This is easy 😀

It is the Airboein 777 😀 😀 😀

Commercial maybe?

All I’m going to say is this. My photos are crap, my equipment is crap and none of my pictures are ground-to-air, and many out of focus. I enjoy them for what they are, for the memories etc. I would not post them, ever, on a forum alive with more or less pro guys with the top end gear and experience to match. If I do post, it is alway done with a certain disclaimer of quality.

Your photos Ollie are sometimes a bit dodgy, out of focus, blurred etc. Nothing I could do better, however, I do not think EN830 has to go all the way to the other forum and be a pain in the back side there. He is just telling the truth. When you are competing/comparing with (arguably) the best of the class, you will get a knock down once in a while. If you had been at it as long as some of these guys, with the correct equipment, you would be at their level, but you are not at the moment. So keep practicing, keep shooting aeroplanes but do not expect universal approval right away. In 30 years time you might be the greatest photographer of aeroplanes, but at the moment you are not! EN830 is not a pain in the **se, that should be elsewhere, he is just telling the truth as it is right before our eyes.

Keep shooting Ollie. Keep it to your self until it is of real quality. Then post. Do not say people are having a dig because they do not like your photos, because, frankly, some of them are best kept a secret

DBW, I think it’s time for me to eat some humble pie here 😮

Of course, if checking out on a new type, I would do the walk around with the student! I just missed the part in the previous posts about it being an entirely new type to the student. Sorry about that!

I was a little surprised that I wasn’t supervised closely, although I think she was watching from the Clubhouse.

I’ve been in her shoes. She WAS watching from the clubhouse (or at least I would have been)! When you have got a student with previous experience of things aeronautical, you let them get on with it on their own. Even if you watch very closely in the background. It does tend to get people down if they get the impression that (with all their expertize) they are not allowed to even preflight the aircraft without supervision. So, they are frequently sent out by them selves to do what the checklist says they should be doing, closely watched from a convienient window in the club house. Afterwards there might be a grilling on what are you looking for here, why is that checked and if you move that what should happen there etc.

My name is galdri and I smoke :rolleyes: In fact I smoke about 5 cigars (the small variety) a day, but if it is a bad day maybe 10. I started smoking out of boredom 5 years ago, at the ripe old age of 28 😮 At least when I was smoking my cigar, another 10 minutes of complete and utter bordom were and over done with. And the thing is, I liked it from the first puff. This is an addiction that is probably in our genes. My father used to smoke (He quit 25 years ago), my grandfather smoked, my great grandfather smoked etc. I’ve never tried to quit, because I like this thing. Ok, Ok, I know! It will kill me ( or so the doctors say), but I can think of so many thing that will kill me, without me ever getting near another cigar again (how about getting pissed and ending up with a less than reputable lady). Hell, my smoking grandfather lived to be 98 years old before he passed away!

Having said that, however, I’m all for the ban on smoking in certain public places. The work place should, ofcourse be smoke free. All public transport should be smoke free. All restaurants should be smoke free. But Pubs? Well, there I would like to have a designated smoking room.

As for building hrs galdri is right, an instructor’s rating is generally the way to go, galdri has over estimated on the price a little bit here, you can get one in the UK for about £5,000,

…………….. also galdri is correct regading hrs on type after you have obtained a nice shiny type rating, you can pick up a 737 TR for about 14,000 euros if you shop around
Dean

Ok, I admit! I multiplied the wrong way around 😮 5000 pounds for an instructors rating is about correct.

However, I would like to take issue with the 14000 Euros for the type rating on the 737. I’m sure you can FIND a place prepared to give you a rating for that kind of money, but what is the training like? Would you really know the first thing about flying the beast? This is one of the areas where it does not pay to go for the cheap option. Go for a good, quality training. It will cost you money, but will save you a lot of troble later.

I may not be the best quilified person to answer your questions, but I’ll give it a go.
1. The length of time to finish the Modular Frozen ATPL depends on two things. First of all MONEY, and the second is TIME. If you have the money and the time you could reasonably expect to finish in about 18 months time. In that case, it would be more or less a full time job, so you can expect little or no income while getting it done. Judging by your comments about ab initio training, I guess that would not be possible. So it really is all up to you! One thing to bear in mind, though, is that after all the theoretical exams for the frozen ATPL have been passed, you have only 24 months timebracket to finish the flying part.

