Hollingworthp
 

PM on it's way to you & you can be anywere in the UK.

Potkettleblack

Nitpicking? using the numbers Deano777 posted I made a conservative estimate of the saving that could be made just on the hours building flying content.
If I was to realy pull apart the road transport costs as well I could save some more money, in total I could save IRO 10% of his total costs or £6000 if you like.

It is good to see realistic numbers on this subject posted taking into account all the costs, and I thank Deano777 for doing so, I hope the breakdown above will encourage pepole to look more carefully at the costs of hour building in the USA. I say this with you knowing full well that I have an axe to grind on the subject but looking at the numbers the cost in the USA is usualy around the £70/hour mark when all costs are added up if you use a reputable company.

Hopefully none of you will end up with the disaster suffered by one of my customers who's trip to the USA ended with the hourly rate of £690! This is very much the exception but once you step on the airliner the flying has to be cheap & plentyfull to keep the hourly cost low.

A&C - Everyone loves an entrepreneur!

Also any newbies reading this, a FI licence is not manditory, and if you take that into account I would suggest if you follow Deano's extra's you maybe add £5k to any integrated course total published cost. As you have to eat and drive to places and buy headsets wherever you learn to fly.

I do find a certain degree of sniping about the FAA/US system a tad boring, yes the RT is more informal, so what is there many more accidents due to miscommunication there than here?

An aircraft stalls at the exact same airspeed in the US as it does in Europe but it costs me 2/3 less dinero to get it into the air to make it stall.

I did my CPL in a twin with 2.2 hours dual in the UK, its all about application, studying like a dog, preperation and a bit of luck :-) I would stress again, if you come back from the US and go straight into the mix then it is certainly possible. Also having a CAA/FAA qualified instructor in the US who prepares you to come back home but charges you US prices helps.

Finally with respect to reheats comments,
Content - fewer solo hours and more dual hours (erm ..... you are the boss in a modular course .... hello! If you want more multi hours then you say "hey Mr FI can I spend less time in the 152 and more in the twin please? .... It's going to cost me more? ..... well naturally, I understand, nothing in life is free, thank you")
Structure - earlier exposure to twin aircraft - CPL test on twin at some schools (See above, just replace "spend less time in the 152 and more in the" with "sit my CPL in the")

Remember which is something I sometimes forgot during my training, you are the customer, you do what suits you within reason and makes you feel comfortable, do not feel pressured or rushed, its expensive and you owe it to yourself to tailor it to your needs learning level.

Sorry but I can't agree on all your points.
Content - fewer solo, same dual, less TT.
Structure - Earlier exposure to twin, but same amount. Meaning less SEP training and less TT
Support - More staff needed for marketing, yes. The student per staff ratio is higher in integrated because of more students per ground class, instructors booked from morning to evening, etc...
Training aids - Their profit margins are enormous, so they can afford to buy flashy new equipment + use that flashy equipment to promote and attract even more students to make even more money, etc...
Availability and overall organisation - Better organisation, I agree.

As reply to A&C's marketing stunts on this thread:

So you rent your C-150 for 60-70£/hour?
I admire you, how can you make any profits on that in the UK if you're honestly paying VAT?

-At 6 USG/hour and 6£/USG that's already 36£/hour.
-Maintenance is 15£/hour.
-Engine OVH is 10K£ and TBO is 2400 on a C152... 4£/hour
-Prop OVH + regular replacement... 1£/hour
-Annual inspection + insurance with the higher premium for commercial rental, cost 3K£. Supposing your aircraft flies 600 hours per year, that's 5£/ hour
-Supposing aircraft was acquired for 20K£, and you use it for another 10000 hours, ownership cost of 2£/hour.

A total of 63£/hour without VAT.
Add VAT 17.5% and you're at 74£/hour.

This is supposing that you don't account for parking/hangarage/tie-down, you don't account for unforeseen maintenance costs, you have a perfect aircraft that doesn't burn oil and you don't have other expenses or taxes to pay... let alone any earnings.

Are you sure that your accounts add up?

On a sidenote, pilots, make sure you don't fraud on VAT because the consequences are severe. Make sure you receive a vat invoice for every flight hour you log.

There is a certain threshold below which you do not need to be VAT registered although that limit is only around 55k if memory serves so I suspect that does not come into this situation.

Thanks for that info hollingworth. Even without the VAT I have a hard time figuring out how he can even achieve break-even...

I have no idea as I have never hired an aircraft let alone owned and operated one. Just wanted to point out a - albeit highly unlikely! - legitimate reason for VAT not being involved :)

:hmm:
You've seen accounts for these companies then? If you had, you would know that their profits are quite marginal at best.

Nich-Av
 

Thank you for the business advice, I have been operating for five years now, pay VAT and have the fleet in first class condition.

Having top of the line maintenance keeps the cost down in the long run and the customers happy.

