Your training day at CTC will resemble to this:

The doctor comparison is total BS.My brother in law is a surgeon,48 and earned over 400k last year private (NHS really) and NHS.Worked 9 to 5 no weekends or antisocial hours and has a cracking state funded pension waiting for him.He lives in a 2 million pound house surrounded by mostly other doctors.He didn't pay a bean for his training.
The 110K thing is just another example of the boomers screwing the young ,50K for Uni,renting from your grandparents generation ,retirement when you 75etc.Good luck, your generation is going to need it.

Sad joke
 

I have to say that I am ashamed of being part of this sad "profession " of being an airline pilot, I, m proud of my achievements from a dis-advantaged background but not proud of the naive idiots with invariably more money than sense who completely ridicule a previously hourorable and respectable true profession. If you want to compare this occupation with that of doctors, check the real facts as the previous post alluded to, they (medical) would never be so stupid to pay for everything, work for virtually nothing in the hope of "crumbs from the rich mans table" (as an analogy) in the hope of a job. Those that are pay to fly pilots be aware that those around you on the ground respectable engineers , ATC , dispatchers , refuellers and more of the travelling public are aware of what a joke you are, so I suggest humility at all times. You are a disgrace.

John smith, assuming you're not just a troll but a genuine share holder, then you are a part of why the industry's standards are plummeting. If you have money to invest, then it seems a fair assumption that you are well paid. How much did you have to invest into your career, and how many years did you have to spend unemployed and then clawing your way up? How many lives are dependant on your skill and attention at an instant, and how often do you have to undergo proficiency and medical checks that could terminate your career? How many nights, weekends and holidays do you work, and how much restriction do you have over holidays and where you live? And are you really so stupid that you want the jobs to go to those who will accept the lowest pay? Maybe you should start an airline staffed by school drop-outs - they'd be cheap, and who cares about their intelligence or competence? You are a selfish, short sighted and ignorant buffoon.

Although they certainly are one of the major causes of the downward trend for general standing and conditions in the UK, It is unfair to focus on ezy, nor their loco partners in the race to the bottom

The comment about Germanys recent achievement of ridding their country of universities charging student fees stands out as a very positive move Here you have a country with pride in itself, achieving through manufacturing and economy whilst looking out for its people. Obviously they hun have identified that allowing those with talent and ability to rise to the top both rewards excellence and ensures their continual existence as a strong and leading country continues into the future. This does not discriminate based on background or financial situation.

The UK has a broken Economy, a broken political system and little regard for its people. No matter what the media, nor the any of the political parties try convincing the electorate prior to the looming election our great country is in fact a total mess.

This, quite frankly, ridiculous process of paying £115,000 to gain employment with one of the bottom echelon airlines (my view and that view of the bulk not employed within the orange propaganda bubble) reflects us as a nation. Poor and low class. I agree fully that the USA change to regulation with the 1500 hour minimum an essential that the industry needs to stop virtually the whole lot been dragged down with the locos

I have to agree there are definately posters on here silently appearing as "impartial posters" who are working to an agenda. It is not difficult to identify those with some "interest" in maintaining the current recruitment path/streams dominating recruitment like never before.

My guess, either connected with an interest to the "current streams" or pretty much propaganda soaked.

I agree wholehearted with the above post.U.K. government is massively corrupt and has an agenda to favour the few...doctors,politicians and those sitting on generous totally unfunded pensions.
negotiations with doctors
do you want to work evenings?....no
do you want to work weekends?...no
do you want a 30 per cent pay rise?...yes please
We can pay for that with the VAT we make on pilot training BINGO!!!

John smith wrote,

and micheal o'leary said,

john, you are micheal o'leary and I claim my five pounds

Depends which lawyers you look at.Is it the ones in London who rubber stamp their public school mates Lehman Brother deals and earn 1.5 million a year or the 95 percent who earn 35K doing whippy claims and putting your car insurance through the roof?In Asia piloting is well respected and well paid.I agree though pilot egos are ridiculous coupled with not much upstairs can lead to the situation we are seeing in Europe.

Well I know more surgeons than most and I don't a single one that is one that figure.

I have also yet to see a pilot do a 100 hour shift whereas 10 years ago that was common in the medical profession.

These have eased up but I know people who regular work over 80 hours a week.

