bobbysamd
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2001
- Posts
- 5,710
I'll bite, too . . . .
Anyone who wants to be a pilot must be taught how to fly. Unless you have a father or friend with a CFI and an airplane who wants to train you for the fun and joy of it, you'll have to pay money to learn how to fly and earn your ratings. The entity from which you learn how to fly may promise that you will receive an interview with an airline upon completion of your flight training. Unless the entity is hiring you as a pilot with zero time and you must then pay for your flight training, this is not P-F-T.
In the case of military pilots, Uncle Sam "paid" for their training. In return, military pilots have to fulfill a commitment to serve in the military for a period of time certain. Maybe this is like a training contract. I am not comfortable with this analogy, but it seems apt. Those military pilots who opt out of the commitments early are exceptions.
After you learn how to fly, you may have a friend who likes flying, so you make a deal to split the cost of a block of time. Yes, you are paying for hours but you are not paying for training to work for a company. I rented airplanes for years to fly and logged ever hour I "paid" for.
Let's say EJI or one of these commuter airline bridge programs comes along and offers to hire you for a pilot position However, as a condition of being hired you have to tender a remittance to cover your training expenses. If you do not tender that remittance, you will not be hired. That is pay-for-training.
The fuss behind P-F-T is manifold. One reason is it makes chumps out of pilots and pilots into chumps. Many people want a quick way up and damm the consequences, so they opt for these schemes. They have no pride. Companies who require P-F-T, in my mind, anyway, expect people to grovel to fly professionally and will treat them as grovelers and beggars. P-F-T takes away jobs from people who've otherwise earned them. I wanted a commuter job badly ten years ago. That's all I wanted from aviation. I suppose I could have have P-F-T'd, but I would not because I wanted to feel that I was hired because I was qualified, not because my checkbook qualified me. Aside from that, even, the notion of having to give "them" money for "my" job smelled of con and scam. Overall, P-F-T demeans pilots.
Finally, the magic total time requirment varies from company to company. For example, years ago, as a rule of thumb commuters wanted 1500 tt, 500 multi and an ATP as their basic requirements. Numbers can go up or down depending on need for pilots (notice that I didn't use "shortage" - there is NO "pilot shortage") and quality of the applicant pool. Commuters were hiring recently with far less than what I wrote above and I've heard whining about how hard it is to build the 200 or so of multi to make it to the commuters. In my day, people sweated out the 500-hour multi requirement. Now, I'd bet you need more than the 500 multi to be considered.
Hope these comments answered some of your questions.
Anyone who wants to be a pilot must be taught how to fly. Unless you have a father or friend with a CFI and an airplane who wants to train you for the fun and joy of it, you'll have to pay money to learn how to fly and earn your ratings. The entity from which you learn how to fly may promise that you will receive an interview with an airline upon completion of your flight training. Unless the entity is hiring you as a pilot with zero time and you must then pay for your flight training, this is not P-F-T.
In the case of military pilots, Uncle Sam "paid" for their training. In return, military pilots have to fulfill a commitment to serve in the military for a period of time certain. Maybe this is like a training contract. I am not comfortable with this analogy, but it seems apt. Those military pilots who opt out of the commitments early are exceptions.
After you learn how to fly, you may have a friend who likes flying, so you make a deal to split the cost of a block of time. Yes, you are paying for hours but you are not paying for training to work for a company. I rented airplanes for years to fly and logged ever hour I "paid" for.
Let's say EJI or one of these commuter airline bridge programs comes along and offers to hire you for a pilot position However, as a condition of being hired you have to tender a remittance to cover your training expenses. If you do not tender that remittance, you will not be hired. That is pay-for-training.
The fuss behind P-F-T is manifold. One reason is it makes chumps out of pilots and pilots into chumps. Many people want a quick way up and damm the consequences, so they opt for these schemes. They have no pride. Companies who require P-F-T, in my mind, anyway, expect people to grovel to fly professionally and will treat them as grovelers and beggars. P-F-T takes away jobs from people who've otherwise earned them. I wanted a commuter job badly ten years ago. That's all I wanted from aviation. I suppose I could have have P-F-T'd, but I would not because I wanted to feel that I was hired because I was qualified, not because my checkbook qualified me. Aside from that, even, the notion of having to give "them" money for "my" job smelled of con and scam. Overall, P-F-T demeans pilots.
Finally, the magic total time requirment varies from company to company. For example, years ago, as a rule of thumb commuters wanted 1500 tt, 500 multi and an ATP as their basic requirements. Numbers can go up or down depending on need for pilots (notice that I didn't use "shortage" - there is NO "pilot shortage") and quality of the applicant pool. Commuters were hiring recently with far less than what I wrote above and I've heard whining about how hard it is to build the 200 or so of multi to make it to the commuters. In my day, people sweated out the 500-hour multi requirement. Now, I'd bet you need more than the 500 multi to be considered.
Hope these comments answered some of your questions.
Last edited: