I have already spent in excess £100k so no going back now! I am sure I cannot be the only person going through such situation and if the airline sets a criteria, a lot of the time it is enough to declare such incidents for the purpose of vetting and often times you will be given opportunity to explain during the interview stages. I find it difficult that as a result of this, they would stop accepting application as this is not 'equal opportunities'. I hope they take previous character into references also. I know a person who was arrested for assault charges in USA and did a behavior course as part of the proceedings in USA and now is flying for a major airline in UK and he is young in his twenties! Let us see, I guess being optimistic is the best way to go about this.