EasyJet MPL CAE - Delays? How bad?
 

Hello,

I'm currently considering the EasyJet CAE MPL, but reports of severe delays during flying stage of training are putting me off...

Does anyone have any info on the outlook of these delays? How many classes are currently dealyed? How many classes have actually completed training and been employed by EZY etc...

I heard they set up Malaga base to try to deal with issues in Phoenix, but there is still a backlog of ~3 classes sitting around waiting to fly in Malaga?

Does anyone have info on whether CAE have a plan to sort this out or what the situation might look like in 9-12 months time?

Thanks!

Look elsewhere
 

Hi,
I’m one of the unlucky many stuck out in Malaga doing next to nothing. There are 4 courses that have been sent here, so far.

CAE are utterly incompetent in every way, their decision making is easily the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed. I hope that things do improve in the next 9-12 months, otherwise this Malaga shambles will have been for nothing.

My only advice to you would be to not fall for the fraud and blatant lies told by CAE. It’s not a course that you want to waste your money on. I know the EasyJet branding is a massive pull, but you have to actually complete the course before EZY consider you… and with CAE as the training provider, good luck. Don’t waste your money on CAE, go to a proper flight school, or at least one with decent management

It’s shocking apparently. I know someone who works at their old base in the UK and she said that for most of this year they hired some Diamond Aircraft from the UK company who maintains them and it was working perfectly but then the Head office overseas decided to shut it down in the UK to save money and go to Spain.
It’s turned into a shambles and with quite a backlog there she says and nobody knows if it will ever work in Spain as she was told the company there don’t have the available aircraft or the capability to achieve things. Leading Edge also try in Spain but they are also a shambles.
People apparently are already asking why CAE don’t reinstate the working model they’ve had at Oxford airport this year for MPL as it worked perfectly I’m told.

………and WHATEVER YOU DO DO NOT SIGN WITH LEADING EDGE AS THEY ARE WORSE AND WANT PAYING UP FRONT. £12m in the red apparently so I’ve heard.

Especially because Easy are now, as predicted, hiring direct entry modular pilots. A reflection on CAE's failure, and the ongoing failure of UK/EU's big integrated schools. It's an embarrassing shambles, and I fear it will end in tears. My old mum could have told you that Malaga has never had the capacity to deal with the CAE output. A pity the UK regulator is incompetent, a pity that EASA don't care. Don't pay up front, if you have already paid up front lawyer up early to avoid the rush.

The decision to send their students to Malaga was indeed an odd one. Whist Malaga is a nice place to stay and has good weather, LEAX was already dramatically over capacity with two large flights schools and the flight club using the tiny airport in a small valley. It is surrounded by the highly restrictive airspace around Malaga airport and high terrain limiting options (navigation exercises following the coast at 1000ft to LEAM are de facto standard. Stunning views, yes, but not exactly a challenging navigation exercise). Oh, and it is uncontrolled and has Spanish as its language of communication. How many aircraft can you fit in a single sided pattern? You'll be unpleasantly surprised there I imagine.
There were plenty of other options to partner with, but I imagine a good price (along with a glitzy school building under a blue sky) was CAE's thought, not practicalities. A sad situation for all involved.

Alex Whittingham Note the scheme is only for UK students with UK licenses. They seem to have much less of an issue getting EASA licence holders. Though I am not sure it's totally CAE's failure. easyjet has taken students from other big integrated schools for years and years when the need arises.
And I don't see how you can blame the regulator totally for this. They can't fully nanny state the market. There is an element of caveat emptor as a lot of this information is accessible.

Are the 4 easyJet MPL courses literally doing no flying? Got through the selection but this sounds very concerning.

Delays big and growing not shrinking. Malaga base was meant to fix it but made it worse because its been so badly planned. CAE sent 80 english EZY MPL cadets to a small busy uncontrolled airfield with spanish only comms before they had managed even a single flight. It was not even approved by CAA to deliver MPL when the first groups were sent so they did nothing but pay rent for weeks and CAE sent half home.


