Hi, I hate to bring you bad news, but I am on the first course who were sent out to Malaga mid-May this year. It is now August 10th and I have only just been scheduled my first two flights this coming week. We were told by both CAE and the easy liaison team that the first class would be prioritised, as it’s been so long since we finished groundschool (our last exam was 14th December 2023!). CAE have now turned around and told us that we will be sharing instructors equally with the other three classes out here, and have no sort of enhanced training plan in place to get us back on course for our sim phase in Milan, which was scheduled to start w/c 11th November. We have a class who finished groundschool 2 months ago scheduled to be only 4-6 weeks behind us, starting this coming Monday. With the current instructor number (4 including the CFI, so basically 3) and the projected progress of certification, there will be 7 instructors ready, to share between 74 cadets, come September, which is simply not feasible. These numbers currently allow for an absolute maximum of barely 2 flights each, per week. We fear that with no adjusted contingency training plan, we will be out in Malaga for the best part of a year, with the summer easyJet induction looking, more likely by the week, to be out of our grasp. Pretty much every cadet out here is filled with complete uncertainty and a lot of frustration and I myself and quite a few cadets are now seriously considering leaving and picking up ATPL training elsewhere. I will update you as things progress, but as it currently stands I see the setup of the Malaga base as a complete and utter failure and the treatment of the cadets from CAEs side has been absolutely horrendous. I will of course update on any progression, but from cancelled meetings with no communication, to blatant lies about what to expect, I have run out of words for how I can explain this situation.

hey,
Is there anyone in the training with whom I can exchange?

Sure happy to help

Not too dissimilar to another integrated cadet I spoke to at a recent airline assessment day. Was sent to USA for 3 months, no flying due to oversubscription and mass exodus of FIs to the airlines. Brought back to the UK, and then had their flight training subcontracted out to a smaller third party school in the south. Not great when you're spending all that money. With the flood of people looking to join the industry its becoming ever evident the schools aren't equipped to meet the demand. I keep my fingers crossed that it will improve, as at the end of the day, you are customers before anything else.

Is there a trust worthy FTO out there?
 

As I sat at a Crawley watering hole ( no alcohol available ) at lunch time earlier today and short distance from the CAE FTO facility and the L3 HARRIS centre not far away, a group of young people sporting shirts with CAE markings, other industry related lanyards and single bar epaulettes came and sat down at the table next to me.

With an historic interest in the likely process that they were engaged in, I was truly saddened to overhear of their experiences as they progress (or not!) at the hands of their FTO. This was an erupting volcano of frustration, venom, financial concerns, mental health implications, lack of respect/consideration - customer service? No prospect of a seamless progression through the programme they signed up to and paid for. It was clear that the credibility, capability and integrity of the employees and directors of relevant FTO's and its partner airline(s) is a disgrace and bordering on fraudulent - at least the highwaymen of old had the common decency to wear a mask!

The situation is more than graphically demonstrated with the apparent vague progression in their training at some unknown time and place in the future involving Phoenix/Malaga/Milan or FKW, FKW or FKH. Delays of months!! To make matters worse with the knowledge and participation of the involvement of their intended future employers that are equally slippery that carry the contract safety valve of 'nothing is guaranteed or set in stone” "Not my aisle” at its best.


Of course it invites the question as to how this situation impacts the operational needs, planning, budgeting and credibility of the partner airlines. Is this anyway to run a business? of course it is, no financial exposure!

For the students/cadets there is no viable opportunity to mitigate the resulting financial loss resulting from the uncertain future time line - should such a credible plan exist!! i.

Those present questioning the merits of walking or needing to walk away.

Who am I? I was that banker for one with similar aspirations (realised!!!) prior to Covid - who just avoided such a lottery!!! and that was not without serious pain.

easyJet MPL
 

Hi all. I have a friend that has been through a UK based MPL programme but didn’t obtain their MPL license due to not completing base training. I was wondering if there is anyone else here in a similar situation to them or if anyone could shed some light on their situation?

