Yep, been there and done it.
Borrowed 44k off HSBC back in '99. Completed modular route from nil to cpl/ir in 11mths 15 days. Then spent year and a half unemployed before ending up in the RHS of a medium jet.
Top tips from me.
1. Your loan starts to accrue interest the moment you draw the first bit down.
2. If you need 55k for the course, by the time you get to the end of the course you will have picked up around 2-3k of interest...so you now need to borrow 57-58k to fund the course and the interest on the loan.
3. Immediately you graduate get a job, any job (would you like fries with that?), preferably one you can walk away from at v.short notice and start making interest only payments. The bank will love you for it and your loan will not get any bigger. I know you can get a 6 month repayment holiday, but in 6 months you will owe them another 1800 quid. In my case as I was making interest payments the bank allowed me to continue in that vein for 18 months till I got my job. My mate who thought I was mad not taking advantage of the 6 month repayment holiday had to start repaying his loan at the 6 month point. The bank would not entertain an interest only option for him.
Once I got my job, I started throwing 800 quid a month at the loan. On top of that I bought a house with my wife and struggled through each month. After 2 years, sold house, used equity in house to pay off outstanding loan, world now a great place. New job, much bigger salary and no loan. So from completing flying training to repaying loan 3.5 years.
Glad I did it, and a lot of people out there thought I was mad to do it and take the risk. Now spend quite a lot of time telling them to sod off when they ask me to get them cheap flights
