Obviously not for yourself
ruralaviator as your other post states:
"I'm currently a captain flying the 747-400F out of Israel on an FAA Validation and my contracts up in December. I have 28,000 hrs with 13000 hours on the 747."
I assume the query is for a son or daughter? Reading these forums for 23 years, it is obvious no two opinions are the same, so what suits one may not suit another. Where does the potential student want to end up and do they have the aptitude and commitment to get there?
- Cadetships cost 50% to 100% more than the traditional flying school route.
- An aviation degree does not appear to be a pre requisite to airline employment.
- An airline job or airline front row seat on graduation is not guaranteed.
- I still don't understand how an airline college graduate to airline FO gets the required command hours and experience to ultimately obtain an ATPL and airline command?
Conversely, what is this general aviation track you speak of? For a variety of reasons - including over regulation and a Regulator determined to wipe out GA - it appears extremely difficult to find a worthwhile GA pilot job that offers security and aircraft type advancement to gain the required hours and experience for an airline job. Additionally, with Qantas and Virgin establishing commercial "pilot academies" and talking 250 to 400 pilot "graduates" per year, I suspect the transition from GA to airlines will be increasingly difficult in the future.
With all these new airline colleges, there will obviously be a demand for instructors, but the airlines are very reluctant to employ a pilot whose predominant experience is 2,000 one hour circuits in a SE aircraft.
Has your son/daughter thought of an alternate career with a real future - medicine, engineering, IT?