ATPL studies continue..

A little update on the current situation:

We've now studied ATPL theories for a couple of weeks and a few subjects are only few hours short of completion already. Now it's only one week left until our Christmas break, whichafter studying will continue on the 8th of January. I thought it would take a long time for me to get accustomed on theoretical studying again but actually it was quite easy, even after the long period of just flying. So far studying has been quite fun and I enjoy my time in the class. I'm relieved that I didn't get the same "will this never end" - kind of desperation I experienced at the start of CPL theories!

The everyday view from the classroom. But wait, who's there at the apron? :)

What's also happened in the past few days is that we went to an employment-related seminar organized by FPA (Finnish Pilot's Association). It was specifically aimed at pilots who are currently unemployed or in training. There were representees of four Finnish airlines and each told basic information on the airline and its employment prospectives in the near future. In my opinion, the seminar was a nice opportunity to scan the participants a bit and meet people, but its content was quite useless. There really was not much new information and somehow I feel that some airline representees had lost the point completely. Their presentation was merely and advertisement for the airline. Who needs to know how nice and comfortable material are some planes seats made of in the current employment and market situation?


Here's a short overview of the presentations from the unemployed pilots perspective:

- One of the companies will recruit in the year 2016 at the earliest, but maybe not even then, and applying will be possible for anyone who is trained as a pilot provided that he/she has passed the psychological tests approved by the company. Currently this means that only students of a certain flight school can apply. Even if their evaluation was ten years old. Nice!

- Another company needs a few new pilots every now and then, and everyone is free to apply, but their demand for pilots will not be growing anytime soon and there will not be an open recruitment anytime soon.

- The third company's need for new pilots will be based solely on the current regional jet pilots returning back to the company from which they were borrowed a few years ago. All pilots can apply, and about 30-40% will be suitable, but there isn't going to be too much of vacancies in the near future.

- The fourth one doesn't recruit openly, but pilots can apply via email and rumour has it that one pilot has once gotten a job!

So, things aren't looking that good at the moment, but really I didn't learn many new things from the seminar and such there's no need to get all depressed over this. Everything just is like I knew it is. Hopefully it will get better one day.