Thank you for your fine contribution recounting your own experiences with this industry
cnnnn1.
You mirror the experiences of many many pilots who start in this industry. Yes, it is an enormously risky gamble, unfortunately luck, chance & uncertainty play a significant role in success or failure in this industry. For most people it really is a one-shot roll of the dice given the binary nature of qualifications. A CPL has a large net negative financial value unless working for a large RPT operator
as a pilot.
Here is something I wrote back in 2016 (completely different topic, yet also highly relevant) that reinforces your experiences
Originally Posted by CurtainTwitcher
Are you actually a pilot Orange Future? I note this question has previously been asked. Because, if not, it is very difficult to understand the risks, determination, no, sheer bloody-mindedness that is required to make it into a jet in this region. Every single pilot who you see walking through the terminal has demonstrated, at some point in their career a rare ruthless determination to succeed, usually prior to the point before there is any guarantees. They have totally committed every single one of their chips to a single hand. If you haven't been there, it is difficult to understand the pain & anguish of the process. Perhaps that is why airlines are desperate to attempt to broaden the base, people are no longer willing to take such risks, or they perceive the pay-off to be too low.
2016
post #155
However, this is a very old story, originally written by the father of modern economics, Adam Smith in
1776 in the
Wealth Of Nations.
Substitute any occupation that requires a great deal of expense or career risk for that of the law student in Smith's example. He was merely observing what had gone on for a very long time.
Originally Posted by Adam Smith
10.1.25 The probability that any particular person shall ever be qualified for
the employment to which he is educated, is very different in different occupations.
In the greater part of mechanic trades, success is almost certain; but very
uncertain in the liberal professions. Put your son apprentice to a shoemaker,
there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of shoes: But send him
to study the law, it is at least twenty to one if ever he makes such proficiency
as will enable him to live by the business. In a perfectly fair lottery, those
who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks.
In a profession where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to
gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty. The
counsellor at law who, perhaps, at near forty years of age, begins to
make something by his profession, ought to receive the retribution, not only
of his own so tedious and expensive education, but of that of more than
twenty others who are never likely to make any thing by it.
How extravagant soever the fees of counsellors at law may sometimes
appear, their real retribution is never equal to this.
Compute in any particular place, what is likely to be annually gained, and what is likely
to be annually spent, by all the different workmen in any common trade, such as that
of shoemakers or weavers, and you will find that the former sum will generally exceed
the latter. But make the same computation with regard to all the counsellors and students
of law, in all the different inns of court, and you will find that their annual gains bear but a
very small proportion to their annual expence, even though you rate the former as high,
and the latter as low, as can well be done. The lottery of the law, therefore, is very far
from being a perfectly fair lottery; and that, as well as many other liberal and honourable
professions, is, in point of pecuniary gain, evidently under-recompenced.
Reflect on Smith's words carefully:
"The counsellor at law who, perhaps, at near forty years of age, begins to make something by his profession, ought to receive the retribution, not only
of his own so tedious and expensive education, but of that of more than twenty others who are never likely to make any thing by it.
...
their real retribution is never equal to this"
In essence, Smith is saying that many professions undertake great financial risk to train, those that succeed should capture the cost of the training expenses and foregone income for all trainees for years of lowly toil. Overall, they never capture the full amount lost by those who fail. In other words, in modern financial terms, flying training, like the law in Smith's time, on average, likely to be a
negative sum game.