Originally Posted by scroggs
Probably in the order of 10 - 20% of those that complete an fATPL will never fly an aeroplane as a professional pilot.
This 10 - 20 % must be pretty similar to degree courses. I know a lot of people finish a degree and never actually get a job doing what they trained to do. From what I can find out from my uni - around 20% of people from my course are still looking for a job relating to their degree subject. I know it is much cheaper to do a degree than it is to train as a pilot (let alone doing both) but I don't think getting a job as a professional pilot is necessarily less likely to happen than getting a graduate job in any other industry. Before I got my current job, I filled in exactly 56 application forms for graduate schemes. I got about 20 phone interviews, then 3 face to face interviews. It was just a point of applying for everything I could find and practising aptitude tests - from my limited knowledge, this is similar to finding an airline job.