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This company offer a 'fast-track' modular course which, in their words:

Our speciality is the training of pilots with no flying experience to become Fastrack airline ready pilots by means of continuous Modular training. If this course is commenced on a full time basis it is possible to complete in under 12 months however the majority of students will take between 12 – 18 months to graduate. This will provide the cadet with a ‘frozen’ European Aviation and Safety Agency (EASA) Airline Transport Pilot Licence (fATPL). The Licence will remain ‘frozen’ until 1,500hrs of Total time and 500hrs of Multi Crew time have been achieved.

They also add:

100% of Aeros Fastrack graduates have been placed with major airlines across Europe over the past two years.

All for the relatively low cost of around 62,000 Euros.

My question is about the last part of that, regarding hours. How much time (months/years) and how much money would it cost to achieve the 1,500 total hours with 500 multi crew hours after completion of the fast-track?

Several aviation forums suggest this is a much better deal than the airline provided schemes, where they normally charge around double this in order to actual turn a profit on training.

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  • $\begingroup$ There are 8760 hours in a year, if you flew 6 hours per day it would take roughly 250 days to get 1500 hours. I know quite a few people who did this by taking an instructor job. I'm curious about the multi-crew though, in the US, it is "multi-engine", not multi-crew. $\endgroup$
    – Ron Beyer
    Oct 1, 2018 at 13:57
  • $\begingroup$ @RonBeyer I guess I wanted to know how many hours you get from the course, so as to calculate remaining hours and then get an idea of (realistically) how long it would take you to log said hours. $\endgroup$
    – Cloud
    Oct 1, 2018 at 14:00
  • $\begingroup$ I'm fairly certain that the course you show only takes you up through the CPL and then the ATP practical (ground course), which would be a minimum of 200 hours, which jives with the information provided (a "target" of 185 hours and then 15 hours of CPL instruction) in the link you provide. So at the end of this course you still have to make up 1300 hours. $\endgroup$
    – Ron Beyer
    Oct 1, 2018 at 14:07

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You get to the 1500 hours by working in a flying job once you have your comm/group 1 IFR, which is where the 62k gets you. Even if you wanted to spend a decade renting airplanes to get the time in, for the 500 multi-crew part you have no choice but to find a flying job since there is no other way to get those hours unless you are rich enough to afford your own multi-crew airplane.

The course gets you to a minimum employable level of flying hours (maybe 250-300 or so - hard to see 60k getting your any farther than that) and with the EASA ATPLs written, which allows you to copilot multi-crew aircraft as a greenhorn 300 hr copilot (normally you get a "multi-crew" license, which is a trimmed down version of the ATPL for low time pilots to serve on 2 pilot a/c) without having to write the exams again when you get the time in (that's the "frozen" part). Most jurisdictions will "freeze" your exam validity for 3 years.

The "fast track" bit just means they cram the whole thing into one year. That would be a pretty intense course, jamming 2-300 hours into 12 months with the ATPL ground school thrown in as well.

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  • $\begingroup$ What if you can't get the flying job? $\endgroup$
    – Cloud
    Oct 2, 2018 at 10:41
  • $\begingroup$ Then you're done. You instruct, hire on as a copilot with a 3rd tier commuter or charter company flying old junk, fly in the bush. Getting the first job is the hard part, although WAY easier today than 10 or 20 years ago (a commuter company operating piston twins or Beech 1900s will take 300 hour wonders now, when it used to be 1000 hours minimum). After that, it's just don't screw up and make sure you don't make enemies in the trade. $\endgroup$
    – John K
    Oct 2, 2018 at 12:24

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