Leaving aside all the hysterics I regularly sit next to lovely FO's who are good pilots, nice people and well aware of their inexperience (and bring it up in their briefing). They have spent about £100k getting to sit next to me. They are early twenties and they earn after two years a salary of £45k whilst owe the bank lets say the full £100k.

Their pay is £2,500 a month. Their loan repayment is £800 month. Their rent is £450 a month because they share with another.

This is a lot better than year two of my professional flying career. I was just stopping teaching PPL's on Tomahawks for £8hr and just starting to teach CPL/IR's on Seneca III's for £24,000. Luckily I then bypassed the four years in a turboprop job and went straight to jets in a national airline.

When you sum it up they have things better now than I ever did or my generation who didn't get a BA Cadetship.


This is why there is a queue around the block to sign up to this scheme. Moan, bemoan, despair all you like but its the new normal and its no worse than the old normal. Just different.

The above, Some Pilots have an over-inflated egos the same as members of any other profession. Piloting is not semi-skilled but the Airlines are trying to make it so by technology, spy equipment , sops and specialist training (mpl). Salaries are not "artificially high" but I would agree that the next attack will be on Captains salaries , eventually being on a par with train drivers, around £55k. The jobs buggered by Airline bosses(piss takers) and idiots(P2F), its been a team effort. One post mentioned P2F being "a pleasure to with" there,re unlikely to be any other, that aside they have denied more deserving and probably more competent cases, by their immoral and corrupt actions as well as that of the Airlines. Disgusting.

Lets just clarify the process of the scheme
By way of finance...
'Airline Placement Limited (APL), a wholly owned subsidiary of CTC Aviation, will part-sponsor your MPL training. The total funding requirement for the CTC WINGS MPL Route in partnership with easyJet is £109,000. You deposit a ‘security bond’ of £69,000 to secure your place on the course. This security bond is deposited in 13 instalments over the period of training and is held by APL until your employment with easyJet. During the period of employment by ARL, the £69,000 security bond you deposited during MPL training will continue to be held by APL until you are employed by easyJet.
easyJet will, in turn, repay the £69,000 bond to you in monthly instalments over a period of seven years in addition to the salary commensurate with experience.
Heres the issue...
You will be required to pay two MPL Training Fees. The first Fee totals £20,800 and is payable before you travel to NZ or USA to commence flight training. The second Fee is due prior to the Advanced Phase of the course and totals £19,200'.
Is this a separate cost?


Now, regarding employment...
'easyJet also continues to select from our Airline Placement Pool of CTC WINGS Integrated ATPL "white tail" graduate pilots which is always open for applications

Generally airlines will make a ‘conditional’ offer of employment prior to the commencement of training and pilots will be employed by the airline on completion of Advanced Phase 4 of training.

On commencement of Line Operations you will be offered a three year renewable contract to fly as a First Officer for easyJet through CTC FlexiCrew. After 12 months flying as a CTC FlexiCrew pilot, you will be eligible to apply for a permanent position of employment with easyJet.
Pilots operating as a CTC FlexiCrew pilot with easyJet can expect to operate, but cannot be guaranteed, a minimum of 750 flying hours in any one 365 day period.

In reality, one pays c.£109k to be rostered out to a recruitment agency, then if it suits the employer (easyJet) you may be brought into their stable after 3 years? Would I be correct in my assumption?

- All cited material sourced from CTC website -

That's pretty much it.

Wanna hear about the years of hardship, penury and tough flying jobs I risked my life on in my journey to an airline job? No. Nobody does.

But before we travel too far down the rosy tinted memory lane lets not forget that to be getting a job in a big FTSE100 listed airline in a 70ton jet was until fairly recently a wannabes wet dream and about as likely.

Like so often in life you can either have your cake or eat it but not both.

Consultants contracted with the NHS 3 and a half day week full time.That's how they manage 1 and a half days doing private.One day private generally nets about 5K.
WWW I'm glad you love your job so much,I just got bored after 25years of saying checked and set and sitting in a broom cupboard watching clouds go by.My 3 times tables are brilliant though.

I recently flew with a young guy who had been dumped by Easy as one of the trainers didn't like him.He had done the CTC/New Zealand thing and now he owes :mad: loads of money and has very little chance of getting a job as he has n experience.
Firstly what a :mad: the Easy head trainer was to chop him.I remember the walking ego his was when I was with Easy 12 years ago but I think this sums up the dumb idiots that inhabit the loco pilot world.
The pilot was really good for what it's worth.
I so wish I too could fly a 70 tonne ,550 mph FTSE 100 airplane but I am not a :mad:.