As for the marketing stunts I got this from the master of the PPrune marketing stunt................... yourself:ok:

Just to throw a few numbers in, at OAT (OAA as they are now):

Integrated students do 15 hours ME before their ME CPL test, modular guys do 10.

As far as I've seen on the internet most flying schools claim that they'll get you a rating in 6 hours flying time - some offer 10. Considering what there is to learn, this would seem rather limiting. Can someone who has done a 6 hour course please advise?

I have no doubt that students can complete the syllabus in this time and are competent (and I fully accept that some integrated students still haven't got to grips with the aeroplane after 15) but I for one am certainly happier to have flown the extra hours before going off for a flight exam in a brand new type - which is a very different beast to a simple non-retractable single that most of us have flown before.

You get more dual hours. Simple as. To licence issue (VFR CPL ME) I flew 123 hours, of which 46 were dual single engine hours and then the 15 multi engine were obviously dual also, not including 2 and a half hours of test. This is because at my school (no prizes for guessing which one), once you have completed your progress test 1 (the equivalent of a PPL skills test), every 3rd lesson is a dual simulated IFR flight (flight in simulated IFR, not IFR in a simulator!).

Before you move on to multis, you do what I understand is basically the IMC rating, again all dual, before a second prgress test (Imaginatively enough, PT2, presumably the IMC skills test). The time between PT1 (PPL Skills test) and starting the multi rating accounts for 28 hours of dual time which you would not normally get, unless you choose to do an IMC rating which accounts for 15 hours. In that time, we fly something like 30 hours cross country solo, significantly less than modular guys!

How many modular guys do an IMC, well, I'm in no position to guess the percentage, but most of those guys who come to my school modular don't appear to have done it and tend to be of the opinion that it is a useful rating if purely for familiarity with IFR procedures before jumping into the IR with no experience. Pure opinion but one formed from countless conversations with modular students, and learning the intricacies of holding during the 50 hours of an IR when you have a hell of a lot of other things to learn could perhaps be somewhat limiting.

Is it more expensive? Any idiot can tell you 'yes'

Is it more structured? Arguably, yes, more than a standard mod route at a small flying school/club!

Is it the better route? None of us here, irrelevant of who we are or how we try and argue it, are qualified to say if either is a better route...no-one has done both ways!

Will it get you a job sooner? Who knows - I am more inclined to believe that your individual ability and personality are what will get you the job eventually, unfortunately for modular students what seems to be true is that most airlines will look to interview integrated students before modular students at the newbie end of the market. The story I have heard from countless trainers, chief pilots and training captains is that an integrated student, as I recall seeing mentioned here a few days ago, is seen as more of a known quantity with well defined training progession and a single point of contact, from what I have been told directly, the danger of SOME modular students is that they have been to more than 3 schools for their training and so no-one has a real in-depth knowledge of their ability. Again I can accept that this is not the case for many, the modular students here have only usually been to the school where they did their PPL before coming here for CPL, IR and MCC.

But for my two cents, I have been fortunate enough to afford it, and if I had the choice again, I would again go integrated. If I hadn't had the money for my course, I'd have gone modular, simple as that, but I certainly wouldn't let other people's opinions influence my choice of training route, and I apologise if at any point in this post I have shown a clear sway towards my chosen route, I have tried to keep it as factual as possible, I accept that there are opinions lurking in there somewhere.

I would be interested to read a similar post from someone on the other side of the fence!

cfwake

Just to clarify that last point if you didnt have the money for integrated would you have borrowed it from a bank in the current financial climate. It is this area i have a bit of a problem with, 21 year olds borowing huge sums after being told by an integrated school it will give them more chance of employment. :=

Would I have borrowed the money today? Most likely not.

As far as impressionable 21 year olds go, there are plenty of them. But if they were turned down at an integrated school, do you honestly believe that they wouldn't go to the nearest modular shcool and do their ratings there. Cheaper yes, but whose property is almost always secured against the loan?

The parents of said students have an equal responsibility to research the industry and decide for themselves whether they are willing to give their guard the financial backing that is required.

I researched my chosen profession for well over 3 years and in that time spoke to countless people in the industry as well as doing all that I could to ensure that I was competent to venture down the path. I made the correct choice for me, but I admit that by the time I was told the marketing spiel by countless schools - and that included pretty forceful sales pitches by modular schools too - I already knew significantly more about what I was getting into than many others, who went to open days and asked questions such as 'So when you finish at this school, can you fly any plane' and (in the same Q&A session) 'So do you have to do different courses if you want to fly Boeings or Airbuses?'.

It was always made very clear to me that no route will guarantee you a job, this seems pretty obvious to me, anyone who thinks otherwise clearly needs to do more research, and if parents are not sure of what they are agreeing to, they also need to more significantly more research.

Just for those who have the slightest interest, and this is off at a bit of a tangent, I went to uni, I got the life experience whilst there (mostly not through uni but the extra curricular activities that I partook in - namely extensive interaction with the military) to prove to myself that I had the aptitude to succeed and this was substantiated by others in a position to examine it.

