You will be expected to get up at any and all hours to get the job done. Your days-off will be spent checking for missed calls from crewing and worrying that they are going to screw you over for your planned vacation because you didn't help them out today....

Respect is something that you get from other "dreamers" who want to do what you do.
Crewing don't give a damn about you. Cabin crew certainly couldn't give a proverbial piece about you. And management, couldn't give a toss about your loan or the time you have invested in your training and they certainly won't give a rat's arse about your degree. A stroke of a pen can bring you from swanning through Gatwick with your new Jeppesen flight bag to packing shelves at Tesco and again, checking your phone for missed calls from HSBC looking for their instalment - or worse...your parent's instalment!

Then there is the risk of “putting all your eggs in one basket”. Like the poor souls who invested someone else’s equity in a flight school that left them all begging the government for flights home and an idiot's bailout.
The majority of that group were told on this forum and others that paying up-front for a flight school could be fiscal suicide. I wonder how many of them passed that nugget of information on to their parents to allow informed decisions to be made.
That story should be masoned into a monument for the financially naive!

What are they doing now? Anyone? 
My guess is that some are working at the local Burger King to make ends meet, but you can be sure that some have moved on to a new dream of another bank loan and a new school. It is madness.

My advice: forget about flying for now. Go and get a degree first. Your back-up plan should be in place before your dream. Proof of that is the PTC circus mentioned above. 
Do not get an aviation related degree. That is only half a back-up plan. Do something completely different. That way, when the industry goes into another decline, and believe me, it will....you have another string to your bow, be it law or civil engineering.....or train as a debt management specialist....now there’s a qualification that would make you a fortune in a downturn.

Sorry to :mad: on your parade, but I have seen this industry from many sides now and it ain’t what it looks like on the box....or in the brochure.

I'd avoid CTC for the time being. They have 1 CP starting every month with 24 pilots on each CP more or less. Their facilities are working to capacity and the holding pool is heading towards Olympic proportions.

I'm not going to slate their quality of training because on all accounts its quite good, but for the time being its a massive sausage factory, the horsemeat scandal has taken hold and no ones buying the sausages. Thats a really bad analogy but you get my drift.

I would also avoid learning to fly in America but thats another argument all together. Go to university and think of a subject you're interested in totally unrelated to aviation. Something like a degree in Business and Management would be handy.

What is interesting or alarming depending on your perspective is what is on Ryanair's careers page.

Source: Careers in travel - Pilot Recruitment (sourced 20th February 2013)

Thanks for the replies.

I have always been slightly on the fence about this degree and training, but all of your comments backup my concerns. :ok:

For what it's worth I taught some of the ATPL subjects for a while and, whilst I retired a couple of years ago, my memories are clear. Some of the Bucks students were undoubtedly more than capable of achieving good results but there seemed to be an inherent attitude within the Bucks classes that work was a four letter word and something that was there to be done by the lecturers and not the students. Many of these students, I have no doubt, would have progressed far better without the distractions of what I came to believe in as a dubious degree course where they were given little guidance and even less motivation. Some, I know, are now following successful aviation careers but others have fallen by the way side where they might well have achieved far more by following a more traditional modular or integrated course. Perhaps things have changed in the last two years.

hey charlie,

I completed my degree at bucks new uni on the air transport with commercial pilot training course in 2010. I understand what people are saying about how useless the degree is at getting you a flying job but its not all true. I'm still not a pilot but should be getting my first officer role with easyjet later this year. Following the degree, i secured a role in security at heathrow for BAA. And 4 months after that i joined easyjet as a crewing officer. Without the degree i don't think i would have passed the interview as it does go a long a long way to demonstrating your knowledge of the industry in far greater detail than anything covered by a flight school. You've got to be realistic and accept that its very unlikely you'll get a flying job as soon as you walk out. Of the 40 or so guys in my year, only the ones who could afford ryaniar went flying straight away. Others joined airlines as check in staff, dispatch or just other jobs where a formal higher education is needed. That's the benefit of the degree until you secure your flying job. After that if you loose your medical, sure it will help you get back into work but obviously not as good as some other degrees. But this one is focused enough so i highly recommend it. As for me, we just had cabair with no other option. You need to investigate to see which flying schools has the best prospects after. Does it secure you a place in the holding pool? if so i'd go for that but generally, the airlines won't consider that much where you went. Cabair was pretty much run of the mill and it still got one of the students onto the cathay cadet scheme. Some of the other guys when to susi air whilst two went on to do the ctc scheme and joined easyjet and thompson. The easyjet contract was just 8 months whilst the thompson lad has just been offered a permanent contract after only 1 year. So you never know. I'd go the holding pool but if its not offered, just go for the cheaper option. ps. join easyjet in any role and after 18 months you can apply for sponsorship which is what i'm hoping for. It gives you CTC type rating for £5K and a 3 year contract with easyjet. Not bad!