David Learmount/LONDON
Aspiring student pilots worldwide are naturally delighted by the growing demand for airline crew, but it is becoming clear that an appropriate pilot's licence and ratings are no longer automatic passports to jobs. The training industries of Europe and the USA report that airlines expect higher standards, and the signs are that it will stay that way.
The relentless economics of supply and demand would normally be expected to produce the opposite effect. Traditionally, when demand for qualified pilots has been high, all but the premier carriers have accepted that any pilot with a legal licence and minimum experience is potentially employable.
While that sector of the market will always exist when the market pendulum swings in the pilots' favour, pilots without training or experience in line operation as part of a crew seem more likely to be relegated to market niches in the future. Most carriers this time are holding out for quality, despite the demand for quantity.
Both the training colleges and the carriers confirm that more airlines are backing away from employing flightcrew who may turn out to be liabilities. Minimum-quality pilots, for example, may start by failing a type conversion at the first attempt. Recurrent training also needs more time, which is both a direct and indirect expense because it keeps the pilot away from productive line flying.
Quite apart from any safety consideration, these pilots cause their employers administrative headaches simply by not being command material. Peter Moxham of the Oxford Air Training School in the UK explains: "Airlines suffer from a number of individuals who are incapable of command, which puts blockages in the system." Airlines, Moxham emphasises, do not have any use for "career first-officers". Oxford does "more and more selection" for airlines, Moxham says, explaining: "Airlines have more two-crew cockpits. They have to avoid making mistakes." Even self-sponsored applicants are screened, Moxham says, as much for crew-compatibility and command-potential personal qualities as for psychomotor skills.
UK-based low-cost operator easyJet burst onto the conservative European market in November 1995 under the flamboyant chairmanship of young former shipping businessman Stelios Haji-Ioannou, and has needed pilots for its fast-growing Boeing 737 fleet. The new carrier provides an example of the trend to screening for higher quality, despite the fierce demands of its market sector. EasyJet's chief pilot, Capt Mike Keane, says that his airline screens all its pilots thoroughly, checking the track records of experienced applicants and testing them for professional knowledge. Less experienced, but appropriately trained, potential first officers are sent to the ATP Academy, near Southampton, for aptitude testing and selection followed by jet-experience and type-rating training. In 1995, ATP launched a scheme now used by easyJet and three other UK airlines, of placing qualified pilots as second officers on probation for up to six months, seen by pilots as the final stage of line training and airlines as the final stage of selection.
Unusually, easyJet does not have an aircrew-seniority system. Keane is strongly in favour of promotion on merit, insisting that the airline gains more than quality. EasyJet, like other medium-sized carriers, is a target for aircrew headhunting by the majors, Keane explains: "People stay with you if they feel as if they are being relatively well looked after, but also if they can see an opportunity for advancement within the company."
Alternative strategic supply
Despite the airlines' awareness that they remain subject to boom-and-bust economic cycles and concomitant shortages of quality pilots, there are no signs that the average carrier's management is any more likely to set up a long-term strategic policy for aircrew supply than before. All the indications are that airlines will continue to rely upon the popularity of flying as a career to provide their pilots. The training industry and the airlines, however, are setting up innovative, flexible, schemes which make it easier for young pilots to finance their own training.
External pressures from many different directions - not just the current airline-industry growth - are forcing changes in the airlines' approach to sourcing flightcrew and their training. The special skills required by pilots of modern, electronic-flight-instrument-system (EFIS) aircraft is one such pressure, although it has taken time for the industry to acknowledge the need for special skills and specific training.
During the 1970s, two-pilot EFIS cockpits were flagged by the designers as the tool which would eliminate the flight engineer's job, simultaneously reducing pilot workload through automation and thus reducing the opportunity for pilot error. There was a clear hope that automation would make mediocre pilots safe.
Skill still in demand
It did not work out that way. Today's highly automated EFIS airliners demand all the traditional airmanship and stick-and-rudder skills. In addition, however, "-Increased automation [has created] new knowledge and skill requirements", according to the US Federal Aviation Administration's 1996 study of flightcrew/ cockpit interface in modern aircraft (Flight International, 9-15 October, 1996, P26). The FAA human-factors (HF) team's report highlights the need not only for enhanced technical knowledge and information-management-system skills, but for crew-resource-management (CRM), or teamworking skills. Finally, the HF team recommends that training standards for EFIS types should be drawn up.
Military cutbacks have put another pressure on airlines. Carriers all over the world have relied on pilots leaving the military services for satisfying some of their crewing needs. In the USA, the major carriers seem to prefer military-trained crew, says FlightSafety International, and they cream off all the suitably qualified former military pilots. They are now finding, however, that, while their size and needs are growing, the military-pilot supply is actually declining. This effect trickles down the market to the regionals, who stand to lose even more of their captains to the majors and other jet-operators than they already do. This "cherry-picking" by the big carriers hurts the regionals badly because, as Moxham observes: "You can't create a captain overnight."
Finally, in a progressively deregulating, more competitive, global marketplace, the carriers are having to watch their training costs more carefully. Hence the need to find a way to persuade aspiring pilots, especially ab initios, to finance their own training while the airline retains considerable inßuence on candidate selection and training quality.
Moxham confirms that, except among Asia/Pacific and Middle Eastern airlines, full sponsorship for ab initio trainees - already rare - is on its way out. Where it exists, there is always a pay-back scheme and contractual bonding of the pilot to the airline for a minimum period.
