You may remember me, I posted about the BTEC being withdrawn after my grandson (who lives with me) had completed all the work? If his leader had put him in for it promptly he would have had the BTEC.
Now something else has happened. Before Christmas, he applied for the PPL Scholarship and got through the first round and has been offered a place on 12 February for an interview and selection day. We received an email stating that the venue had been changed and my husband noticed that in the second paragraph of the email it said cadets now have to be 18 years of age or approaching 18! My grandson is not 17 until June so my question is how has he got through the first stage? Is he now too young to do the PPL? When did they change this? Maybe we’ve got it wrong but we are meant to be taking him this Sunday and nobody has even told us that he is too young!
I feel like the AirCadets are dangling these carrots but he’s not getting anywhere! To add to this, he’s desperate to go on the Easter camp but has been told that preference is given to new cadets. My husband and I are very fed up at not knowing what is going on and the goalposts keep being moved.
Does anyone know anything about this PPL as we haven’t had an response to an email we sent so we don’t know what’s going on and we are really fed up!
Long story short they very recently changed the scholarship minimum age from 16 to 18.
What they have said however is anyone who has been offered a scholarship and it’s not yet 18 will still be able to do their scholarship once they reach the age of 18.
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I take it this is the Air Cadet Pilot Scheme, 12 hours flying and ground schooling with the aim of going solo by the end of the time.
To avoid covering old ground you could read from here down ACPS Cancelled: another kick in the teeth - #190 by Giminion a lot of unsubstatiated guesses in the thread though and I would take those with a pinch of salt.
Long story short something happened, it was investigated and the outcome has been over 18 for ACPS going forward.
Edited to add
This may explain why your grandsons assessment hasn’t been cancelled, still no guarantee of him getting a place but good luck to him and well done for getting through the initial sift 
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It’s worth noting, just for your own understanding, that there’s no air cadet PPL scheme.
ACPS is ‘just’ 12 hours, getting a pilot to (hopefully) first solo.
Getting a PPL takes a lot more work than this, many more flying hours.
ACPS counts towards a PPL, but is not one.
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@chianti Might also be worth looking at the last post on this thread as well Flying Scholarships - #74 by YoungAirPilot
not long left to get an application in for this years PPL scheme though.
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Came here to say this, thanks @Canoe_crazy
Full PPL Scholarship applications close on the 14th.
Air League Scholarships (3-5-12 hr) recently opened up (but i’m having problems posting in the other topic)
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He’s got 1 lesson of flying time already in his log book. This is what he has called it so apologies if I have got it wrong.
Don’t worry about getting it slightly wrong - there’s a lot of initialisms and jargon involved so a few misused terms is common.
The only thing I can add from the above and the other threads is to say that these things are just as frustrating for us as CFAV, but at least here the door has been left open slightly and there are other options as per @YoungAirPilot 's regular updates.
Sorry to hear though that you’ve had no other contact until this email regarding the changes - that’s poor considering the timeline of when the decision was made (assuming it is ACPS) and now.
Yes and if they hadn’t changed the venue we wouldn’t have even known about the change in the age for the PPL! All is not lost though as he is still going to go through with it in the hope that he gets selected this year to do it next year. He’s also going for the gliding too so fingers crossed 
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you are confusing two things here.
there is no change in age to hold a ppl, thats set in law and is 17, no change, anyone with the aptitude and medical standards can get one by going along to a flying school and paying. as part of that course you can legally fly solo at 16
the ACPS scheme which is specific to air cadets and gives 12 hours training and which counts towards the PPL used to have a minimum age of 16, hq have now increased that minimum age to 18.
…and it’s not because of anything on the flying side - it’s just to do with the fact that the cadets on the scholarship are staying in a hotel, less well supervised than we need under-18s to be (supervised, but remotely)
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