Hello, first post and all so thought I may as well make it here being I’m of an assumed above average age for starting ATPL.
Background is quite an odd one and to be quite honest I’m not sure what, if any difference it would make to a potential recruiter, positive or negative. I always wanted to fly military from a young age, however, poor academic grades meant I had to settle with ground engineer working on harrier and typhoon while working toward the required qualifications to apply to OASC. 6 years in and a good run at selection later saw me entering EFT at Church Fenton giving me a whopping 20 hours before the SDSR struck and was made redundant. At the time I decided to go down the integrated route with Cabair managing to pass 6 of the ATPL exams before that went bust. At this point, I’d simply had enough and couldn’t financially carry on having already sunk my savings into Cabair, so decided on a knee jerk career change.
Fast forward a tough 6 years of university and I’m now a qualified dentist, though to be honest, I don’t really enjoy my work. I’ve often toyed with the ideal of going back to flying and many of my RAF friends still fly, but I’m not certain how realistic it is at 39 to be undertaking an ATPL and have a decent prospect of commercial flying after. Though money shouldn’t play a part, I have to be realistic in that I can’t leave the job I do now to go spend the next 25 years flying regionals - I will have to earn something reasonable even if the average FO salary is still way less than I get now and is a balance I’d be quite happy with.
How realistic at this late stage in the game with the current airline climate to be ending up RH seat for Jet2/TUI/Easy etc in my position probably being 42 by the time I have my fATPL?
I’ve started going back over all the BGS PPL course learning materials and luckily it’s all coming back very fast, so that’s one less worry than starting from fresh.
Thanks