Lufthansa of Germany, which operates its own flying-training school, terminated its policy of paying for its pilots' ab initio training in 1992 because it "-needed to be able to react to variations in its need for pilots". By this, Lufthansa means that it could not afford to pay upfront for its pilots' qualifications because it might not need all of its graduates by the time they completed their courses. Any who were not employed immediately, however, having been through the four-day Lufthansa selection procedure and airline-supervised training, would clearly be high-quality material and could choose either to take other employment, or to be first on the Lufthansa waiting list when the airline restarted recruiting.
British Airways, now advertising for ab initio recruits, is one of progressively fewer "Western" airlines which pays upfront to sponsor its selected pilots. As a large international airline with flag-carrier status, BA can be more confident than most airlines that it will reap the benefits of its own pilot-training investment, because history so far has shown that, once recruited, the graduate pilot is likely to stay with BA for life. Even BA, however, has a payback scheme once the pilot is on the line.
Today's training solution
Many training colleges and airlines now offer schemes which basically consist of a two- or three-way partnership to help pilots find the finance for their own training courses, whether ab initio or more advanced. This enlarges the pool of potential young applicants, because more than those aspiring pilots who have access to personal or family funding can consider full-course ab initio training.
The schemes normally have the following components: a selection procedure which consists of aptitude testing and interviews, conducted either by the flying-training college, or a potential employer, or both.
Then, using success in the aptitude-testing and selection procedure - plus the likelihood of employment - as a form of loan security, the college assists the student to obtain finance for the course through a bank or other organisation with which the college has an arrangement.
The student begins the training course, usually having paid at least the costs of the selection procedure and the early part of the ground-school and flying training. If his/her performance within the first 20 or so flying hours gives cause for uncertainty about ultimate success, the student is given the option of terminating the course before costs become high.
Finally, on graduation with the full commercial-pilot qualifications specified by the potential employer, the airline offers the pilot a job (if its business has continued to thrive in the meantime), or the freedom to seek work elsewhere.
Potential variations within such a framework are infinite. ATP adds the system of placing pilots as second officers on approval with the airlines. FlightSafety has had a system known as "New-Hire" up and running since 1992, in co-operation with US regional-turboprop operators, and more than 4,300 pilots have successfully passed through it. The New-Hire training is not only generic, but can include a relevant type rating for the operator which expects to hire the graduate.
The potential employer may contribute finance in the form of a repayable loan provided that the student signs a bond. For example, British Aerospace Flight Training at Prestwick, Scotland, has struck a deal with Manx Airlines, part of the British Regional Airlines group. Manx needs high-quality pilots with turboprop-aircraft captaincy potential, who will stay at least long enough to repay the training investment and, ideally, develop a company loyalty which will result in longer employment.
Like other regionals, Manx suffers "cherry-picking". CSE's Moxham says that in the British market: "British Airways chooses some 200 pilots a year from other airlines. This hits the market. They'll take good first-officers from the other majors, but only captains from Brymon and Manx [both regional turboprop operators]." Manx hopes that it has now found a middle path which will provide it with a high-quality, loyal, pilot workforce and reduce the job-turnover rate among its flightcrew.
There has been much debate about the area which has become known among flight-crew as "pay-for-training". Ab initio training has not been at issue, but the appropriateness of requiring qualified pilots to pay for an airline selection and induction procedure followed, on acceptance, by paying also for a type rating, has been questioned. Pilot debate centres on the lower crew morale and company loyalty which might result, and whether these are detrimental to safety. US low-cost operator ValuJet ran such a scheme until recently, but has stated openly that the ability to operate in that way depends entirely upon the state of the market for quality pilots. With the current US pilot shortage ValuJet, now renamed AirTran, has found that quality flightcrew can only be attracted by the offer of free induction and type-rating training.
Paninternational Airlines, a UK-registered specialist international wet-lease airline organisation, operating mainly Airbus Industrie A300s and the Boeing MD-80 series, wants its pilots, at all levels of experience, to be selected and trained by the SAS Flight Academy so that it has control over the quality of crews it employs. Contracts vary according to experience at entry, but "juniors", who will undergo a 15-month training course as cadets, are expected to contribute at least 40% of the training cost before starting. The airline puts this at $39,000. Pilots converting to the A300/A310 will have 50% of the cost of selection and conversion deducted from their salaries.
The market will undoubtedly determine whether airlines such as Paninternational must vary their demands for a share of training costs, but the consistent point is that airlines are setting high standards at the selection stage.
Pressures for improved pilot-selection/training:
- Two-crew cockpits;
- EFIS/flight-management-system training demands;
- larger, more complex, aircraft;
- higher cost of initial and recurrent training for mediocre pilots;
- seniority logjams caused by pilots who do not have command potential;
- reduction in the supply of military-trained pilots combined with a proportionate increase in airline-industry size;
- greater media attention focused on airline accidents;
- growing industry consciousness that flying will be perceived as unsafe if the number of accidents increases;
- increased availability to the public of comparative airline-safety data;
- increased media concentration on safety anomalies perceived to be associated with low-cost carriers, regionals, or turbo-prop airliners;
- the direct and indirect cost of accidents;
- safety sanctions now wielded by the USA via the International Safety Assessment Programme and the European Union through the Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft scheme.
A generic flexible pilot-training scheme
- Candidate undergoes aptitude-testing and selection by flying college and potential employer;
student pilot is assisted by college to find finance on the basis of high potential to complete the course, and to find employment;
- progress-assessment early in training allows student to terminate course while costs are low if potential is less than expected;
- graduation, followed either by a line-pilot position with the planned employer, or the opportunity to seek employment elsewhere;
- if employer has directly contributed to finance, pilot will be contracted to work for that airline for a minimum payback period.
Source: Flight International