Paying for a TR without the promise in writing of a job at the end of the course is financial suicide. An A320 rating without at least 500 hours on type is worthless.

The one who pays for a genuine business expense only adds to the bottom line of the LoCo carrier's CEO pay packet/profits and helps to reduce Pilot Terms and Conditions across the industry.

This situation has now mutated into people paying to fly airliners to gain 100h or so "experience" and then go back to being unemployed. They are simply replaced by another P2F cadet. In the meantime the airline's FOs are on the ground on standby, unable to build flight time to help them towards a Captaincy. The captains are now all effectively training captains with P2F FOs changing every few months - most of whom require serious monitoring which only adds to the cockpit gradient (lack of CRM) and workload.

P2F and Paying for TRs is the scourge of the industry. This is NOT the same as an apprenticeship or Medical or Legal training - those folk may pay to live while they do voluntary work but they do not pay the Law Firm or Hospital once they have the professional licence. They do not pay to use the court room or some new piece of surgical equipment. They are professionals on graduation.

Most Pilot's are very capable once they have the ATP/frozen ATPL with Multi Engine IR. Yes, it is still a licence to learn, but they have graduated in qualification terms.

However, some unscrupulous Companies (some call them Pilot Mills) promise the earth if you will pay them an extra Euro 30000 or so for a TR plus another huge amount for a few hours flying fare paying passengers.

In the EU, we have seen the rise of "integrated" courses and now MPL where cadets are given the bare minimum time airborne in which to develop sound airmanship skills. It is possible under the new "approved" schemes for an MPL to join an airline with less flying time than a Private pilot. Worse, the most experienced pilots (GA, Turbo Prop operators, Flying Instructors and even Military Pilots) are now ignored by airlines because they have signed up for deals with the cheaper cadet schools in the mistaken belief that this will save serious money. Experienced pilots are finding it harder to progress their careers as they believe in professionalism and being paid to work. Younger cadets who are willing to P2F or join under MPL contract terms don't tend to rock the boat. After all, the MPLs are airline specific (ie: not valid elsewhere to prevent social mobility).

Flight Safety is being compromised. Jumping straight from Flight School to a shiny airline jet job is not providing the right stuff. Flying a hundreds of hours in an automated airliner following company SOPs with little chance to practice emergencies or get a real feel for the aircraft(as Flt Ops don't like hands on flying), has created system operators rather than aviators. These have missed the chance to learn about poor weather operations in Turboprops or taught incipient spin recovery at a decent flight school.

The biggest killer in civil aviation is now loss of control. Many cadets are not taught about Mach Buffet or JAR25/FAR25 stall recovery techniques.

Just look at the situation with Tiger Airways being grounded in Australia and now Jetstar. Another famous EU LoCo recently had a cadet tail-scrape an Airbus which cost into the Millions of Euros to fix.

Colgan Q400 crash was flown by a Captain who was a P2F customer! He fought the stick shaker into the stall. His FO was paid less than a toilet cleaner and their Ts&Cs on working hours led to fatigue which was a contributory factor in the tragedy.

Cadets and Integrated training certainly has it's place, but the system is being abused for profit.

Who would you rather fly your family?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPrpxYVNmMo&...

Lukafoto - I quite agree with what you say about Jet Type Ratings and paying for line experience, and personally I would never recommend anyone to follow this route. It is risky, and as you say financial suicide.

However, in terms of a turboprop type rating, through personal experience this can work very well. I can only reiterate and stand by what I have previously said about using an extremely reputable turboprop TRTO with great connections. Whilst I was there virtually everyone who came through Skyblue as a self-sponsored student gained employment following completion of type rating. Former students are currently flying with airlines all over the World - Dutch Antilles Express, Blue Islands, Aurigny, Farnair, Aer Arann, Air Contractors and United Airways (Bangladesh), to name but a few.

Apart from professional pilots who were being put through an ATR course on behalf of their respective company, the average student age was mid to late 30s. Youngest students early / mid 20s and the oldest around 50. Those in the late 30s to 50 age bracket gained their first airline jobs with turboprop companies for a couple of reasons:

1. Maturity - life experience, stability

2. Unlikely to 'run off' to the first jet job after gaining a year or two of turboprop experience, although where there have been mixed fleets within a company promotion to jets within was still an option.

The instructors were no slouches either - all former highly experienced Captains with a multitude of experience behind them, all of them had previously flown ATR, and before that either ex military, ex major airline; or both. One was an ex Concorde Captain. The Head of Training is a current and highly experienced pilot himself and conducts the 'circuit training' to complete the rating. What did this mean to our students. Not only did they gain the knowledge from completing the course, they also learnt an awful lot about the practicalities of flying the ATR on line and gained from the knowledge imparted to them by the training staff. In that way, there type rating training was much fuller and gave them so much more.

I am flying from Cannes LFMD Vaseem: Let me know when you are there!

Wilco!