They have an A320 type-rating but just no license. Is there any way for them to get their license, go to another airline or salvage the type-rating?

Any help is greatly appreciated :)

Hi Easy MPL cadets,

How long did you wait before passing stage 3 and getting a call from CAE to arrange a start date? Is the situation improving with the aircraft training in Pheonix yet?

Thanks in advance

Hi
Really interesting - My son has his stage 3 interview this month, and intends to start (if successful) after June 2025 onwards. Can I ask from your bad experience how long you anticipate finishing the course or perhaps when did you start the course? We are close to Gatwick and these comments fill me with real anxiety. I did phone them and they told me (as sales would accordingly) that the last section of cadets will go over by 3 months, but anticipate no delays starting mid 2025. Would really love your feedback if you have any left after your comments above. Many thanks

For me I didn't get a phone call, I got an email a few days before my Stage 3 with a list of dates and asked to shortlist, then if you pass they'll follow up with an email with all the documents a week or so later and once they are all in place (signed and class 1 sent over) you get a confirmed space on that specific course date. Hope that helps

Could you explain a little the circumstances around this? Assuming your friend completed every part of the course apart from the EZY base training, do you know why this was?

easyJet is now hiring fresh modular students. The last bastion of refusing to hire modular students in the UK has fallen - if that doesn't tell you something about what's going on at CAE, who was surprised to provide easyJet's cadets, then I don't know what will. easyJet exhausted CAE's supply, seems to have exhausted the integrated / tag supply too... Details (and I don't know what the refresher training rubbish is):In order to standardise your previous experience, you’ll need to complete a short refresher training programme which includes; 8 hours of ground school, 4 hours in a cockpit mock-up and 3 full-flight simulator sessions. You must pass this in order to proceed onto your A320 Type Rating.

Both the Refresher Training and A320 Type Rating will be self-funded - further details will be provided during Assessment Centre.
Requirements of the Role
For your application to be progressed, you must have:

• The right to live and work in the UK with unrestricted access across the easyJet network
• Valid UK CAA CPL
• Valid UK CAA IR
• UK CAA Class 1 Medical
• No more than 5 ATPL exam resits
• Completed A-UPRT training
• Normal standard APS MCC qualification
• No more than 20 hours of remedial flight training
• Minimum ICAO Level 4 English
• Must not have attended an easyJet Assessment Centre for a pilot role within the last 6 months

In addition to the above requirements, you must also meet the following dependant on your previous experience:

If you have completed training, but have no operating experience: You must have completed pilot training no earlier than 31st December 2021.

Unless this was very recently then I imagine it’s due to the same reasons as previously that the airline dumped the students on their program during the pandemic. The ATOs were even less helpful in transferring licenses or completing courses. Plenty of information online about that.

Hi, so to be blunt… the CAE sales/ Customer Service teams are nothing other than utter liars, frauds if you will. As you said, they will say everything to get you to sign up to paying them… even when their company has no ability to provide the services offered.

Like NepoBaby001, I am also a CAE student in one of the 4 classes forced to Malaga. CAEs management are simply not fit for purpose. They seem to have willingly sacrificed our 4 classes in the hope of making it ‘look’, on paper, that there are no delays… they can claim that all classes that should be in the core phase are, even though the 4 classes in Malaga are basically doing F*** all, except wasting money on accommodation and missing potential income.

Optimistically, the delays felt by the courses now would hopefully mean that by time your Son would get to this phase, the delays are gone and CAE have managed to sort themselves out. My personal opinion, unless they sack and replace their entire management team and every decision maker involved in the Malaga shambles, things will never improve.

The easyJet MPL is a massive selling point I know, and I hope your Son does well. However with the UK airlines willing to hire Integrated cadets straight from Flight school now, I’d honestly say look elsewhere.

Some questions about your experience
 

Hi, I am very interested in easyJet MPL with CAE too but I have many concerns and I am a bit worried...
How was your experience in the end? Did you get the job with easyJet directly or did you have to pass any selection?
Would you recommend this course to someone else?
How long did it last?

I found some opinions of people who got their job offer cancelled or who had some unplanned stop during the training and other bad experiences.
I am considering this option because I need a secure job after the training but someone says it's just marketing, and the job is not guaranteed.

Do you also know if there is any funding possibility and how does it work for the payment?
Thank you in advance for your help, I appreciate any recommendation!

Hi Tia, did you apply in the end? how it was?
I am very interested in easyJet MPL with CAE too but I have many concerns and I am a bit worried as I read horror stories
In case you applied and passed, How was your experience in the end? Did you get the job with easyJet directly or did you have to pass any selection?
Would you recommend this course to someone else?
How long did it last?

I found some opinions of people who got their job offer cancelled or who had some unplanned stop during the training and other bad experiences.
I am considering this option because I need a secure job after the training but someone says it's just marketing, and the job is not guaranteed.

Do you also know if there is any funding possibility and how does it work for the payment?
Thank you in advance for your help, I appreciate any recommendation!

Hi all, I've got my easyJet MPL assessment coming up next week with CAA. I'm trying to decide with this course, or going modular - cheaper, faster & I could keep working alongside.

Any updates on the CAA MPL delays from anyone currently on the course?? Have things improved this year?

As someone currenly in completing the core phase, unfortunately the experience in PHX hasn't been amazing, even despite it supposedly having been 'fixed'. There's been inconsistent communication, inconsistent training (I've sometimes had 3 weeks of sitting around between missions, and have currently only completed 1 flight and 0 sims since the 14th April) and it seems they rely very heavily on ramping up at the end of the training phase, instead of maintaining consistency throughout the course. Despite this, we are looking at leaving on time in the not too distant future, or at least within a week of that date. The good thing about the course is that even if you feel you're behind, a week of a decent amount of missions really changes the outlook due to the limited number of mission required to complete. But be warned, you WILL be sitting around a lot in the fair weather location, so make sure you find something fun to do otherwise it will become mind-numbing quickly, and there is very little you as a cadet can do to change how quickly you get through the training, apart from just putting the work in at home. One thing I must say as well is that a lot of cadets are coming out at the moment, and it seems like they're struggling to maintain good ratios between students/instructors - they had to use F2 instructors to teach F1 students so they can maintain their 1 mission a week requirement for the course, at the expense of some F2 missions (think I lost 3/4 missions because of this policy). It seems to have improved in recent weeks (maybe caused by licencing issues, but again wouldn't really know due to communication issues), so that may not be a problem when you're out here.

The groundschool phase is run very well, can't really fault it, and I have heard that the sims are run well as well, but I shall report back when I get to that stage.

Thanks very much for the info Gilly. I guess as long as you're leaving on time, it doesn't really matter about the delays.
Yes please keep us updated. I have my assessment soon. The easyJet MPL taking 2years vs 3 years makes a huge financial difference for me.

Isn't the whole point of these MPL (and integrated) courses that they're supposed to be more streamlined? You pay a higher price for a better product? All I seem to read is how people on these courses are flying once a month etc..

I flew twice a day at flight school. How badly managed must these places be to screw up the process of what is essentially printing money. All you need is planes, instructors and decent weather, or am I missing something?

100% agree rudestuff.

When I started my training nearly 50 years ago I was flying twice a day, flying training requires CONSISTENCY. Maybe 3 or 4 times per week but 1 or 2 per month what a farce and some of these post are out in sunny PHX where you don't have to worry about the vagaries of the British weather. Ground school is easy to control as everybody knows where they are for 6-8 months but it's the flying phase that usually causes the problems (aircraft & instructor availability etc.).

When I was an ATPL ground instructor at the good old OATS back in 1999 a full-time UK based integrated course was approximately 55 to 60 weeks. I know there have been changes & various add-ons with JAA/EASA but really anything over 15-18 months needs serious questions asked. I believe that these schools are over extending themselves, too many students (bums on seats = cash) & not enough correctly licensed instructors.

