Airbus captain here. Haven't read the whole thread, looks like most of the issues have been covered very well, here's my 0.02 on a couple of other things
He has time on his side. 18 year old pilots sitting in Airbuses are beloved by flying school marketing departments for brochure making purposes but they aren't actually all that common in the real world. Early / mid 20s yes, 18 no. I personally recommend a year or two between finishing high school and making such a big career decision. If he works his ass off for those couple of years, saves some money and at the end of that time he's still determined to commit that money to flight training then I think you'll be able to approach the decision with a lot more confidence.
Don't believe ANYTHING that a flying school marketing department tells you in terms of potential earnings and time to be earning them. Yes you can still earn the big bucks when you're in the captain's seat of a big jet. For many of us it took decades to get to that seat. I personally started full time training at the age of 22 and it took 20 years to pay off my 100K student loans. I spent many years working as a flight instructor / air ambulance pilot / copilot on an old cargo turboprop aircraft etc, before I got my first passenger jet first officer job. That's the reality for just about everyone who doesn't get lucky with sponsored courses.
I finally got my big jet captain position in my early 40s, did it for 3 years and then covid struck, I've spent the last 2 years working as a casual labourer and sliding back into overdraft, it's gonna take me ANOTHER year or two to get back to where I was financially before covid. The medical checks get harder as you get older, when I finally get called back to work, I'll have pretty much one decade to finally make some decent money, assuming no more industry crisis or medical issues. It's compulsory retirement at 60 in the Asian country where I work now, so that'll be the end of that
I'd almost certainly be better off financially if I had sunk that money into a house deposit 20 years ago, grabbed a couple of rentals along the way and done a normal career that doesn't cost 6 figure sums to get into. Can't look back with regret because flying is cool, but there's a MASSIVE cost of lost opportunity that isn't talked about enough.
My advice, do the class 1 medical as everyone says, read the fine print on the "sponsored" courses and if you find a good one by all means apply, discuss the individual courses with the boys and girls on here as you apply for them, there's a lot of fish hooks in a lot of them nowadays. If you don't get lucky with that, then get your pilot licence the old school "modular" way, save a heap of cash, and work your way up from the bottom.
Ultimately flying isn't really about who's the best or the most naturally talented, it's about being in the right place right time in the good times, and being a stubborn SOB clinging on with the tip of your fingernails and refusing to give up on the dream in the bad times.
Final thought, Brexit has severely limited the options for UK citizens / UK licence holders, if he's able to work in Europe then I'd probably advise him to go that route as opposed to a UK one, it's a much bigger market overall and Brits are now unfortunately locked out of it
Cheers, LST
