Spanish government declares ATPL as equivalent to a University degree
 

Source (in Spanish): El Gobierno determina el nivel de correspondencia del título de piloto de transporte de línea aérea al nivel 2 del Marco Español de Cualificaciones para la Educación Superior (MECES) - Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte

Thoughts?

They must have low standards for degrees in Spain.

Interesting. Can You show up as a foreign pilot in a Spain and claim a degree ?

Even if it is possible to get the degree certificate on your own you want to go through COPAC, Colegio Oficial de Pilotos de Aviacion Comercial, so you don't lose your bearings dealing with the legendary Spanish bureaucracy. If you are adamant to know I can ask it for you, assuming you are not a Spanish speaker.

More interesting is whether this would be granted to any Spanish citizen with a EASA license based in another EU country, there is a bunch of us who transferred our papers, once again, running from the never ending non-sense of Fomento.

Truth be told, if you feel those 14 subjects were harder than a University Degree, then you did not take said ATPL subjects in Spain. Or you did, but through a foreign ATO based in the peninsula.

The only use of an equivalent degree I can think of right now is to sum up points to qualify for a government job.

Would be interesting to know if this would even work in germany or italy.
Maybe there is a way to have this covered in European Law.
:-)

I have an University degree and are a current TRI/TRE in an European major and I can assure You that I have studied and keep studying a lot more as a pilot than what I did study to get my degree back then.

Interesting. I also have degrees in Aeronautics (German (then) equivalent to masters and ph.d) and did my JAR ATPL in my late thirties. To me the ATPL felt like one semester of the 12 which were required to get the master's degree.

Anyway, it does not matter much because who in the industry would hire someone with an engineering degree converted from a pilot's license - without any additional training that is? I have worked as an aerospace engineer for many years and my actual work was a lot closer to mathematics and computer science than to anything taught in an ATPL course. But maybe there are positions in the industry which are suited for an ATPL trainee, something like flight test evaluation maybe.

I don't want to drift the thread, but for those of You who think that You finish studying once You get Your ATPL ratings You are waaaaay out of line. That's when You actually start.

what next

I also went to college 5 years and I think an ATPL is more like a primary school thing, no reasoning involved, just one dimensional thinking. At least where I took it in Spain.

Anyways, so far I am having a party laughing at my former university colleagues, it turns out I am officially at their same level even though my job only consist in "pressing the green button to go up, and the red one to go down". :E

What is the Spanish government trying to achieve by doing this is beyond me. Throwing out to the streets thousands more degree holders in a country that is saturated with architects and lawyers serving sangrias and copas for 400 EUR? Hell, go for it!! Craneo privilegiado...

So pilots should stop looking for good T&Cs and accept any low class labour wages then. Problem solved.

Hey, don't look at me, I didn't invent the multiple choice test. :8

It’s nothing related to multiple choice questions as you can seat some pretty nasty ones, from psychometric to technical stuff.

Cambridge physics graduate sitting next to me in Cass looking very stressed.

'It's not that there is anything particularly difficult in this, it's just that there's so much of it.'

The stresses then were often to do with job offers and or getting one's first command. CPL first, some years of flying and then the ALTP - in my case, via a Senior Commercial PL was quite usual.

Those hand written papers were quite searching but to anyone with a good education an a lot of time, they were quite fair. Lots of stuff one never needs of course. I never ever adjusted a latitude nut. However, I did once sit in and sign off a DC3's compass swing.

I studied and passe all ATPL exams in 9 months while working a full time job. I spent 3 years 40 hours a week in lectures and struggled to gain a diploma in Engineering years earlier.
Something not right about this.

Yep You progress swiftly to a PhD in offloading drunks at Bangor.

The aeroplane is a very complex machinery. To operate safely an airliner you need a large amount of knowledge, a little from various fields such as physics and mathematics, computer science, automation, flight mechanics, stress, meteorology, FAA regulations, human factors, you name it. This kind of brain workout could be considered equivalent to the university level for a single field of activity. However, "university degree" is just more a social and intellectual "etiquette" that sadly in some countries and cultures is too important, to circles of friends and even marriages. We certainly will not see a captain in the cockpit, a surgeon in the ER or an engineer's signature on a structural stress report, based solely on "university degree" equivalent.

Europeans love all those theoretical tests for the ATPL; asking all sorts of arcane stuff that has absolutely no value in day-to-day ops. The FAA has one test, huge multiple choice question bank. Study the bank, take test, get in the plane. I don’t see a noticeable difference in pilot success.

to compare ATPL th as a degree, really ? it is not knowing what a degree is !

but hey, that's Spain, not surprising. I would like to see how is their flying standard too. lol!

I have read a little more in the meantime and I don't think it is so much about the "difficulty" and time required between getting a university degree or an ATPL. It is more about social ranking, for example in the case of getting unemployed.

I really only know the situaton in Germany, but I guess it is not much different in Spain. If a pilot loses his medical here, he is left with a license that has become obsolete and which officially counts nothing once he has stepped out of his aeroplane. He can join the unemployment queue at the very end and doesn't need to apply for anything other than taxi driver or waiter because he is nothing but an unskilled laborer. Drastically spoken. He can apply for a qualification course but again at the level of an unskilled laborer. If he is young enough to consider studiying at university he can start there from day one.

The situation would change drastically if an ATPL would be regarded like a lower university degree (bachelor) or higher professional education (in Germany again, I have no comparison, a bacelor from university is equivalent to a "Meister" or master of crafts - which I think comes closer to what we pilots do because it is a combination of theretical knowledge and practical skill and experience). In case of loss of license one would be eligible for a high-level qualification program or given credit for a year or to at university. Which would not be a bad thing in my eyes.