Do Flight Academies Make Economic Sense?
 

I'm a Brit who has been living in Canada for ten years (currently 28) and I hold a PPL.

We're considering a move back to the UK and, since we left, I notice a surge in Flight Academy offerings (CTC, Oxford, etc).

Do most graduates end up finding work that allows them to pay back their loans, or is it like the United States where there's tens of thousands of flight grads churned out, unable to land jobs and forced to bag groceries for cash?

I know that's a very general question with many industry and personal variables...! Just curious if there's a general consensus?

The better ones will be employed.

Those who undertake the ATOs aptitude testing really need to pay attention to the outcome. If you are assessed as a training risk, that translates, in percentage terms, into not expected to exactly flourish. You really need reasonable expectation of success, and the potential to be employed.
Do the sums of cost of training, against reward. After all, it is not exactly cheap.

End of the day, SUPPLY and DEMAND will determine whether the marginal ones get employed.

You will always get the "no hopers" who struggle throughout the course, but decide to take the risk: as ever, it is a personal choice as to how you spend your money.

When the market is buoyant..Quite often the case for the better ones as well.

CTC, Oxford and CAE place a lot of people with partner airlines, but this has absolutely nothing to do with "aptitude"

They all have set up a system that gives them significant tax benefits, and they also have a cashflow going into the airlines to get their students first in line. Students pays twice the market rate, school makes massive profit, airlines get bunch of people with a known baseline of skills jumping at the opportunity to work for peanuts. ATPL scores, first time passes, etc mean very little in this scenario. This come straight from the horse's mouth; The man who explained this to me, albeit a long time ago, used to work for one of these training providers. It's is at best unethical, but all fully legal.

I personally know people that did extremely well during their training, and simply don't get called. One of them actually passed the CTC aptitude test but decided against it due to the ridiculous course fees. And I know plenty of people that absolutely scraped by but went to a fancy school, and are now sitting in the RHS.

It's not about being good, it's about getting a chance/making your own luck. And sadly these big schools have cornered a big part of the labour market.

For anyone to succeed, they need to pass the type rating, and then the line training.
So given the integrity of any training department, then whoever is chosen by what ever method, they would need to achieve 'the standard'. The Standard is the Standard.

It would be total folly, to allow any old Tom, Dick, or Harry to be operating in the right hand seat. I think a few years back EZY had a batch of new CPL/IR holders who got binned during the EZY training phase as they failed to meet the required standard