Straight out of school at under 20, time is on your side. People in this situation rarely (some do) have the right mind set for the job that they desire. Even if they have the right educational qualifications, they are rendered unsuitable for the profession because of their age, usually always having lived at home and never having had to fend for themselves, and certainly I have strongly recommended to people who have asked for advice that unless you will be 23 or ideally older (I will be 24) when you get into the job market, it is perhaps more wise to take your time, if solely for the purpose of getting into the wide world outside the classroom.

Perhaps it is this sheltered view of the world (and the are plenty of uni students who share this view due to the way they spend their 3 years) that make it, in our opinion, easier to pitch to.

Knowing what I know now (and i would suggest that part of the problem is that many people are complete outsiders to the industry), if my 20 year old (funnily enough I haven't got one) wanted to do flight training, they wouldn't be doing an integrated course. They'd get life experience at uni or in working life, and could do a PPL for the modular course or save to part-finance integrated training when they were 22 or 23. I've met and known enough students, both modular and integrated, to know that the advantages of being older are vital to be at the top of the pile in the job market, and this would hold true for whatever industry I was in.

So perhaps it isn't the way they are told about instant employment, it's how they are led to believe (and schools both modular and integrated are guilty of not mentioning this) that they are mature enough to train for one of the world's premier careers that requires maturity on a level alien to most others. And it is, in my opinion, maturity that forms the respect that enables two complete strangers to handle any emergency, no matter how grave, an hour and a half after they first meet.

And as a last note, folks, I suspect that most would agree, the 3 or 4 years after school, whatever you do for them, are vital in making an individual a rounded and mature potential employee - and if you miss out on them, you're missing a treat!

The above posts from cfwake shoule be archived and noted as the first thing that any young wannabe should read...preferably before posting their first question on this website as well.

Good words of advice.

Oh stop you'll make me blush!

I agree, and thanks for posting that cfwake.

May I be correct to assume the integrated courses were a throwback to the days when airline sponsorship or part sponsorships were alot more common; known as CAP509 courses in pre-JAA days.

I would be interested to know how many candiadates self funded CAP 509 courses (during the eighties and early nineties) compared to the numbers self funding integrated courses now.

When the airline sponsorships started to dry up I would hazard a guess that places like Oxford were set to lose nearly half of its customer base. As a result Oxford in order to survive had to start marketing its courses to private individuals rather than airline training departments.

portsharbourflyer

Correct, the integrated course is borne from the old sponsored training route, as the modular course is a development of the old self-improver route.

As for comparisons between self-sponsored integrated guys, please remember that it is some years now since anyone of note offered sponsored training, the best you can hope for these days is guaranteed employment, and even then it is a guarantee that relies on the airline's situation when you finish training. No one will pay your training course any more, and as far as making comparisons between now and then, I would limit time scales to around 25 minutes.

Cfwake, I am currently working as an FO, so I have no vested interest in ab-initio sponsorships or training.

The point I was trying to make is in the 70's Oxford was completely supported by contracts from airlines across the world. I don't have hard facts for how the customer base was in the eighties and nineties. But it is the historical track record of Oxford and a clever marketing campaign that saw the company survive. Once more the company should be complimented for this as the irradication of sponsorship and the JAA modular system should have seen CAP509 courses fall to the wayside.

The other point to remember is that on an integrated course half of the p1 time is SPIC, so there is an instructor on board, so paying "dual" rates for p1 time will add considerable cost. It is still a mystery how Oxford charge so much when a good proportion of the training is conducted in the US.

Easy, because they can and people will pay. Its called very clever marketing

phf:

Absolutely no qualms with your point and I agree that historically, schools such as OAT doing integrated courses relied on airline endorsement wheras things have reversed now, however I would say that while the survival of the integrated course may well be somewhat attributed to marketing, it is also attributable to the structure of the course and, unfortunately, the view that the airlines hold over the two training routes. Very unfair perhaps, but it does happen, and is unlikely to change until the last fully sponsored captains have left their seat of office!

As for SPIC, indeed it does add to the cost and results in actually more instruction, the intention is of course that the instructor sits there as safety pilot and doesn't interrupt...unlikely of course!

And as for cost, well, no comment...but we are forewarned!

No, I haven't seen the accounts but I have a good idea of the costs involved in the operation of aircraft in the U.S. and in Europe since I was part of the start-up project of a flight school which involved comparing operational costs in Europe, U.S. and South Africa for given aircraft.

If profit margins are low, despite charging high prices and having low operational costs, this means that there is a huge waste somewhere. Students shouldn't be paying for inefficiencies, should they?

In the US you can get a FAA CPL IR ME for 25K£ including all expenses and 250 hours TT. So why should one pay a European FTO over 70K£ all expenses inclusive for a 200 hours TT program that involves 90% of flying time in the U.S.?

Hell, for 70K I can provide you a JAA CPL IR ME with 3 hours of massage per day, your own servant and have someone drive you to your aircraft in a McLaren F1.