The industry is ripe for a new approach to recruiting & assessing pilots
The way we screen and recruit pilot cadets in Europe is an issue that lately has been raising eyebrows amongst industry experts. Today, the bulk of training schools screen their future clients – the cadets – themselves. The industry has turned a blind eye to this conflict of interest for years as it suited almost everyone.
Regrettably, to many Approved Training Organisations (ATOs), a pilot candidate equals profit. Hence – to make a profit – the school needs a constant influx of cadets in training. Airlines, some of them happy to outsource their own training task, were also satisfied with a high volume of new trainee pilots. For a simple reason – an over-supply of pilots keeps new pilots cheap and labour costs down. The perception has changed when the results of this policy started to surface. Plenty of license holders who were initially able to secure the 100.000 € funding for the flight training with an ATO and to complete the training successfully were deemed ‘not fit for the job’ during the selection process at the airline company level.