As soon as flying started they realised it doesnt work so are trying to shift the base to Granada, more delays incoming. Circuits at LEAX banned by CAE after a few weeks because too many near misses in small busy uncontrolled circuit where other traffic don't follow procedures. Not to mention cadets get no comms practice as MPL cadets not allowed to speak Spanish on the radio and have no situational awareness because can't understand anything and don't know where the traffic is. Nowhere near enough instructors, some left already and none instrument rated for the IFR phase so even more delays incoming. But still CAE bring back more cadets to do very little. Cadets losing their minds at CAE lack of planning and respect


Now EZY will take cadets from anywhere that will actually finish your training there is no reason at all to do this course. you won't find a happy cadet to say a good word about it

So of the 4 courses sent to Malaga so far, 2 have flown and 2 have not.
I think Core 1, which is VFR flying with the first Solo as the end point, should have been finished after 12 weeks (don’t quote me there but I think that’s about accurate). The first 2 courses arrived before 01/06/2024 (having already had at least 3 months of delays in the UK between the end of groundschool and being sent to Malaga) and are still nowhere near the end of core 1, so even though there are flights in LEAX for CAE students… it’s hardly enough. Classes 3 and 4, no flights for the foreseeable

Easy jet mpl
 

How is it now? Is it still bad and should I apply for the MPL as I'm really considering it, also does anyone know where do integrated atpl students go in case after completing the training?

Observations from Malaga
 

Dear All, and especially those who were up to this point considering training with CAE.

I am in Malaga on the easyjet MPL with CAE. Here are a few facts.

• It is now 225 days since I finished ground school and I have done TWO flights.
• The core phase operations were temporarily shut down by the CAA but only because of a whistleblowing report to the CAA. CAE were happily pushing us through things that we had long since reported to them as unsafe.
• When we arrived for core phase we were given out of date charts. It took months for these to be replaced.
• We haven't been given a cohort meeting with them in WEEKS. Meetings are routinely cancelled at the last minute and there is radio silence from them between times.
• Emails are not replied to by them.
• Two days ago the head of training was here from the US along with other members of the CAE team - did they invite the cohorts for an update or meeting? Of course not.
• I have heard some aircraft have gone out over MTOM
• The training manual is not being followed
• We are not getting to backseat any training flights becuase we have 2-seater aircraft. This will greatly reduce our learning.
• Sim instructors have been playing games on their phones during sim sessions.
• Cohorts were brought out to Spain BEFORE the relevant approvals were obtained for the place here and the sims here etc.
• We are at an aerodrome which does comms in Spanish.
• There have been a number of near misses at this aerodrome but operations were not shut down immediately in the aftermath.
• We don't have any training manuals for the flight part of the training.
• We were given 187 online presentations to do, many of which were from an old Jet Blue training program and some out of date enough to tell us that EASA was soon going to replace the JAA. This is hardly "designed specifically for easyJet" as the website blurb would have you believe.
• The website also promises that you will be "mentored by easyJet right from the start" but this couldn't be further from the truth. The easyjet representative didn't even come and say hello to us when we arrived at the training centre in Gatwick.
• Gound school staff were mostly very good.
• The runway at LEAX here was damaged by floods but despite that being on the 13th Nov we still have had no official comms about it or the way forward as they see it.
• Our VISAS will be running out in a matter of a few weeks and there has been no guidance on what we need to do.
• Those students with cars out here will have to take them back very soon when they reach the 6 months limit. No idea how we will get around rural Spain after this.

Would you sign up knowing that this is how they deal with problems? CAE categorically sent students out here before it was anywhere near safe or ready to do so.

Their glossy website with all shiny promises about how they do things and their corporate values etc reads more like a dark comedy.

This is extremely shocking to read to say the least. I was considering this and now after you posted this I just cannot believe things like that are happening.

To pay £100k and then pay for your own food and accommodation and to get this service is unreal.

How are you holding? Do you think you will reach the end somewhat soo?

Wishing you best of luck with the MPL

Can anyone provide an update to the situation at CAE? The last update I've seen was in November 2024, and I've been told that the delays are better now? Would be good to hear from some cadets the current situation. Thanks a lot in advance and I'm very sorry to hear you're all in this situation.

Hi guys, any update about Malaga/Granada? I'm also an MPL Student going through ATPL at the moment. I heard from someone that operations in Granada started. Could you confirm how it's going at the moment and what are CAE plans?

Are you just starting this Jan? What is the official information from CAE?

No, I am not at Gatwick and I started last year. For now I don't have any official info. I'm trying to gather information

We’ve been delayed by 2 months for PHX.

