Hi guys and girls. As G-SXTY (hi mate!) said in his post, there used to be quite a few modulars who posted on here regularly and now that we've found jobs we just don't have as much time as we used to have!
For the record, I did the modular route starting in 2000 by doing my PPL and IMC. I then did the usual buzzing around for a year or two flying friends and family around building up my P1 time.
In 2002 I started my ATPLs (urrrghhhh) with Oxford through the distance learning method.
In 2003 the fun really started as I spent a month constructively hour-building in Florida (the Americans couldn't understand why we always refused to take a GPS-equipped a/c in favour of a steam-driven 152) and then immediately came back to the UK to do the CPL and IR back to back at Oxford.
After leaving Oxford, I did some dispatching t'up North for six months and then finally got the break in 2004 with BACX on the Dash 8
. Eleven months on I'm about to get my hands on a slippery Barbie jet, the ERJ145. Strangely enough, the majority of the FOs on the Dash are modular. Hurrah!
So, there you go. Four years from start to finish. It's a long old slog and you've got to be prepared to give up a lot of things in your quest but once you achieve that first job you'll be able to look back and smile at all the crap you went through.
Without also wanting to relight the Oxford vs .... fire, there was no difference in the training received by integrated or modular students. The instructors taught both.
The only difference I did find was how much support you got from Oxford afterwards once you were looking for a job. I got the impression the guys who had paid almost 30,000 UKP more were ever so slighly
favoured.
And finally, I chose Oxford because at the time it looked good on the CV. I'm not so sure that's the case anymore.
Good Luck!
MB