@SR71 - My info could be out of date but last time I checked BA's recruitment process wasn't driven by psychic triplets making futuristic predictions a la 'Minority Report' so I'm failing to see how someone killing their wife 20 years after they joined BA reflects on the quality of their recruitment process. Perhaps you could enlighten us, or should we just assume you were taking a cheap shot?

"BALPA wakes up"
 

I think not... BA has finally woken up to the financial advantages of using flight crew as a revenue stream just like EZY and FR do.

Indeed,

So whilst some get midly excited about this future pilot programme and, yes, I think it's a reasonably good thing there is a niggling question. Would I be right in saying that BA are going to be interested in getting new pilots on board who have had shag all flight experience but:

1) will be mentored through an ab-initio programme
2) alternatively are type rated experienced pilots
3) are ex service pilots.

So what of the 1000hrs + guys/girls who've increased their flying skills by instructing/air-taxi/etc but lack the multi crew time? It feels a little difficult telling someone not in this industry that BA are taking on pilots with no experience but with a thousand or so hours of non airline flying, you're outta luck right now.

?

Thats always been the way. BA have traditionally recruited ab-initios, type-rated commercial pilots and ex-military. They've never, to my knowledge, recruited air taxi pilots or flying instructors. From BA's perspective there's simply not enough quality control in the field. You can muddle through with 1000+ hours and still be rubbish (and frankly who hasn't met a piss poor flying instructor in their time?). With the ab-initios they get full control of the end product. With the military they get a known and proven standard. With commercially type rated candidates they get someone who has walked the walk. With air taxi and instructors they get, from BAs point of view, risk. That's just the way it is and they don't need to change as there's a plentiful supply of low risk candidates.

Well one has to love this strange, fickle industry. I suppose it's also a breath of fresh air that not all airlines share BA's approach to sourcing pilots.

Yellow pen, SR71s post wasn't a cheap shot, it was pointing out (and routing) the hubris that some posters seem to have - posters that claim they fly for BA. We all know what hubris ends out in.

So many people seem to impulsively feel that BA is the holy grail job for an airline pilot - it's absurd. There are many reasons to join BA. There are many reasons not to join BA. Anyone who can't see that is sure to go off a cliff. Don't be a lemming.

Interesting. What type were you on when you joined BA as I'm not aware of anyone who has come from and air-taxi or instructing background straight into BA without operating for another carrier first.

Yes I think we are. Nothing at all wrong with the self-improver route, I was merely stating that BA don't hire people directly from the instructor/air-taxi field into the airline.

Hubris? Is that like part of an Mediterranean mezze dinner?

Mini kievs, are they a main course or a starter?

I'll get me coat ............... :E

Sponsorship or debt Mountain?
 

So £84,000 say 8% interest (CTC HSBC rate for EZY TRSS at height of financial crisis), 2 years training (nil repayment), 7 years with BA - repaid around £12k per annum.

So you end up paying over £34k in interest over 9 years assuming you make the grade and can summon £84k in the first place.

The Cathay SO deal might be a better option for cadets that wish to avoid upfront costs but then there's the cost of living in HK.

...and new pilot hirees are expected to be of sound judgement :suspect:

BALPA wakes up?!?! The paper tiger? Has woken up? Reeeeealy?

Hahahahahaha! that's about 5 years too bloody late!

CNN.com: "Nice guys earn less."

Once again the self-improvers bypassed.

The real question is, what the hell has BALPA been doing the last 10 years (a decade that mysteriously coincided with virtually nil recruitment from the almighty BA) while every other airline in the country was instigating insidious recruitment practices, pay-for-type-rating, pay-to-fly and all other kinds of general exploitative shaftings, and generally doing everything in their power to get young wannabes to pay massively inflated prices for costs that were always previously borne by the airlines?

So now BA finally decides to recruit ab initio again, and after a decade of utter silence BALPA promptly issues some pompous and self-congratulatory statement which contains little more than vague waffle about how the industry is "waking up to this issue" and a couple of outfits are "making commitments to look at stuff".

Where were you during the last decade when virtually every decent charter outfit dropped their bonds in favour of charging for type ratings? When Ryan started outrageous nonsense like charging £50 for applications and £150 for job interviews? When Easy first of all dropped their bonding arrangement for the much reviled TRSS, and then a couple of years after that dropped TRSS also once they realized they could actually get kids to fly their planes for effectively a grand a month on casual contracts, courtesy of :mad: ing CTC Wings?

