Are we really short of pilot ?, should you go to Multi Pilot License training ?
In general, the answer partly right and the reality is NO, there are about 30-40% of commercial pilot graduates that does not have job within 1-2 years after graduation whether in the US, Europe or Asia, this happened because there are gaps between flying school commercial airlines pilot graduate with 150-200 hours or the new MPL (Multi crew Pilot License) with 350 hours with narrow body type rating with the Airlines demand which requires majority 500 hours and some of them demand or welcome Type Rating, thus the pilot who wanted to have better chance to be recruited try to invest as much as they can in order to get the return as early as possible, Natural Economy principle. If the pilot invest type rating of USD30K and initial minimum CoPilot salary of USD 5-8K, it means if they are wasting USD60K/ year if they did not get the job. Definitely either in Europe or Asia, the pilot are willing to pay type rating, however they are still gambling as the rate of absorption is not align with the graduates.
The MPL training program has been running well in the last few years by an aviation organization who possess agreement with airlines that the graduates directly conduct line flying and employed. MPL is basically a flying school who have an agreement with the airlines and introduce the type rating prior to their graduations, in addition they have about 100 hours more flying and may double the cost as the element of type rating is embedded in the school. Most of the MPL is run or financed by the large airlines or have a contract agreement with airlines.
The MPL is beneficial for a larger airlines but slowly taking the market for the commercial flying school that has no agreement with airlines.
The individual self sponsored pilot will remain in mystery whether they can get a job within prescribes time not even to mention looking for job for years, they will be rusty when they stop flying for few months if not years.
There are many individual and organization who disagree with the idea of pay to fly scheme, however the demand is always there although the industry or individual is considered this is un acceptable, the individual it self is willing to and in some cases pushed to do this way as the period they remain jobless the lesser probability being employed.
So what and how the pay to fly scheme comes to the picture, basically pay to fly scheme is one of the method for the pilot to collect enough hours, typically between 250 to 500 hours of line training on specific aircraft type and willing to fly to pay the airlines, some individual pay USD2000-3000/mo to obtain at least 50 hours / month of line training, not to mention salary, the good offered by some operator is to offer accommodation.
In these blooming aviation worldwide and high demand for pilot, open various opportunities for pilot to look for a job, however the publicity sometimes does not align with reality that it is not straight forward to get airlines job.
In short, before you or your children start stepping in the flying career, do your homework, contact operator offer or ask if they are having agreement with any training organization whether they are willing to take type rated pilot and possibly obtain the growth rate of the airlines by looking at their statistics and travel statistics
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