Unfortunately consistency is non-existent out here at the moment. There is no doubt in my mind that a lot of the problems that CAE face are self-inflicted due to lack of planning, being reactive rather than being proactive and biting off far more than they can chew with number of cadets that they need to get to easyJet and other airlines (they're even trying to get a military contract at the moment, when they can't even fulfil their current contracts properly). Admittedly since being out here, the weather in Phoenix hasn't been as good as I was expecting, it's sunny pretty much everyday but it also gets incredibly windy and many of my coursemates have had missions cancelled due to it being too windy (I had one that was borderline where we had to come back and wait for it to die down). In total, we're getting around 80 hours out here, with around half of it in the sim, so there is no way it should take 6 months, but alas that is what we find ourselves in and luckily it should be in the past very soon (can't wait).

EDIT - Just did some calculations, and since starting F2 in March, I am averaging 1.6 missions (flight or sims) per week.

Hi Gilly,

Thanked for the inside info! I’m looking at starting a course next year so wouldn’t be out in Phoenix for a little while so who knows what the situation would be regarding missions per week.

i haven’t found too much online regarding accommodation, for all UK phases I’m able to commute, what’s the situation for Phoenix? Do you have so source your own accommodation and transport for however long you’re out there for or do they have their own places to stay?

Hi KJ,

So for in Phoenix, you kind of have 2 options. Source your own accomodation and transport, or you can stay in a place called Stone Canyon with the option of getting a bus into the centre. I went for the former option with some coursemates, and have purchased cars/rented a house with the intent of selling these cars onto cadets coming out as we're leaving. Obviously having your own car is much more flexible than relying on a bus getting around, but it's not unheard of and many cadets do just choose that option.

Hi Gilly,

Thank you! It’s been quite hard to find much about the Phoenix stage online. Would you mind if I asked a rough ball park figure for accommodation for the whole stage?

So for accomodation, probably you're looking at $5k-ish for the 6 months here, so it's not too dissimilar to UK rates. Car-wise, we've spent around $3k-ish each for 2 cars and then food is around $150 per week on groceries, depending on how flashy you go with your meals. It's not been cheap, but you're not going to get this time again, so why not spoil yourself a bit. All in all, I would say I've spent around $12k-ish on living out here for the 6 months. Obviously it will really depend, but if you budget for $10-15k for the 6 months, you'll be absolutely fine.

Staying in Stone Canyon is around $8.5k for the 6 months through CAE.

Hi all,

I have recently passed the stage 3 interview and am deciding on whether to join the program or not. I was wondering are there any updates on the previous delays for the core flight training phase? Has the situation improved?

I’ve literally just got back to the UK from Phoenix, so it’s still fresh in the memory and probably the most recent experience anecdote you’re going to get so, here we go.

The Phoenix setup is a bit of a strange one because you’ve got so many different groups of cadets/military guys all kind of fighting for the same resources. Luckily for you, CAE have the resources out in Phoenix to weather this, and there was never really a time personally where I struggled to get an aircraft or sim for my required activity, which was pretty consistent for everyone on my course (Seminoles are slightly different as, if a few go down due to maintenance issues at the same time, you may not be able to get the required aircraft for your mission, so bear that in mind). Unfortunately, the management are very reactive rather than proactive, and prefer to tackle problems as they come up instead of trying to prevent them, which is incredibly frustrating as i feel if they were a bit more proactive, they could have a great setup.

When it comes to scheduling, this was the bit that irked a lot of cadets - there is no consistency to it. Some weeks you could fly 3/4 missions a week, some you could fly none, but you won’t be told any different. Luckily, instructors have been given control of their schedules again, so you can get an idea of how much you’re going to fly, but for some of my time out there, schedulers had complete control over everyone’s schedules so you kind of had to sit around and wait, which was incredibly frustrating as it just seemed like you were waiting for some that was never coming (and in some weeks, never did come, especially between mid-April and mid-May where i flew very, very little).

Delay wise, I ended up being 3.5 weeks delayed to leave Phoenix. This was due in-part to one of the F3 instructors becoming ill for an entire week which definitely slowed everything right down as the other F3 instructors was busy completing his own ATP training at the same time, so prioritised that over getting us out, understandably. So, without that illness of the instructor, I reckon I would have been 2.5 weeks delayed, so not amazing but certainly by no means bad considering it doesn’t have an impact on my next stage of training, and CAE to help you somewhat financially with payments after your contracted time out in Phoenix if you are still out there. However, I would not be surprised at all if you see reports of these delays increasing in amount in the next few months, as policy changes that luckily didn’t affect my course take hold. But have an open mind, it is just a stepping stone to the next stage of your career, and it is a finite time, regardless of how long it feels it takes. Yes, it is frustrating, but look at the bigger picture and compare it to other flight schools too - I have heard rumours other flight schools have 6/7/8 MONTH delays to their training, and most of those don’t even have a job attached at the end of it, at least many initially. So yes, there are delays, are they frustrating? Yes. Would you avoid the course because of them? No, absolutely not. You’ve got a great opportunity to join one of the best and safest airlines in Europe right from the start of your career, take it, you will not regret it.

Feel free to PM if you still have any questions, don’t want to clog up with chat with too many walls of text.

Thank you so much for the sharing! That is really helpful!

Hi
Currently starting ground school now for the MPL. Any delays over in Arizona now? I've heard they improved but interested to know what the current situation is.
Can['t wait to get up flying tho

Hi, some people are getting behind because of a mix of factors for example lessons cancelled by the CFI, or they just didn’t get scheduled that much, but there a lot of variables.Other people are more or less on schedule, it’s quite a case by case scenario. By the time you’ll finish ground school the situation would probably be different so no point in asking almost one year before your arrival.

Stage 3 delay and flight training delay
 

Hi, I'm from Europe and I want to join the Ezy MPL next year (I know it's closed, but I contacted CAE, and they replied, saying it will likely reopen in spring 2026). I'm going to be finishing my last year of school by September 2026, and I've heard that some people waited months to do Stage 3, so I want to know how long I should take (e.g. 1,2 or 3 months??)to prepare for Stage 2 in order to be promptly prepared,not wait months for stage 3 and still start in 2026. It wouldn't be cool to wait several months after school while I could have started an ATPL in my own country. And get some progress ahead of time.
Oh,and if someone is willing to answer this also- Are the delays in the practical part in Phoenix being resolved and should be more stable in a while? (Just asking because I heard they are persistent)

The delays in Phoenix are persistent and I very much doubt the situation will improve until something changes and there is no longer a world wide pilot shortage. I would be very surprised if anyone encounters less than 2 months delay.

With respect, literally look 2 comments above and you will see my breakdown of Phoenix after having come back a few weeks ago.

How to ace the ADAPT test?
 

I'd like someone who successfully passed the course to tell me the best resources to help me prepare.

I'm going to buy the Symbiotic Essentials package, but I've heard it's only useful for an overview of the test format.So it might not be enough.

Since I haven't taken math or physics in a while, I want to prepare well. I'm thinking about buying the latest pilot jobs 1 month bundle although I'm afraid it won't be as focused as it should be.

Hi there,

Does anyone know when the course fees are due? Are they due on receipt of an offer or x days before your specific class start date?

Thanks

Fees are split into 5 payments of varying amounts, due before starting each section essentially.

1 - Prior to Start Date (Course Deposit)
2 - 10 days prior to start Core Phase
3 - 10 days prior to start Basic Phase
4 - 10 days prior to start Intermediate Phase
5 - 10 days prior to start Advance Phase

Thats actually quite enticing as there's much less risk to failing the initial theory than I expected.
Do you have any resources to practice for stage 2 and the type of interview in 3?

Stage 2 I paid for the Symbiotics practice ADAPT set and was like for like the real tests just different numbers.
Stage 3 guidance is provided after passing stage 2 and is quite helpful, but research easyJet and why you want to / are a good fit for the role.
Also think of situations where you've shown leadership / dealt with people in a difficult situation.

Thank you very much, I appreciate the help.

Actually...they tend to send the bills out late.
I have been very impressed that the quoted price in € is exactly what you pay.