I’m hoping to be a commercial pilot.
In Europe? Ask around commercial pilots employed (!!! – not the thousands of unemployed ones…) here where they got their license. Then derive a statistics from those answers. Then calculate the chances of landing a job here if you do your license elsewhere.
If you really wan’t to be a commercial pilot in Europe, do a European certificate. No-one will accept a conversion from Asia as unfair as it may sound. It is so competitive, you need to play in the same league.
neiiilm wrote:
It’s the beginning of an aviation career. I’m hoping to be a commercial pilot.
Pilot
neiiilm
Ah, that changes everything! Talk to pro pilots (those who actually fly, not the wannabes) and then weigh your chances and options. If you want to pursue this career in Europe, then I’d say you will have to go through one of the European career FTOs that train ATPLs. Forget sunny California :-((
There are very few pilots who started flying to fly “GA” for say a few years, seriously (not just hour building, usually as instructors) but as aircraft owners, and then later moved to airlines.
One reason is that to fly GA you need quite a bit of money. It’s not a cheap hobby. It’s true that one can fly fairly cheaply in say the ultralight scene but in general as airline pilot you will make so little money – for a number of years – that you can forget any GA flying on the back of that.
So those who want an airline job are normally focussed on that route from the start. And most of them have little money anyway so they can’t do any GA flying.
Check out the school as well. There is a school in Kloten, Switzerland which will give you much more chances to go to a regional airline than any other. Even the airline itself writes on their website that they only take pilots from that school. Unfortunately it was 25% more expensive than the other options in Switzerland, so I didn’t go there but I know people who did and got a job as first officers. So, keep an eye on that and ask people what they experienced.
If you want to be an airline pilot also keep a lookout for things like the British Airways Future Pilot programme. A friend of mine was accepted onto it about 3 years ago and is now flying Airbus A320s for them. They help you finance the whole training from zero to the right seat of an A320 or Boeing 737. (The basic scheme is that you get a loan which they help you finance, on successful completion they pay the loan back for you over the next few years – in other words you take all the risks of getting washed out – if you fail, you are left with an enormous loan – but if you succeed, and the screening is good – my friend said no one accepted onto his intake washed out – they pay the loan back on top of your salary and you have a job at the end of the training).
Same exists for Swiss International Airlines.
