Peter wrote:
It is deeply cyclic, and this will remain all the time there are thousands of youngsters spending their parent’s 100k for the dream job
Yep. And therefore, if you don’t catch the very beginning of the cycle or even act anti cyclic, you usually end up finishing when the cycle is finished again and there are too many. It was like that with teachers in recent years, they claimed tens of thousands needed, currently each vacancy generates 40-90 applications. They also forgot to mention that males don’t need to appy below high school level….
Peter wrote:
I have seen loads of posts in various places by anonymous characters who were obviously FTO owners, or full time FTO employees, and they were spouting really obvious BS.
Welcome to the world of advertizing….. I recall the statement of one job advisor decades ago who told someone interested in advertizing that only compulsive and qualified liers need to apply. The trouble is, advertizing is not there to show facts but rather to stirr emotions and addictions. And the job still is attractive, nonwithstanding all the moaning and ranting some do on proone and elsewhere.
Peter wrote:
Loads of CPL/ME/IR holders never get an airline job; how many of this lot do you think will get through the airline interview? I reckon 20% of those I knew never got any flying job
20% is a low washout rate. In the old days, washout would be close to 80%. I’d reckon that today maybe 50-60% of those who finish an ATPL mill with decent marks will end up in airlines pretty sharpishly, the rest is either of the “more money than brains” type or those who will take a detour as discussed above. Nevertheless, it is perfectly normal that a significant number of applicants will never reach their set goal. not the only job this is so.
It is obvious that this business has loads of factors in it and one cannot generalise.
I have seen loads of posts in various places by anonymous characters who were obviously FTO owners, or full time FTO employees, and they were spouting really obvious BS. There may be reputable FTOs out there but they are not the norm. For example I have known various ex FTA instructors (even flew with some) and they said that standards were dropped all the way to get the money in.
Peter wrote:
There is the is FTO training (the subject header) and there is airline recruitment.
In many cases FTO’s have agreements with a number of airlines and are basically doing some of the pre-selection process for them.
Peter wrote:
I can tell you with 100% certainty that the FTO sausage machine will take in anybody even if they look pretty weird.
Some will, no question. Some will tell applicants that their chances are slim, others will keep them going until they run out of money. There are good and bad ones.
Peter wrote:
To get in: they have to like you you need good exam pass marks (in Europe) you need to ace the simcheck
Primarily you have to fit into what they expect. And that may or may not have a focus on “flying skills” but rather on personality. Lots of applicants will fail that very first look by an airline not because they are incapable or have lousy flying skills (they never get near the sim) but simply because the profile does not fit them.
Theoretically FTO’s could weed those folks out very early on, if they were interested in it. Of course they are not. And even if some FI’s would have the honesty to tell an applicant that his chances of being taken on are close to zero, they would still continue.
You forgot another factor however: The market situation. Currently, as Bathman writes, chances are as good as they have not been in decades to get a job if you have your paperwork in order and show halfways decent performances. Lots of airlines have massive problems finding new FO’s and it shows. So maybe for the first time in a few decades, the pilot shortage proclaimed by the FTO’s to wow students is actually a reality.
The other bit is, that even alumni with proper papers but who disqualify for most airlines for the reasons mentioned above may well end up flying some sort of job eventually, as the “decent” folks are being sucked up by the airlines currenty. So they will eventually end up on what is known in the industry derogatively as “Coffee and sandwich pushers” on Citations, sometimes even Pay2Fly, sometimes “major slave” type of jobs until maybe they sort out some of their deficiencies doing that and can scoop up a command on one of that kind of operations. Or they go fly in Asia or Africa, whereever.
I’d think one big weed out factor would be that the jobs the less apt finally are offered will have paygrades so absymal that they can’t ever hope to pay back their credits… so they get forced eventually to work somewhere else with better salary, or else they grab it and vanish into a non-extradition country to fly on some questionable outfit.
gallois wrote:
The cost of flight training must have a weeding out effect, because in an article I read.ot was saying that there were some 90 applicants for each airline job.
Maybe this is still the case… the difference being that there are a lot more jobs than there were a few years back. It’s still a cut-troth process to get into an airline, and to an extent rightly so, but I’d think chances are much better than they were.
“How many of them have the formal qualifications?”
