Flyingfunder - I must be in the wrong job then, if what you say about bus drivers is true. Or maybe you're just talking out of your arse.

There is NO evidence that those SELECTED for a SSTR in Easy or Ryanair are any more of a risk to the travelling public than any other pilot recruited into the airlines from Legacy to LoCo.

A proper selection proceedure weeds out in the early stages those who are less committed and who may not fit into the airlines profile.
It is NOT the "I can pay take me" that people here think get onto these schemes, its the dedicated hard working boys and grils who are prepared to risk everything to get a foot on that ladder, that will achieve.
159 applicants for the Easy positions, surely not all had "Mummy and Daddys" money to pay for the course.
Its not up to us to decry their ability to pay, or run them down for doing so.
The arm chair hero's who post on here have a fair proportion of missinformation and there is a lot of the green eyed monster.

The main culprit for blame has been and still is the company accountant who is seeking any way possible to reduce airline costs.
What people MUST remember is that keeping a company solvent and employing staff, is far better than the company going bust and ruining the lives of their ex-employees.

As for BALPA, well !!! they are only interested in your money as members and their frequent junkets at pilots expense, when it really comes to the bottom line they hide in their offices do not take calls or answer e-mails.
Give yourselves a 1% pay rise leave BALPA, join the IPF if you must have a union represent you, its far cheaper and comes with 25K of legal cover.

Finally Salaries 1972 Turbo Prop F/O (Airline) £1200 per annum
1979 F/O Jet £8500 per annum.
2009 Capt Jet in excess £80000.
2009 F/O Jet in excess £50000

Who is doing the selection?
 

Night_fr8

Actually there is evidence that folk ARE selected and even given extra training and still crashing aeroplanes.

There is snobbery in some schools - you have to wear the correct shoes, do not ask too many questions etc. Yes I can understand the face must fit if you are talking about Cockpit Interaction/CRM, working together and so on but some schools take this beyond a joke.

As for I can pay take me: what are bmi doing then? These guys have since modified their website but did the PTF thing: The Journey to the skies starts here, Become an Airline Pilot ? - Home

　
I agree , indeed that's the kind of person you are despegue. I know you too. Your nationality is the same of those of that journalist or the one of this nice welfare minister :
DE SUPERMINISTER BRENGT LEVEN IN HET PARLEMENT !

You have destroyed the prestige of your profession and now you come here to cry out. Remain just a lier don't be pathetic, please.:hmm:

Angelorange.
Proof, factual and appropriate.
Can You provide specific data.
Also is there needs to be proof that the self type rated pilots are more liable for an incident, which to my 35 years in aviation has NOT proved to be the case.

In fact I fully support SSTR's providing that there is a job at the end of training.

I have seen the "I can pay crowd" comefor interviews with the idea that if they can pay they are in, no preparation just a cheque book.
They go away very bitter.

Having also seen those who were well prepared and scraping together the cost of their course, pass selection, a very low percentage ultimately fail the course or require more a than a couple of extra sim details.

As I said before provide factual evidence to support your claim, and back it up by statistics of the same for those whom the airline paid for.
I think you will find your previous statement does not hold much weight.

Guaranteed Money Making Idea for ALL Pilots
 

Here is a novel IDEA!! that will benefit all professional pilots ( and those who want to be)

Boycott all Pay for Fly airlines for 6 months....first, those who want to pay and those desperate to fly big airplanes for nothing, will not be forking over thousands of dollars they most likely dont have ( big money saver ) and that will force these airlines to rethink their hiring practices to the point that they will have to actually hire and pay candidates to fullful pilot positions. If there are ABSOLUTELY NO PILOTS out there willing to accept current pay to fly schemes things WILL change.

Second...those who are flying the big airplanes will not be forced into recessionary contracts due to low wages ( if any ) at the pay to fly operators.

Its a win win situation for ALL Professional Pilots for now and the future but will take a collective effort by all in the industry....Low Cost Airlines does not necessarily mean Low Wages....look at Southwest Airlines...some of the highest paid 737 drivers around.

