'When to start training' is an age-old question. The answer lies in your assessment of the recruiting market. If you start today, you will be available for employment sometime between May and September of 2008. If you delay 6 months, your availability goes back to the winter of 2008/9. How will the market look then?
That's not an easy question to answer, but my own suspicion is that the recruiting market is at a peak right now. That peak may go on for a while, but there is only one way off a peak and that's down! I don't mean to suggest that there will be a catastrophic failure of the pilot jobs market, but I believe there are a number of economic and political pressures building up which will constrain the growth of the industry, and may lead to what is euphemistically known as a 'period of consolidation'. The first part of the recruiting market that gets affected, and the part that gets affected most, is the market for brand-new pilots.
When will this happen? I can't be sure; a lot depends on the speed and intensity of the pressures I referred to. Inflation is becoming a reality again, in both the US and Europe. Interest rates will inevitably rise to contain that inflation, and rising interest rates always negatively affect industrial expansion. The inflationary pressures on domestic budgets reduce the capacity for dicretionary spending, and unnecessary holiday air travel is one of the first things to go when budgets get tightened. Better weather in UK this summer (and last) has already had a negative effect on forward bookings for next year, both for package and self-booked holidays. Political pressure to constrain and reduce emissions from air travel is building and may result in fiscal and other measures to limit the growth of air travel - or even to achieve a real reduction in flying in some limited areas. On the up side, Western economies are still doing well, and measures of consumer confidence are still quite strong - but measures of such things tend to lag the reality by quite some time.
My best guess is that we have a maximum of a couple more years at or near this peak of activity (on the recruiting front) before things take a bit of a downturn. Not a crash, but a decline in available jobs for wannabes. If that is the case, any delay now could be very costly.
That said, as it says on all investment products, the value could go up as well as down, and I'm not an economist - therefore my advice is not to be relied upon in this field! My experience, however, is that there's rarely a benefit in delaying starting training. Yes, after 9/11 and SARS there was, but those were exceptional circumstances.
Scroggs