Flyer Prof Flight Show (Again)!
 

Just a quick question. During the seminar given by the senior SFO at BA, he mentioned that there were a number of schools that would recommend their students to the major airlines in the UK. However, he was reticent to divulge exactly which schools they were. From my own research I found that BAE Systems, OAT and WMU all put forward their best to BA, but does anyone know of any others? Cheers

When I did my ATPL the BA "approved list" for the self-sponsored pilot programme was:

Oxford Air Training
West Michigan University IPTC (where I trained)
BAE Systems – Jerez/Adelaide
Cabair - Cranfield
NLS – Netherlands
KLM Academy – Netherlands
Lufthansa Flight Training
European Pilot Selection and Training (EPST)

Not sure if all of these are still in business, but probably academic now anyway!

The reason for his reluctance is probably that it depends on the airline and the state of the industry.

When pilots are needed all the major schools get some airlines coming along. Most of the major schools (including ours) also have some sort of relationship with some airlines, either through someone who works for the school knowing people at the airline, through graduates of the school achieving senior position in the airline or simply working out of the same airport.

You can recommend students to BA till you're blue in the face, it doesn't mean they are going to take them. Most of this 'We've got links with BA' stuff is just marketing rubbish. The only real links between schools and airlines occur when there is a sponsorship agreement in place and that in itself is not an automatic endorsement of the quality of the school, more often than not it is chosen on the basis of price with the assumption that it will meet a basic standard of training or lose the contract.