Our profession has been desimated by these schemes and respect is no where to found anymore.....Please Please RESPECT this once proud profession and maybe sanity will return and we will all be making money again!!!

Have you ever study what was the difference between I.S.A. and real atmosphere ? That difference stand exactly between your great ideas and suggestions with our reality. In an ideal world your ideas would be successful and a wonderful solution. In our real world has no chance to happen ever.

angelorange, I can vouch for the fact that bmi is willing to chop self-sponsored cadets; I had a week of post-Christmas standby (and a full TV schedule) suddenly disappear because the cadet who was rostered for much of that week's flying was chopped!
I have reservations about the whole self-sponsored scheme, but the training department is keeping the standard high, and NOT letting revenue take priority over safety.

As far as I know, only 2 cadets have been chopped ever from BMI, some have run out of money or realised this PTF thing is not really worth it at the mo!!

Are these guys generally crap? Loads of money but no ability, hence they pay for line experience. I seem to remember the FO who hammered an A320 into the runway somewhere in Greece was a PTF guy. He had a history of having 'difficulties with the aircraft in the last 50 feet' or something along those lines. Thomas Cook (the PTF provider at this time) continued to let him fly and hey presto, grounded a/c in Greece requiring maintenance to the gear!

What kind of selection criteria do PTF guys go through besides an Experian Credit Check?

At the end of the day Call sign Kilo, these guys have to pass a Type rating and base training provided by the operators TRE's, These examiners of vast experience and knowledge should have trained these guys to the standard required on the line.

If some fall through the net, and are not noticed till they write off an airbus, who do you blame? The **** cadet, with no confidence who is so far behind the aircraft, he may as well be in Row F staring at the world go by?

The operators for allowing this to happen?

The "TRTOs" run by Training captains of these very operators who profit massiveley off this

Or the guys making extra money for training these very cadets?

SW1

I think we both know the answer to this? Commercial decisions take precedence within every operator these days. PTF is another revenue venture, as was/is the SSTR, as was the end of airline sponsored training. Shame to think it may indeed take a hull loss (or indeed more than one) for the regulators to stand up and put an end to it all.

I dont think it will ever come to the point where this is brought into the media and public eye regarding a crash.

The captains who command these aircraft are there to inhibit any such occurence!! By way of experience and the insight this brings into taking control before we get to ASRs, MORs or the other nasty forms that need to be filled out.

Granted, there are, and have been, days where the TC was caught off guard, i.e all was well until the last 50'- and the rest is documented by the AAIB.

To give some credit to any "****" cadets, who out there didnt have initial problems landing a 65 Tonne jet after 250 hours? Youre a liar if you didnt....

I think one of the huge problems here that has not been addressed is that the initial training is so (SO!) expensive, that there HAS to be a return on the investment.

There is much criticism of people who "wish to jump straight into the RHS of a shiny jet", yet little understanding that generally people would LOVE to go instruct for the first 1000 hours. The problem is of course that when the average (f)ATPL costs what? £50k? a £12k salary as an FI just does not cut it.

THIS is why people need to get to the reaches of reasonable salaries as quickly as they can and this is in turn the driver to go direct to jet.

As Night FR8 has stated, I think also that (Beak in particular) people assume that PTF is nothing more than chequebook selection. I seriously doubt this is the case - in the recent easyJet selection of OAA cadets I know for an absolute fact that to even be considered, you had to have >85% and first time passes in all ATPL exams and first series passes in both CPL and IR. I know that if you were put forward to easy you had to go for interview and selection. Alright, >85% these days is nothing particularly special and first series passes doesn't mean that much either (except that you still have to achieve these and all of us that have done those tests would have to concede that's not necessarily easy!). You can also argue that perhaps the selection at easy wasn't as vigourous as it would/should have been had the candidate been selected by the company for a fully paid position, but either way, hardly "unselected".

That said, I do fully agree with Beak that selection should be purely through ability and your fit with the organisations M.O., not through whether you can pay or not.

However, IMHO - a defined "apprenticeship" type scheme where the route to RHS looks something like CPL/ME/IR --> FI 1000hrs --> FO turboprop --> LHS Turboprop --> RHS jet etc (not arguing whether that's right or wrong, btw) would benefit all....but the key is that training has to be priced such that the earnings you can make at your appropriate career ladder rung mean you can survive - this is the biggest single detractor from this.

I'm an eJ TC. One of my colleagues was conducting the interviews. He said the calibre of the applicants is generally high and it was easy to spot those who were not likely to be up to it. I'm sorry to disappoint some of you but THERE IS more to it than simply having the funds.

quote: "The captains who command these aircraft are there to inhibit any such occurence!!"

yes indeed, the commanders responsibility for the safety of the aircraft, occupants and contents etc is seemingly all encompassing. however i think its a step in the wrong direction for him/her to have to deal with a 200-250hr f/o too.
i agree with the call for standard minimum experience requirement for a rhs position dependant on the class/type of aircraft.

someone said something about 1000hrs on a seneca not helping you on a 737 so it makes no difference between you and the low hour sstr/ptf's..
yeah, maybe not for the initial TR and LOFT stuff, but once released online and getting reasonably comfortable with the aircraft i dont think decision-making/awareness/crm/understanding of an aircraft in flight ect can be compared.
of course thats broadly speaking.

who is responsible?
its a bit of a "what came first, the chicken or the egg" type thing.
trto's or lcc's? rich parents or stingy management? cadets attitudes or pilots egos?
its all mind boggling really, you ask yourself how did it get so far? real question is how much further will it go?

i personally dont give a sh*te if you got 100% and a little star on on your report card, paying to fly rhs on commercial passenger jet as a "foot on the ladder" scheme is almost a revolting practice, its degrading to the people who will sit to your left.
i actually can afford it as my daddy is well off too but the respect of my peers and my self respect, especially in this job, is important.

i equally tire of some of the older crowd who have worked so very hard doing whatever in order to hold this prestigious job and feel vexed that some hotshots out of airschool are sitting in the same cockpit that for them is a culmination of a lifetimes work.

it may boil down to people, which we arguably all are. the ceo of an airline is as likely to forgo the interests of aviation, in favour of the interests of his bank account, as the ceo of an airschool is.
principal and honour has been dying a medium-to-fast death for a while now, humans as a race had little in the first place.

we are a young-ish industry, and we are inevitably falling into the same state as most others have. i.e you are the crux of the matter but also the neglected baby of the family.
i mean who listens to or cares about teachers these days regarding education? parents/governing board have all the say. like us they only make news when they f*ck up or strike.
and nurses?
police?
the clients of a bank?
government of the people?

what to do vs. what can you do.

sorry if this has been tedious but you know how it goes ;)

Hmmm. Sounds a bit like the 'traditional' training implemented by BA and the Services.

My mother was a teacher before she retired and I always remember her saying throughout her career that fads may come and go but in the end everyone has to learn the '3Rs'.

I wonder what will be said in hindsight in 10 or 20 years' time when the effects of the current low-cost boom have been experienced? Will it be a new age or just a fad, with traditional training, in the end, proving the route of choice towards a successful, varied and rewarding career?

KR

FOK

good post clanger.. almost the exact way it actually is at the moment..

You can put those pre-decimalised 1966 annual salaries into this calculator for some idea of what they're worth today.

Depending on which of the 5 ways you measure the worth I would say they're fairly similar to today's salaries, or certainly not as comparatively large as I expected.

(Recap on the 1966 salaries quoted in the Hamble advert: For BEA/BOAC, New FO: £1300/annum, 3-year FO £2300/annum, senior Captain over £5000/annum.)

No there isn't.. because of 24 only 2 were not hired..

In the mail from OAA it actually said: ''remember, this ''airline oppertunity'' will for the most part depend on ones ability to have the nescesarry fund available. booya

Instead of telling how dificult the selection process is (which I'm sure it is)
you should stand up and unite :)