In short, if you are not in a position where you can take the ATP Written Exam by July 31, 2014, you should consider finding another line of work.
Go read the article and then ask yourself if you can stand to pay $20,000 in training just to qualify to take the written exam. Right now, the cost of taking a preparatory course for the ATP written exam is on the order of $100-300. You then would have two years to accumulate the flight time and instruction necessary to take the flight test.
This is all Congress's doing, of course. Because they have not yet seen a "problem" that, though diligent efforts, those fuckbags cannot make a hundred-fold worse.
No Need To Be A B-Word About The W-Word
50 minutes ago
6 comments:
And how much does an airline pilot earn? I understand they don't get paid very well, considering the enormous responsibility they bear. Pilots also seem to get blamed for bad management practices, such as scheduling that leaves them with no time to rest. Now this will likely lead to fewer pilots, and more stress on those remaining. Yikes.
At the commuter/feeder airlines, they don't make a lot.
What this will lead to is a form of voluntary servitude, where the airlines will pay for the training and the new pilots will work for them for low pay to pay the airlines back for the training (and owe it as a debt if they quit or are fired).
I think you're right... and considering the number of senior captains that will be required to retire in the next 5 years is going to have a MAJOR impact on the airlines, and this is NOT going to help...
I think you're overestimating the effect of this rule change. As a practical matter, according to a young FO I know who just got hired on a regional.... the ATP multi can be combined with the baby FO's "first type rating". All it takes is signing a contract saying you'll stay on for a year ( or was it two.. ).
Still indentured servant wages and terms, but people are coping with this.
Sarah, does your friend understand that this is a matter of a massive training requirement in order to be able to take the written test? That no such requirement exists now? That the airlines will have to establish new training programs to meet the rule? And that new pilots will have to pay for it all?
When I got my first job at the commuters you couldn't even get a look from them unless you had an ATP and at least 200 hours of multi-engine. Also preferred were all the CFI ratings, CFI,CFII,MEI. All that cost a boat load of money back then. I know that it's proportionately a lot more now, but it still was a lot with not nearly the job prospects a lowly 400 hour commercial pilot with an instrument rating had until recently.
The prospective pilots working on a career in the airlines will not have to pay for all that prep just to take the written, or even to take the checkride. Lets say you have your required 1500 hours and 25 hours or more multi. Since the demand at the regionals is high, you will get hired, go to ground school and thereby fulfill the new ground school requirements for the ATP written. This costs the airline no money because they have to teach that stuff anyway and the pilot might actually get paid to sit in that class. Then the simulator training they receive will fulfill the flying portion and bring them up to the 50 hour multi engine mark, also at no additional cost to the pilot or the airline. Then the student/prospective FO will take the written, probably also paid for by the company and then get his ATP when he passes his checkride.
Right now the commuters and regionals are parking planes by the dozen because there are no pilots to be found. It's a monster the airlines created themselves. I hope they choke on it.
How it will play out in corporate aviation I haven't a clue.
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