That depends on the job. Some come with formal training, some come with a non specialized university degree and others with experience, which I think it is probably around the same mix as aviation.
It is interesting that there is such a shortage of suitable applicants for airline jobs at present that everyone with a CPL/IR is being snapped up.I have been hearing this tale for the last 30 years yet wherever I go there are qualified pilots in search of jobs and finding it difficult without going somewhere like Papua New Guinea.
There is a massive shortage of FI’s in my aera.
Schools are currently turning away work because they haven’t got staff to train them. Even LAPL FI’s are getting hired before they have even finished the FI course.
All night ratings are now done by LAPL FI’s to free up FI’s with CPL TK to teach solely for the PPL.
The reason for this shortage is that the airlines are sucking them all up. Even those with 40K fATPL’s that didn’t get 90% on their written exams and did a wodge of their hour building in TMG’s. There all getting hired.
Applicants per job is a BS number. Especially with e-mail etc every individual will be apply to dozens, if not hundreds of jobs. It would be very surprising if 90 pilots graduated from ATOs for every new pilot hired by an airline.
gallois wrote:
I had to laugh because in my business there were usually hundreds of applicants for each job.
How many of them have the formal qualifications?
There are also many would be airline pilots who have a dream and even if an FTO were to say that they had no chance of ever making the grade, will think “it’s my money, my choice and I’m prepared to pay for ypu to teach me to fly an airliner.”
They will keep going until they find an FTO who will take them.
For the FTOs/ATOs there is a line between getting a high proportion of students accepted into jobs and those that are just taking all the money they can get.
Anyone spending the sort of sums being talked about would do well to look first at schools who have the highest percentage of students getting jobs.
Airlines expect applicants to have been well trained (no matter what schooling) they put emphasis as Mooney says on the MCC training and instructors assessment.
The first interview with an applicant will be an assessment will be made as to whether or not they were a good fit for the company.
But they wont be the only one being interviewed and it will also depend on how many vacancies there are.
There are usually several interviews before a prospective FO ever makes it to a simulator.
The cost of flight training must have a weeding out effect, because in an article I read.ot was saying that there were some 90 applicants for each airline job.
I had to laugh because in my business there were usually hundreds of applicants for each job.
OK but this is shifting the goalposts.
There is the is FTO training (the subject header) and there is airline recruitment.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that the FTO sausage machine will take in anybody even if they look pretty weird.
Airline recruitment is a different thing. Obviously I’ve never done it but have spoken to countless people from the system. To get in:
Then you will move straight past the other 90% in the queue.
So what happens to the other 90%? They are the ones the FTO should have “washed out” but they never will because they want the 100k 
And to be fair most of them will eventually get some job, possibly with a European twin TP operator (I had a really totally weird instructor who got that far; he had a CPL/IR when he was an FI) and often with some 3rd World operator.
Peter wrote:
I am also not at all sure aboutThey don’t hire first officers, they hire future commanders
because they have plenty of time to wash out those who don’t make the grade.
While I still was hopeful to make it one day, this is what was repeated to me in every single outfit I approached. To most airlines, the time a pilot spends as FO is considered akin an “apprenticeship” for the “real” job of Captain. Hence, even early on in the selections, they want to see how an applicant is doing with regards of decision making, whether he is capable of standing his ground, whether he is able to lead. That is the most important characteristic for an airline pilot, even during his time as FO. If they determine you are a lousy leader, you can ace all aviation related exams and still be washed out before they even think of allowing you into a type rating.
Once you are in, washout rates are low. And they don’t like to hire people who have a risk of being washed out. Type ratings cost a lot of money. Every pilot who fail one cost them serious amounts which they don’t want to risk. IMHO rightly so.
These things are next to irrelevant at PPL level, even though they are important by principle there as well. Integrity, personal ability to lead and stand their ground have a lot to do with accidents where people went flying because the airplane “had to be back” the passengers “had to reach their destination” or else…. if the or else manages to get pilots to cave in to taking potentially fatal risks, they cave in to pressures airline pilots should be very resistant against. If you want to talk about scams, then it is that on the entry level pilots who do not match these criterias are allowed to progress and finally get their licences, despite the fact that from their character point of view, they probably should not be flying at all.
