Losing Integrated ATPL Place
 

Hi all,

I had successfully managed to receive a place at one of the European integrated ATPL programmes. While I got through the ground school portion successfully, I was not so successful in the flying portion and lost my place in the course.

I still want to continue flying and hope to go into the airline market once I complete an ATPL. Has anyone else had a similar experience and continued to pursue a career in the aviation market? Anyone familiar with the industry have any opinions or information that could be useful?

Thanks!

This is a tough one since the integrated ATPLs are typically programmes with the most continuity of training and the best support systems in place to help failing trainees. No doubt you will have had extra flying given to you along with remedial ground work to get you back up to standard. Unfortunately there is no way of knowing if you would do any better second time round and there is no reason to think you would. My advice would be try your hand at another career, one you are better suited to and save throwing away potentially another year of your life and further sums of money.

Reference the ground school, sadly that's the easy part of training. As we all know, in Europe it's a case of memorising the question bank and answering multiple choice questions that you have seen dozens of times before. Completing ATPL exams though will at least show you have a basic knowledge of aviation which will help when seeking out a new avenue to try.


Best of luck with your endeavours and you might well look back in a few years once your earning more than anyone on here and realise it wasn't the end of the world as you no doubt see it as now but rather just the start of something different.

Learnin2Fly, Can I ask which school you were at? I have heard lots of people failing ground school components but not the flying phase..

Don't even know you but Im genuinely gutted for you. Had you flown before, or was this your first ever time?

My I ask how did you fail the flying-part? What/where did you do wrong?

I'm not sure I'd agree with that last statement VariablePitchP. In my experience, integrated ATO's tend to push the underperforming student between pillar and post, convening hearing boards and progress reviews resulting in additional training at cost and often with little by way of continuity in this extra training, frequently with other instructors to the student's usual one (which can be beneficial), and once the student has fallen off the 'production line' and is no longer on the daily planning schedule, confidence is often adversely affected, they fall further behind his or her classmates and the goalposts seem to get further apart. Failing to solo is where I've seen the greatest number of dropouts but it does happen elsewhere in the syllabus and is not uncommon contrary to popular belief, even among selected students.

Thats really interesting about the failing to go solo Reverserbucket I'd never really thought about critical points in flight training before, I was thinking up until now what a waste my PPL was (years ago) since I'm on an integrated course now but at least I know I have the capability I suppose.

I would think then the other points would be the instructor check before solo nav and maybe a bit of instrument stuff in terms of co-ordination etc? I wouldn't think CPL test as I have never seen a school anywhere which will send you to test before you are ready and most failures I know are nerves/brain slips.

I agree with Reverserbucket, I'm a modular student myself and have met quite a few integrated "drop-outs" in various stages of training who have now moved on to modular route.. they don't mess about, if you can't keep up with the pace - you're out! They're keeping good chunk of your money anyway

this stuff happens, no reason to be hard on yourself. Take a good look at yourself, if you know where you went wrong and how to fix it, join the modular route and good chunk of the industry will not care at all

without knowing where/how you failed, it is quite difficult to advise you on anything else, other than keep your chin up. As my instructor once said, if bears can learn how to ride bicycles, there's nothing stopping me to learn how to fly a plane

A PPL is a valuable achievement as is UAS flying and gliding in particular provides confidence on an integrated course although can sometimes be detrimental as techniques and procedures vary (think point and power final approach vs power for descent and attitude for speed for example) and be careful - overconfidence can quickly be the undoing of the cadet with some previous experience. Ultimately it's down to your ability and willingness to adapt.

The first solo is really the deciding point in training where you can see, before the student has progressed too far, whether they have the required skill and coordination to continue - weak visual attitude control will usually lead to poor basic instrument scanning later on and often basic coordination problems will become apparent early on, after all, the approach and landing is the most demanding of the coordination tasks you will face, even with a 10kt HWC. For integrated training, it is normally used as a natural selection point - for many, although they have passed selection and the theoretical knowledge exams, they have not flown and it is not uncommon to discover that not everyone is suitable. Indeed, one integrated school I'm aware of introduced a pre-solo progress check in an attempt to mitigate the number of accidents that students were suffering on their first and early solo sorties. It's not only technical issues , and extreme air sickness and spatial awareness problems can also present a barrier to progress. In a couple of cases, I've seen a lack of motivation linked to confidence problems.

Progress Tests can also occasionally identify a problem(s) and can technically result in a recommendation to stop training although this is unusual. The CPL Skill Test though can be an obstacle for some and there are cases where the candidate is unable to perform satisfactorily on the day on multiple attempts. I've seen perhaps two or three unsuccessful CPL's following two previous attempts (meaning either an outright fail on first attempt then an unsuccessful retake or partial and unsuccessful partial retake). This is not a good endorsement of the school however which is why is fairly unusual to recommend a candidate who is not ready or unsuitable.

I didn't know bears could ride bicycles - every day's a school day!

LOL!! That would be Wolfgang Langewiesche - but it's not a ridiculous book. He was a very experienced instructor. If only more books were like that one. Especially the bit about forgetting Bernoulli's Theorem.

I think you need to give some more detail about what has happened.
People here are generally supportive and what ever setbacks people have you can turn it into a positive.
Good luck

I agree with the OP that gliding is one of the best ways to get into Aviation, so much so that CTC has been endorsing it alongside the British Gliding Association with 16-18 year olds learning in the UK who should then go on to have a fantastic CV.

As the OP is in Europe I assume, Minden is of little value. Instead I'd recommend Lasham Gliding in the UK, the largest club in the world open 364 days a year. Courses throughout the summer. Since instructing for Lasham I have flown with everyone from retired training captains to aspiring ATPL applicants.

All agree that gliding is a fantastic way to get some proper flying skills for little cost. And if you're good, you could build hours flying the towplane for free!

Ultimately this is your investment, clearly you have hit a hurdle but you now need to be really sure that your aptitude is good enough to recommence ATPL training. Everyone learns at different paces, but there is only so much money you can throw at it.