Not Orange,

The training system at EZY does not allow 1 trainer to dislike a cadet and then decide for them to be chopped. Quite frankly if he was let go by EZY then it would have been due to consistent poor performance, possibly combined with a bad attitude.

The decision to drop anybody is not taken likely, and certainly would be a majority decision after various re-training packages. EZY standards are high and a number of people struggle to reach that level required.

Not orange , I think you hit the nail on the head . When someone doesn't make the grade & gets dropped , it's a response which generally confirms the training system works when individuals blame the trainers .

It's a very mature thing to look at yourself & seek help to improve , to attempt to understand & remedy your failings & quite the opposite to blame the trainer .


I find the more these pay to fly schemes develop , the more these cadets feel they are paying for a service & the training Captain's job is to get them through !

Ok fair enough I don't know the full facts of the case but I think if Easy want pilots that way they should interview them before they embark on a massive financial commitment and make sure they are the sort of person they want.
I just don't know how you can go to a bank manager at 21 and say can I have 110K for the possibility of a job.I reckon my bank manager would have floods of tears rolling down his face if I asked that 25 years ago.

That's exactly what happens now.

The problem www is that selection is dependent upon having £110k.

Yes flying has always had a cost barrier to entry for most, but this is a whole new level and is really selection based upon parents funding.

Other companies such as BA have found a way around this but ezy couldn't give a stuff and the calibre will reflect this.

That's the key issue for me. We all know flight training is expensive and CTC are entitled to make a profit. But instead of EZY rolling over and letting cadets take all the burden, a simple loan guarantee would ensure the risk is spread and there are no financial barriers to applying. In turn, CTC wouldn't be able to hike prices year on year as EZY would be exposed to too much debt. If their own claims of a 35000+ salary from day 1 are accurate there's no risk of defaults anyway is there, so why not back the loans? :rolleyes:

There is some interesting debate on this.

I applied for the MPL and got rejected by easyJet after attending their final stage selection at Luton. I have subsequently been accepted on to the BA program. So its not just a case of having the money.

The BA program is £ 94k, they will act as a guarantor on the loan. But its at a fairly penal rate of 3.9%. They pay back £84k of it over the period of 7 years. easyJet dont pay the loan back, but you earn the going rate for a First Officer vs a reduced payscale at BA.

You can guarantee the loan against a house for either easyJet and BA at a rate of 3%. But in both cases your still going to be carrying debt around your neck for 7 years... At least with easyJet you have a chance of having a captains wage within that time to pay it off.

The difference for the cost of the courses is that easyJet require a contribution (or the whole amount?) towards the type rating. The latter phases of the MPL simulator training need to be conducted by a TRI, which is obviously going to be more expensive than a straight CPL/IR instructor.

I wasn't too concerned about the agency aspect of the MPL, because you can effectively offset your training costs against your tax bill. It will take a long time to use up the 100k and you will pay a negligible amount of tax whilst your remain a contractor.

No doubt that the BA program is better for the majority. However if you want to live up north and command is important to you, then its worth looking at the MPL..

...the other thing is that because the MPL has to include the 1500 hours to unfreeze the MPL, if you meet the performance criteria required during the training you have a guarantee of at least 1500 hours with easyJet.

Whereas with BA, the caveat with the employment offer is that BA require pilots when you finish training. If they dont, you have £ 94k of debt and no jet experience.

So if the Financial Crisis V2 happens, then easyJet will still have to give you 1500 hours. Or they are breaching their contract (assuming you meet the required training standard)

True, but 94,000 debt secured against BA is infinitely better than 110,000 of debt secured against a house, despite a slightly higher risk of unemployment in the first couple of years. In reality the risk of BA dropping you is vey low anyway, historically they have always given cadets jobs even if they've had to wait a bit. The risk of EZY not making you permanent or reducing your hours/wage after your 12 months flexicrew? I'd say substantially higher....

£110k, I'd willingly sell both my kidneys to get in there.

Historically Monarch have never dropped cadets either until all of a sudden a few months ago it happens. "Historically" isn't necessarily the best thing to go on in aviation when things are changing. BAs recruitment needs have certainly changed in the past, and with short haul review coming up I'd say it's not a sure thing.

