A £30k loan would seem a little on the low side these days and even if you did manage to cover all of the flying training with that then there wouldn't be any left for living costs. Most of the flying schools like BCFT, PAT, Airways etc have lists on the web of the costs involved in doing the various licences and ratings. Add onto this the cost of the 14 ATPL's plus exam fees and the cost of the PPL in the UK at say £5-6k plus all of the stuff you will need to fill into your flight bag and the £30k seems light.
Having said that £30k is light, then the next issue is how you would get an unsecured loan of any significance in anycase. As I understand it HSBC who used to specifically provide loans to budding aviators have now ceased doing this. Other financial institutions might be willing to finance you however they are likely to want security on either your home or in the absence of that your parents. All in all its getting a lot harder to get finance these days.
You mentioned in your post that you were looking at your PPL taking a year. There are many ways to skin a cat and get into aviation. You could for instance do a PPL in the US over 3-4 weeks, then come back get some work, hour build in your spare time (buy a PFA category aircraft or get into a low cost group to keep the costs down - search in private flying for loads of information on this). At the same time study towards the ATPL exams via distance learning. Hopefully from the work you will save enough over the 12-18 months or so that it takes to get the PPL and ATPL's out of the way and then you can quit the job or take a sabbatical and go fulltime at the ME/CPL/IR.
Last edited by potkettleblack; 25th Apr 2006 at 19:51.