2 and 3 together. I do not know of any sponsorship programs at the moment, all that I’ve heard about is what you are descriping, ie. ‘You learn to fly with us, and you MIGHT have a change with so and so’. But I must admit that I’ve not been listening to the grapevine with this in mind. It is not too bad for the tops of class, they will probably get to work for So and So through this arrangement, but the majority, probably, will be left standing. If you are the unlucky one, then you will find the going hard indeed. Very few airlines take on pilots with only 200 hrs fresh out of school (ok, they are out there, but very very few). That will mean hourbuilding, up to at least, say, 500 hrs. That can be done several ways. You could get your self an instructor rating (lots of money, think in the region of 10000 pounds all told) and start hourbuilding that way, but the pay is not high at all. Route two is to find a gliding – or para club that needs a pilot. It will get you the hours, but it will involve a lot of hanging around the airfield on very little (next to nothing) pay, so your income to pay off the loans, presumably taken to finish the licence, will be very limited. The third route is to take out another loan and do the hour building by renting a plane to fly around. (that will be very, very expensive). Once you have hit the 500+ hour mark, and there is still no F/O position in sight, what do you do?

A lot of pilots (even with 200 hrs. total) go for a typerating, ie, they pay a lot of money to learn to fly a specific type of aircraft. A Boeing 737 type rating will set you back about 20.000 pounds. And that is not the complete story, because if you want to go for a typerating you will have to have a valid twin IR (included in most frozen ATPL courses) and an MCC rating (not always included in the frozen ATPL courses). An MCC rating will set you back about 5000 pounds if it is not included in your basic course. There is even one more snag, once you have finished your ground school and simulator for a certain aircraft type, and passed the checkride, you are still not a fully fledged pilot on type and few airlines want a pilot that is not fully qulified (but they are out there, Ill come back to that in a minute) To be let loose, as we call it, you need 40 sectors or 100 hours under the supervision of a line training captain. This is called line training. Some airlines in the UK, flying the B737, charge you for the privilage of flying for them during line training. The latest prize I heard was 10000 pounds for 100 hrs (heard on the grapevine, truthfullness not known). Other airlines (mainly eastern European) will pay you about 700 Euros a month during linetraining, and if you pass the line check, they will offer you a job with 1400 Euros a month. Given the chance, I would rather go for the UK line training, even though it costs money, as the training is genarally top notch. The eastern European way of doing things, in this respect, leaves a lot to be desired. I know, as I’ve had the ‘pleasure’ of re-training some of the guys that went there.

And this is the Catch 22 that you so correctly descripe in your post. The airlines are accepting pilots with less and less total time, but with lots of hours on type. That’s how they do it. They expect You to pay the training cost, that once was theirs. The MCC, the type rating, and the line training has to be paid by YOU, when you end up in this situation. On top of that, you’ll have to live on, say, 1400 Euros a month for some time while waiting for some opening somewhere with a decent pay check.

All that I’ve written above is a worst case thing. Maybe You’ll get lucky and be working with a decent paycheck right out of school. But I don’t think I would be doing you any favours by blowing sunshine up ……..(you know what 😉 😀 😀 ). I’ve seen exactly this scenario happen to a lot of people that I’m currently working with.

4. I’m trying not to generalize here, but I think you’ll find it pretty much impossible to live in Inverness once you get a job. First of all, the rosters with many of the smaller operators can only be descriped as ‘forcasts’ of work. They WILL change and what was supposed to be a day of might not be, and to find that out while just walking in the door at home after a four hour travel to spend a few days with the family can be very irritating (been there, done that, got the t-shirt). Besides, most operators WILL use you to the maximum allowed, and with the smaller ones, you will probably not get more than maybe 7 whole days off in a month (the legal minimum, at least here in Iceland), and it is a regulatory requirement for them to give you at least 36 hrs. off every 7 days (Icelandic rules again), so there you’ll have 2 days off every seven days. If it is possible for you to travel home to Inverness, spend time with your family, and travel back again in that time, fine. But then you would be keeping two households, one where you work and one back home in Inverness, and that will cost a lot of money! Even if you are with the big ones, Ryanair or EasyJet or Thomas Cook or what ever, You would need to keep two homes if you intend to live in Inverness.
The only guys that do not have to think about this are the long haul guys, (BA, Virgin, etc, etc,) they can live anywhere they like, because they go away and are gone for a week or two on some round the globe trip. When they come to the UK, they will probably be left to their own devices for one or two weeks before being called up on to work again!

This has grown a lot longer than I thought when I first set out! But this is how it looks from my view point. It may look a bit pessimistic, but this is how it works for most of us. Like I said earlier, I’m not trying to blow sunshine up …………, I’m just being honest.

Hope you still want to consider the ATPL. It would be my honour to fly with you one of those days 😀 😀