And now we have a situation where virtually every trainee in the land budgets an extra £25,000 for an exorbitantly overpriced type rating and £25,000 more for 500 hours "line training" as part of their ab initio skills? And every last remaining experienced turboprop and regional-jet skipper in the country, who once had aspirations to get onto boeing or airbus, finds themself trapped because they aren't already type rated on big gear.

And now BA have resurrected the cadet scheme, but this time they're making the kids sign up for £84,000 plus interest as the price of admission, and all the guys at BALPA HQ can do, is issue a bloody great headline stating it's a "move in the right direction" ?? :(

And before anyone has a go at me about BALPA only being as strong as the will of its' members ... I paid my dues to that organization every day I was employed by a UK airline (now in the contract world) and I would gladly have taken part in any action against this massive forced robbery of trainee pilots and scramble by the airlines to outsource every possible cost of recruitment onto them at massively inflated prices. However there was absolutely no direction or comment forthcoming from BALPA about stuff affecting the training market, all those years. Now the horse has well and truly bolted but as long BA weren't mixed up in it, I guess it wasn't worth making comment on previously huh. :ouch:

Well said ! :D

As you have described, BALPA have neither done , nor remotely suggested, absolutely s.f.a. in respect of the abuse of the profession this last 10 years.

British.Airways.Line.Pilots.Association. . . . . . indeed, as most of us have at one stage accused them of being.
When they were asked by the Irish Arline Pilots Association a few years ago to join forces & get involved in Ryanair, they faffed around so long that the momentum was well & truly lost.
At this point I fully realised what a bunch of useless self serving Yes-men they were, & the total unlikelihood of them ever getting involved in any serious fist fight.
I believe they have made Easy Jet a slightly better place to be, but they still refuse to tackle head on the scandal of P2F, there or anywhere else.

save your money, don't pay BALPA.

and stay away from aviation!

in 3 years time, I will have more money SAVED than thesee unemployed monkeys pretending to be commercail pilot ( yeah, my :mad:) with line training, t/rating and still jobless!:E

Bloody well said Luke!

I have always believed that there are too many desperados who want it, at the expenses of the T's & C's, so bad that they become slightly delusional about the big picture. Quality of life etc etc. I'm truly shocked that a union body such as BALPA has not stepped in earlier to clear up this mess that has happened. Does make one wonder. The direction the industry took a few years ago should have been nipped in the bud the moment the indications were there. If anything, it would have made the pages of this website a less bitchy place (I think!). But more importantly people's livelihoods less screwed around. Sadly not everyone thinks of these things when they have such tunnel vision.

Whilst I'm pleased that this issue is getting some more attention I can't help feeling it's too little too late.
It's coming up to 4 years since I finished my modular ATPL training, luckily keeping my day job outside the aviation business and have minimal debt as a result. As a cadet the "offers" on the table are shocking to be frank. Huge upfront costs for a TR on salaries that are lower than supermarket rates, with the added risk that, in this risky economic climate, if the company goes bust you are not only on the dole but have the TR repayments to the bank to find.
Company pays for TR and bonds me-fine.
Lower salary for a while-fine.
I'm realistic. Without commercial experience I dont expect to earn as much as those who are, obviously, but come on. We are at the point now where it makes no financial sense to get into the industry.
The thing is you spend the best part of an hour convincing an interview panel of your intelligence, decision making skills, logical thinking, etc then you're expected you to fork out the best part of 30K, and having a uniform and free parking is a perk!
I've waited for nearly 4 years for this trend to end but although we are in a time where credit has never been harder to obtain people still part with the cash.
However I think it's unfair to blame cadets solely for the situation that we are in now. They have fell for the marketing and are, for the majority, in too deep to stop.
I feel the union, and that means the people already in the industry, should have found a way of kicking up a stink about this a long time ago. How they could have gone about it I dont know but I feel anyone with 10+ years to do in this business should be aware of the problem of large amounts of workers on 'B' scale rates of pay reducing market rates, not to mention the argument of whether they are actually a good person for the job or have they just got the cash to pay for it? The Thomas Cook cadet who couldn't land planes comes to mind. Has a person who is 100k+ in debt really got their mind in the right place if the s**t hits the fan? That's what the people in the industry(unions) should have been asking years ago.
So we will have to wait and see I suppose. Personally I think the rot has set in too far and the damage to the Ts and Cs is permanent. I hope not as if it is then its bad news for us all.
Anyway that's my 2 penneth on it.

I'm interested to see what exactly people think BALPA should have done to stop this mess. It's easy to say something should be done, but what?

Called a strike of all their members who work for companies that do P2F.
What the hell is a union for if not for things like this?