For aspiring pilots who mortgage their careers until middle-age to earn a full airline pilot's licence, airline sponsorship is the ultimate dream. Yet, would-be pilots know that such offers are few, and the schemes, reacting to market behaviour, have been sporadic. When sponsors do announce a course, many are called, but few are chosen.
Another option, although it too is only for a few, is the result of collective effort and insight by an innovative flying-schools group and an airline which wants to play a part in the ab initio training of its pilots, but also wants to keep its costs down. The concept of shared self-sponsorship and airline sponsorship is not new, but the idea of the flying college itself becoming a partner in a three-way ab initio student sponsorship is, to say the least, unusual. The UK-based general aviation company Cabair has been working on such a scheme in association with two airlines, however.
Setting the JAR FCL scene
New ideas for European ab initio trainee pilots are much needed, because the Joint Aviation Regulations for flightcrew licensing (JAR FCL, which entered its adoption phase on 24 June, 1996), have made the traditional self-improver route even more difficult than it used to be. Previously pilots could, with their private pilot's licence (PPL) and a total of 150h flying, gain an instructor's rating and, with luck, build up flying hours by operating as a paid PPL flying instructor. Now the JAR FCL states that, from 1 July 1999 - JAR FCL's implementation date - only pilots with a commercial pilot's licence (CPL) can be paid to instruct.
The Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) claims that winning a CPL by the new "modular training" route is "easier", however. This means that it takes only 200h flying, compared with 700h, although 25h flying and the final handling test has to be completed under instruction at an "approved" flying training college.
Taking the full "integrated" course to "frozen" airline transport pilot's licence standards (the pilot operates with CPL privileges until 1,500h in his log-book confers automatic ATPL status) can cost Europeans up to $60,000, which almost inevitably means that they go to the southern USA's low-tax, benign-weather environment for most of their training, converting to JAR FCL standards on return.
The three-way sponsorship idea, Cabair's brainchild, was born in the boom year of 1989. Today the three active sponsors, who share the investment in training almost equally, are London Stansted, UK-based Air UK, the Cabair Group of flying schools, and the student pilot him/herself. The student's investment is about ú6,000 ($10,000). Cabair's investment is not pure altruism: the Group needs high-quality flying instructors for its seven flying schools, and a part of the deal is that the students work for Cabair for two years before going to the airline. The year 1989 spawned the idea because, at that time, the airlines needed pilots, and the Cabair Group desperately needed instructors at its PPL schools because it was losing them to the airlines.
Britannia Airways was the first customer to use the scheme. Now, having largely converted from Boeing 737s to 767s, it has expanded its capacity without a need for more pilots. Air UK describes the system as "-not a sponsorship in the true sense of the word-more in the nature of an interest-free loan which the applicant will repay over a period of five years while working for the two companies".
Candidates are selected from applicants who already have a UK PPL and instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) rating, plus 150h flying time. The next stage involves training to Basic CPL (BCPL) level at the Cabair College of Air Training (CCAT), Cranfield, a fully approved school.
Cabair employment
Cabair then trains them for an instructor's rating, and employs them for two years at one of the Group's seven PPL units. During that time, Cabair gets a high-quality instructor, familiar with its own Group-wide standardised training methods, and recoups its investment by paying the lower "sponsored instructor's salary".
Having completed two years as an instructor, the student goes back to the College for an instrument rating (IR) course, five weeks of ATPL navigation flying, and the ATPL flying test, which is carried out by one of the two on-site CAA examiners. Finally, the airline gets a mature pilot with nearly enough hours (about 1,100h on average, says CCAT), to have defrosted the ATPL.
The only difference that JAR FCL makes to this neatly-packaged system is that the students will have to be trained to CPL instead of the soon-invalid BCPL standards before instructing. This, says Cabair's business development manager David Hoy, is no problem.
Capt Colin Heathcote, the Cabair Group's managing director and principal of CCAT, says that the cost of achieving 150h in Europe means that some 80% of applicants have done their initial training in the USA. Heathcote remarks: "We find we have a hell of a job with students who have just navigated up and down freeways in the Florida sunshine."
Aptitude testing
Cabair is responsible for aptitude testing and the initial interview process. Air UK makes the final decision at its own interview. Aptitude testing consists of a psychometric questionnaire, a 30min general handling test (GHT), and a 30min simulator test of instrument flying abilities and instructor potential. The Cabair interview checks aviation knowledge and personal attitudes.
Air UK has been using the "instructor-route" scheme long enough to know that the people it produces tend to make good training captains, says Heathcote. At present, it is the only user of the scheme, but appreciates the "drip-feed" of its own mature ab initio pilots who arrive on-line with ready-made company loyalty.
Air UK describes the advantage as gaining "-pilots of known ability who can fill vacancies during a pilot shortage, and who have potential as training staff".
There are four other UK airline users of CCAT's training. Three of them, Airtours International, British World Airlines and Jersey European, use combinations of airline sponsorship/self sponsorship. British Airways sponsors its cadets direct and recovers part of the cost from salary when (if) they join the line.
How to stay in business
Heathcote says that the way the Cabair Group and the College are structured make it possible to provide flexibly for airline needs, despite the vagaries of the airline ab initio market demand. It will also have to cope with increasing competition from European Union (EU)-based schools, and existing competition from flying schools in the USA and Australia, which have been approved by the UK CAA to issue UK- (therefore JAA) valid pilots licences.
The JAR FCL, on adoption, will stop the number of CAA-approved foreign schools increasing as EU flying licences can only be issued by organisations with a headquarters in the EU and which carry out specified amounts of the course, plus licence tests, in the EU.
Heathcote, along with others in the UK industry, have stated their concern that the licensed foreign schools retain CAA approval by grandfather rights, and that other foreign schools may be licensed before 1999. The CAA has said that there are not, as yet, reasons why it cannot approve foreign applicants which meet approved school licencing specifications.
The Elstree-based Cabair Group's survival secret consists of keeping its capital investments low, says Heathcote. The Group arrived at Cranfield in 1991 when the recession had bitten and the Trent Air Services flying college went into bankruptcy. Cabair took over the viable parts of Trent's business, and still leases all its accommodation at Cranfield. The latter enables the College to respond rapidly to demand, Heathcote explains.
Being the base for Cranfield University, with its strong aeronautical faculty and campus atmosphere, Cranfield is equipped for students without Cabair making massive capital investments. This means CCAT trainees are able to share campus social venues with postgraduate students in various aeronautical specialisations, and have full access to one of Europe's finest aeronautical libraries.
The College also trains rotary-wing pilots, making the aviation mixture complete.
On the same courses as the airline-sponsored trainees Cabair also keeps a mix of self-improver/self-sponsored students at CCAT. The sponsored/self-improver mix is about 50/50 at present, Heathcote says, which he maintains is good for the students as well. The abilities of the carefully screened sponsored trainees are, on average, higher than those of the self-sponsored and self-improver students, but they all support each other, he says.
Building team spirit
Building team spirit starts at the beginning of every course, when the new students go on an adventure-training "outward bound" weekend course. They come back "welded together", says Heathcote. Capt Mike Dyson, head of training, says: "Learning alongside the self-improvers means that people realise the value of the sponsorship they have, and how important it is to work."
At present BA spreads its ab initio students between three schools, two in the UK and one in Australia. Dyson remarks: "This has provided us with more work than just liaising with one college, but we all meet often at liaison meetings. In certain areas we want consistency, in others we are happy for the school to put its own personality stamp on the students. In these courses we have taken a policy of standing back a little. Cabair is smaller than the others. That can be a strength."
Source: Flight International