As for the risk of EZY reducing your hours/wage after 12 months? Pretty much nil chance. BALPA did very well to secure the NEC which guarantees you only spend a max of a year before being interviewed for permanent SO (with the vast majority passing the interview). Which is £40k+ first year at the moment.

That being said. Both schemes are the best choice a budding new pilot has. Pre-tagged is the least risky way forward these days.

Cowls, you're missing the point; if you don't have access to the funding for ezy, you could be the best in the world but you aren't getting through.

This has always been my view. A cadetship should ideally be about finding the best pilots for the airline, not the best pilots who can raise £25k. Having said that, there's no shortage of very capable people who can afford to pay the £25k, so it's unlikely to have a substantial effect on the average standard of pilots EZY will eventually end up with.

But anything that has a high chance of getting you into the RHS of an Airbus is clearly still a fantastic opportunity.

So, what we're saying is "life isn't fair".

I think I'll write that down.

totally right, but this is not a cadetship in the traditional sense, the moneygrabbers call it that to attract the mugs, it is nothing more than an indenture.

During your time as Flexicrew, you're employed by ARL(CTC) and contracted to Easyjet so you can't offset any tax. Sorry.

To be exact it's between 12-18 months depending on your start date, as Easyjet only issue contracts twice a year. I'm aware of people who have not passed this interview however they can continue to fly as Flexicrew and get another crack at the whip at a later date.

That's a bit of an odd situation. If you're not deemed good enough for a permanent contract, why are you good enough to continue flying for EZY through flexicrew? :* After all, you still fly the same a/c, same routes, same passengers...

I personally believe that any scheme that allows new people to enter a profession so massive saturated with qualified unemployed people is wrong, irrespective of cost. There simply is not the UK demand to provide everyone with work every time a cadet gets a job; it unfortunately comes at the expense of someone else.

For the lucky few that have the funds to buy themselves a job at EZ, my advice is buy it and never leave, because life outside EZ and BA is a living nightmare and it gets worse every day!

You aren't able to continue as Flexi indefinitely.

If you fail assessment, you are given one more chance to pass. If you fail a second time you are chopped.

Until that second interview chance, you may continue to fly temporarily. It is a job interview for a career with the airline. They want everyone to pass.

Peachy. So you've once failed to make the grade and will potentially fail to again make the grade on a second attempt yet still get to waggle the yoke on a revenue trip with paying punters in the back?

A bit flexible on standards, is it not?

This isn't about finding the best pilots.

It's about finding the cheapest pilots. (for the company!)

So passengers can enjoy their cheap tickets, and the board can enjoy their generous bonuses.

Mind you, if I was Easy, I don't think I would invest in pilots who will almost universally view it as a 'stepping stone' airline. One with no sustainable life for anyone attempting to remain for forty years of same, same, same, same, same.

The latest I'm aware of it's 4 times a year, so 12-15 months. But we're splitting hairs now.

And 4468, don't talk smack about a recruiting and training process that you know nothing about, and that famously produces an excellent standard of pilot.

To borrow your sentence, 4468, you seem to have a real axe to grind over Easyjet. Why is that???:confused::E

BA aren't exactly being generous or altruistic by charging £94K are they? And let's see what the upshot is with the SH and eventual LH reviews shall we? Every job is 40 years of 'same, same, same, same, same' - including heart surgeons et al. Only easy are bringing in new routes every year, the choice of 10s of good regional bases and the opportunity to be home every night so you have something else in your life and don't need work to continually be riding and allegedly stimulating your time. We also, as you know, have the varied elements to our job of the weather, different crews and a high standard to meet.

Posting at 0348 WBF?

That must be you off on another four sector early report I guess? Doesn't that get to be a bit of a grind after a while? How will you feel if you make it to forty years?????

Which strips of tarmac have you visited today?

Easy have good standards. (But then most UK airlines have to.) That doesn't change the fact that, because of the work, it's largely a 'stepping stone' airline. Which is why I don't blame Easy for not wishing to invest in people who will run off to better prospects as soon as they can.

A quick question if I may. What is the retention rate at Easy, because I know for a fact we see large numbers applying to BA? (Including some who felt compelled to declare themselves bankrupt rather than attempt to payback any training loan!) I assume a fair number go to the big carriers abroad too? Plus Virgin etc?