Originally Posted by
Daddy Fantastic
Well the European market has been rubbish for about 12 years now anyway since about 2008...
That's perhaps a bit overstated! IThe real game is when exactly to train if you're determined to do it.
I graduated uni in July 2008 straight into an frankly awful recession. I had planned to go and do flight training almost immediately, initially with the RAF but that dried up and then with CTC etc. It was obvious that it wasn't the time to do it so held off. I applied to CTC 2 years later, so mid summer 2010 and got offered a course October 2010 and managed to get them to delay me until spring 2011 guessing that things might be better when I completed due to a further 6 months, also had a decent job by then that I could easily return to. My course all had a mini-panic for the double dip recession worries in 2011, but fortunately that all blew over.
Finished it all late 2012 and waited 3 weeks before easyJet took most of my course with a start date 3 days after the phone call! I did my command in 2018 in less than 5 years from joining.
I know I was lucky but I can't see how you couldn't call that a boom and call it 'rubbish' instead. We were the first course to graduate and be in jobs in less than 3 months since before the recession. That boom took nearly 5 years to hit after the preceding recession. Bottom line, beware at the moment. Gut feeling is that aviation is about to have a big readjustment.