Advertising is much more targeted now with personal devices and social media. They (insert school name here) show all these great "influencer" style photos with "This could be you in just 2 years!" and BAM they got the hook out. Throw in predatory lending and it's a bad combination for the ill-advised, naïve, or easily manipulated.

 

Strange with how folks like to say young people are great with tech, these kids don’t know how to use the Google, or ask AI a simple question.

Or maybe even worse, they don’t THINK to research before selling themselves into major lifestyle changing debt.

Is this a failure (or feature?) of the goverment school system?

Maybe just progressive breeding of critical thought and IQ out of mainstreet?

10min on any search engine and you’ll see all the horror stories about these “cadets” scams the airlines partner with, and the million other better ways to end up 121 for a fraction of the cost.

 

Imma call BS on this one. There isn’t pilot mill a school out there that doesn’t promise similar things. I bet some of the “concerns” are that “my instructor never taught me that” meanwhile the instructor certainly did teach them that. We’ve all been there.

Maybe too many student to instructors and not enough planes could very well be an issue, but this exists at almost every school lol

 

Assuming you bother to ask the question, vice just roll with whatever the algorithm feeds you.

Plus confirmation bias is pretty powerful.

I doubt UAL *intended* to screw these people, I'd guess they subcontracted without due dilegence and wound up with the "usual suspects".

 

But...but...but...

I was promised a bridge, and I want one right now...

and it better be from Brooklyn...

 

I guess never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence but this was a flagship thing. This was billed as the primary way they were going to open up the profession to all these different groups who just needed a path. They didn't supervise it? They didn't have managers from Chicago on site to protect their interests?

Not everyone is going to make it through training but everyone who has been anywhere near a training department knows the keys to success. Maintain instructor continuity (not too many cooks in the kitchen), make sure the equipment is maintained to prevent excessive downtime, keep the cadence of training as stable as possible to minimize and push through learning plateaus.

Small schools can struggle with that formula because of money. United doesn't have that excuse. If American can pay regional check airmen WB captain salaries, United could have paid flight instructors enough to get the best and make them stay long enough to train the next group. I don't even think that would cost $50/hr based on my surveillance of the industry.

How could they have botched this up so bad? Now it's a PR disaster.

 

If they just googled “UAL cadet school reviews”

I mean Ill google restaurant reviews and that’s just dinner lol

I called one of these schools once, no dog in the fight I was just genuinely curious, I was informed the airline is the one who services the loan, that was off putting and gives motive.

Many airlines float themselves in hard times via finance type income, their credit cards and such, when I head the school was holding the paper on these high cost low quality programs I was like “ohhh this reminds me of the credit cards the FAs are always trying to pitch at the end of the flight”

Ether way this was a dirty way to do aspiring pilots, I wish the litigants the best in their case, as the airline is also publicly traded I wonder if this will blip on any of the securities litigation firms radars.

I agree

…Except when the party claiming incompetence profited off it


Ain’t a PR disaster, outside of the forum and others who are active in the flight training world no one even knows about this, and many of the pilots who are have been ATPs pay less than zero attention to anything aviation related outside of the CBA


What’s wrong with that?

I pay for a bill of goods and I should expect to receive them.

I am VERY sick of the predatory lending BS we allow to fly in this nation.

You have more recourse and options if a tiny car lot finances a grown man a 15k lemon, but suck it up buttercup when a “school” sells someone JUST out of highschool, knowing they have near zero life experience, on “their future” to the tune of 6 figures

We need lemon laws on degrees, we also should be able to bankrupt out of “education” loans.

If a school pressures someone who isn’t even old enough to buy a beer, to go buy/finance $100,000.00 worth of degree or program; knowing damn well they ain’t going to make nearly enough to pay that back, they deserve to eat the loan





And who in their right mind would want anything near NYC

 

Caveat emptor.

 

Nah

F’ scammers

especially ones who take advantage of very young and very old people

 

Your idea about bankruptcy is correct. Changing the bankruptcy law to exclude student loans as well as moving almost all student lending to the government is a huge factor in the absurd costs of any education program from colleges to flight training. You need a free market where only loans with a reasonable chance of being repaid get written. Let the lenders do the due diligence, they have the resources.

Saddling 20 year olds with crippling debt absolutely does not help the average Joe kid get ahead and climb the economic ladder. Claims that it does are all made by those profiting from the broken system. Scammers is exactly what they are.