Paying for a TR without the promise in writing of a job at the end of the course is financial suicide. An A320 rating without at least 500 hours on type is worthless.

The one who pays for a genuine business expense only adds to the bottom line of the LoCo carrier's CEO pay packet/profits and helps to reduce Pilot Terms and Conditions across the industry.

This situation has now mutated into people paying to fly airliners to gain 100h or so "experience" and then go back to being unemployed. They are simply replaced by another P2F cadet. In the meantime the airline's FOs are on the ground on standby, unable to build flight time to help them towards a Captaincy. The captains are now all effectively training captains with P2F FOs changing every few months - most of whom require serious monitoring which only adds to the cockpit gradient (lack of CRM) and workload.

P2F and Paying for TRs is the scourge of the industry. This is NOT the same as an apprenticeship or Medical or Legal training - those folk may pay to live while they do voluntary work but they do not pay the Law Firm or Hospital once they have the professional licence. They do not pay to use the court room or some new piece of surgical equipment. They are professionals on graduation.

Most Pilot's are very capable once they have the ATP/frozen ATPL with Multi Engine IR. Yes, it is still a licence to learn, but they have graduated in qualification terms.

However, some unscrupulous Companies (some call them Pilot Mills) promise the earth if you will pay them an extra Euro 30000 or so for a TR plus another huge amount for a few hours flying fare paying passengers.

In the EU, we have seen the rise of "integrated" courses and now MPL where cadets are given the bare minimum time airborne in which to develop sound airmanship skills. It is possible under the new "approved" schemes for an MPL to join an airline with less flying time than a Private pilot. Worse, the most experienced pilots (GA, Turbo Prop operators, Flying Instructors and even Military Pilots) are now ignored by airlines because they have signed up for deals with the cheaper cadet schools in the mistaken belief that this will save serious money. Experienced pilots are finding it harder to progress their careers as they believe in professionalism and being paid to work. Younger cadets who are willing to P2F or join under MPL contract terms don't tend to rock the boat. After all, the MPLs are airline specific (ie: not valid elsewhere to prevent social mobility).

Flight Safety is being compromised. Jumping straight from Flight School to a shiny airline jet job is not providing the right stuff. Flying a hundreds of hours in an automated airliner following company SOPs with little chance to practice emergencies or get a real feel for the aircraft(as Flt Ops don't like hands on flying), has created system operators rather than aviators. These have missed the chance to learn about poor weather operations in Turboprops or taught incipient spin recovery at a decent flight school.

The biggest killer in civil aviation is now loss of control. Many cadets are not taught about Mach Buffet or JAR25/FAR25 stall recovery techniques.

Just look at the situation with Tiger Airways being grounded in Australia and now Jetstar. Another famous EU LoCo recently had a cadet tail-scrape an Airbus which cost into the Millions of Euros to fix.

Colgan Q400 crash was flown by a Captain who was a P2F customer! He fought the stick shaker into the stall. His FO was paid less than a toilet cleaner and their Ts&Cs on working hours led to fatigue which was a contributory factor in the tragedy.

Cadets and Integrated training certainly has it's place, but the system is being abused for profit.

Who would you rather fly your family?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPrpxYVNmMo&...

Lukafoto - I quite agree with what you say about Jet Type Ratings and paying for line experience, and personally I would never recommend anyone to follow this route. It is risky, and as you say financial suicide.

However, in terms of a turboprop type rating, through personal experience this can work very well. I can only reiterate and stand by what I have previously said about using an extremely reputable turboprop TRTO with great connections. Whilst I was there virtually everyone who came through Skyblue as a self-sponsored student gained employment following completion of type rating. Former students are currently flying with airlines all over the World - Dutch Antilles Express, Blue Islands, Aurigny, Farnair, Aer Arann, Air Contractors and United Airways (Bangladesh), to name but a few.

Apart from professional pilots who were being put through an ATR course on behalf of their respective company, the average student age was mid to late 30s. Youngest students early / mid 20s and the oldest around 50. Those in the late 30s to 50 age bracket gained their first airline jobs with turboprop companies for a couple of reasons:

1. Maturity - life experience, stability

2. Unlikely to 'run off' to the first jet job after gaining a year or two of turboprop experience, although where there have been mixed fleets within a company promotion to jets within was still an option.

The instructors were no slouches either - all former highly experienced Captains with a multitude of experience behind them, all of them had previously flown ATR, and before that either ex military, ex major airline; or both. One was an ex Concorde Captain. The Head of Training is a current and highly experienced pilot himself and conducts the 'circuit training' to complete the rating. What did this mean to our students. Not only did they gain the knowledge from completing the course, they also learnt an awful lot about the practicalities of flying the ATR on line and gained from the knowledge imparted to them by the training staff. In that way, there type rating training was much fuller and gave them so much more.

The problem we face as cadets/CPL/IR, Airlines want Jet hours with X amount of total time!!! We barely hit 300hrs single engine!

Hi i am looking for ground staff job in any where.....................