Any updates? I spoke to two current MPL cadets and they honestly said it was a good program. I tried asking certain questions to catch them out but it seems like their journey is going well so far, hence why I’m not sure if the whole issues with Malaga are still on going. They didn’t recommend skybourne, but that was obvious as they both enjoying the easy MPL

Malaga update
 

Where to begin…the situation in Malaga is complicated,

To answer the first question about LEAX/Granada – 99% of the flying is now done out of Granada with a satellite base in operation. If I had to hazard a guess a large part of training being moved there had to do with UKCAA safety concerns.
Granada is better from a training perspective as students are flying out of a less cowboy area and at a controlled airport, but there are still issues.
For example:

• There is no dedicated maintenance for the aircraft at LEGR.
• There are no simulators at LEGR meaning all sims have to take place at LEAX.
• There is daily commercial traffic. Understandably this is prioritised meaning you can easily spend most of a lesson holding for traffic.
• ATC don’t seem used to school flights so can get jumpy/impose restrictions, especially when as mentioned above, they have to deal with commercial traffic.
• The winter weather (admittedly more of a CAE/delay problem than a LEGR one) has caused numerous cancellations from frequent fog and low cloud or more recently due to icing.
• Transport to LEGR, as cadets started training at LEAX many have long term accommodation around the area, because of this they have to drive over an hour to get to Granada. Due to the delays many who brought their personal vehicles to Spain have had to return them. This means they are reliant on expensive rentals or a bus shuttle service. The shuttle service runs several buses per day but on some days operates just a morning/evening service. Delays occur very frequently as is the nature of flight training, meaning it’s pretty rare to catch the afternoon bus back to LEAX, this results in people being there for the entire day, e.g. 8am arrival at LEGR and 7pm departure from LEGR. Because of these long hours (they can be more than 14 hours door to door), students and instructors have run out of hours leading to cancellations.

As for the current situation in Malaga:

• Of the 4 classes who got sent out, only one (the most senior) is actively training. Instructor numbers have got slightly better over time and the ratios have increased because only one class is training. A tiny handful of this class were rushed through their remaining lessons and have finished core phase very recently. With the remainder of the class making accelerated progress and hopefully finishing soon.
• The second most senior class stayed in Malaga until Christmas, making decent progress in December (compared to previous months) with the vast majority going solo and finishing the VFR flying phase. However, they still have the majority of their flying to do as the IFR phase accounts for about 70% of this, to put a number on it they have been in Malaga since May and done on average around 20 hours total. Since Christmas (when they returned to the UK) communication from CAE has been limited. The current plan seems to be for them to return to Malaga from the end of January in small groups to then begin accelerated training.
• As far as I’m aware the third class was sent back to the UK with the option to continue training in phoenix in early 2025 or wait an undetermined amount of time and return to Malaga when capacity allowed.
• The fourth class was also sent back to the UK. I’m not sure of there current situation but wouldn’t be surprised if they end up in phoenix.

Overall, the situation in Malaga has improved since the first classes were sent out and since the last update post (although not really for the cadets that were sent home permanently), but most of this improvement has come from the removal of classes and consequent balancing of instructor ratios, something that any competent management would’ve done months ago. It will still be months before all the cadets currently assigned to Malaga have finished core phase training, at a time when if things went according to plan most of them should’ve been at ezy or imminently starting.
Still things have taken a step in the right direction and hopefully this continues.

On a more general note, the stuff you read on this forum is just scratching the surface of the total mess that Malaga has been, what is supposed to be the highlight of cadets training has ended up being enormously stressful. The feeling among many cadets is they were rushed out to Malaga way before it was ready and thrown under the bus to save the phoenix operation from even more delays. This is backed up by the fact that all classes finishing ground school have been going to phoenix and significantly junior classes were sent out there months ago and are now at serious risk of overtaking classes that were sent to Malaga.
To further emphasise the scale of the delays, across all the classes sent to Malaga, on average you’re probably going to be looking at it being over a year since finishing ground school by the time you’ve finished core phase. Its also possible that some classes or members of classes will have spent over a year in core phase by the time they finish it and well over 2 years from course start to finish. Throughout the whole Malaga experience, CAE’s incompetence, refusal to acknowledge key issues and their poor communication has made the situation infinitely worse, admittedly there are issues that were out of their control and unfortunate, but many cadets feel the vast majority of the blame lies at the feet of CAE and consequently there is a serious lack of trust and confidence between cadets sent to Malaga and CAE.

I could go on but I think this post is long enough already. So I'll wrap up by saying I think the MPL when it works is a great programme and those in ground school now or sent to America might have a pretty smooth ride and thus feel very differently to the Malaga lot. Admittedly luck and timing play a part, but remember that no one has an entirely smooth ride through training and CAE have shown their true colours with how they’ve treated the Malaga operation and many classes before Malaga.

If I was someone looking at the MPL I wouldn’t write it off completely but would seriously consider applying for all the funded schemes or the standard ATPL route until ezy move the MPL somewhere else or CAE proves they can deliver the course competently.

Thank you very much for a very comprehensive update, it looks like the Malaga/Granada is/was only a temporary solution, and future classes will be sent to Phoenix?