Derry teen's pilot career uncertain

Published Friday, 20 July 2012

A Co Londonderry teenager's dream of becoming an airline pilot is in doubt, after he lost more than €90,000 when an aviation school in Waterford collapsed.

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Conor Deeny is one of six Northern Ireland pupils who has paid out thousands of Euros to the Pilot Training Centre of Ireland (PTC).

"I expected to pay that money and come out with the full licences to become a First Officer with any airline," he told UTV.

Conor moved to America in November for training and has already clocked up around 50 hours of flying time at the Florida Institute of Technology Aviation (FIT), which was subcontracted by the Irish institute to carry out much of its training.

But the Florida College has said PTC owes it million dollars in unpaid fees and training was suspended last month, which means the Claudy teen's visa is invalid and he had to move back home.

The 18-year-old has paid out €91,000, and it is not clear where that cash is, or if he has any hope of getting it back.

"As far as we're concerned we don't where our money is, and do we have access to it? We don't know yet," he explained.

But PTC has said it is now in financial difficulty because of 'non performance' at the Florida college.

The Irish Aviation Authority has suspended PTC's training licence, and on Wednesday an examiner was appointed.

However, FIT, which has now launched legal proceedings against the Irish college, is expected to object to the examinership.

Comments

2 Comments

A.C in Belfast wrote (299 days ago):

@ Ryan in Belfast ,with all due respect i think my £85k a year pilot salary is quite good. I trained to be a pilot 12 years ago , and whilst it did'nt cost €90,000 it did cost quite a fair bit , however my first years' salary alone repaid the loan that the bank generously gave me , although I doubt banks these days would "invest" in such an idea. It took years of training , studying , travel , and more importantly commitment , hence I feel really sorry for this young lad not being able to fulfil his dream.

Ryan in Belfast wrote (302 days ago):

I wanted to be a pilot once but after seeing the amount of training, studying, travel, money, etc involved in qualifying to be a pilot took, i quickly dumped that career route. And with all due respect, a Pilot does not earn much money when you compare your salary to the amount of training, money, time, travel, etc that you put into getting qualified to be a pilot in the first place. Its definitey a career where you have to have sheer passion for flying and for aircraft in general. Good luck to the guy in the article, i hope everything works out for him.