Hi Tinsparrow,
If this post doesn't make sense, I apologise as I'm a little tired as I've just flown back from Plymouth after taking a plane down for its 50 hour check. I'll try to make this post make sense though!
Back in the days of sponsorships from airlines there were two flavours:
1) Sponsorship from zero hours (no experience) to the right hand seat of an airliner.
2) Sponsorship from someone who had a PPL, Night Rating and around 150 hours with a Class 1 Medical.
However both of those sponsorship routes were highly sought after. There may only have been two or three airlines per year sponsoring would be pilots through the whole course and those airlines that did were only looking for a few (count them on your fingers!) candidates. What they got though was thousands and thousands of applications (literally thousands!) for one or two places. So you were very very lucky to get a sponsored course.
There was always paying for the course yourself... which still exists to this day.
Now the airlines have quite a few qualified pilots out there to choose from they are not sponsoring cadets anymore. Okay Britannia have just taken a couple on but that is the first in years.
So this leaves to paying for the course yourself.
Firstly to be employable by an airline you require a JAA CPL/IR MCC and ATPL Written Exams passed. This is commonly known as a "Frozen" ATPL.
There are two types of routes that lead to the same qualification: "Integrated" and "Modular".
Integrated
This route will see you go to a residential flight school with no experience and come out at the end with the required licence. It takes around a year to a year and a half to complete, depending on school.
This route will cost anywhere between 60,000 and 70,000 again depending on the school. This will be for "minimum" hours to get you through the course. Ie if you go over the amount of hours that is in the course (quite likely) then you'll be paying more money to them.
Modular
This is a route that suites the person who is working whilst paying for their training, have family committments etc.
You "build" your experience and licences / ratings until the point you obtain the coverted JAA CPL/IR MCC ATPL Written Exams Passed (ie, Frozen ATPL).
The structure is commonly such:
1) Private Pilots Licence (PPL)
2) Hour Building to 150 hours total time including 100 hours PIC
3) ATPL Written Subjects and Exams (14 of them)
4) Commercial Pilot Licence and Skills Test (CPL)
5) Instrument Rating and Skills Test (IR)
6) Multi Crew Cooperations (MCC)
The above could take someone doing the modular full time about a year or so, but normally takes around 2-3 years or maybe more as you can still work full time whilst diong the above courses.
The Modular route costs around £35,000 to £40,000.
Once you have required licence, that is where the fun begins and you'll be looking for an airline job with the rest of us!!!! Once you have a CPL you can do a Flying Instructors course so you can teach people the PPL. This will keep you in the Aviation world and build upon your experience at the same time.
Hope this helps.
Best wishes,
Charlie Zulu.