Just thought I would add in my experience, after a year and a half of part time instructing no real results. Considered doing the ATR or A320 rating, as the pay cut to full time instructing from my current contract job would have been quite severe.
However a week before doing the type rating pre course assessments, I was offered a full time instructors job paying a decent retainer.
So I took the full time instructors job, after nine months of full time instructing I found that all at the same time I was invited to three different assessment days / interviews; all three were offering training bonds. Didn't get the job from the first interview. But I turned down the third interview as I was offered a turboprop job from the second interview; even though the third interview may have resulted in a jet job. Thought it was best to accept the first offer rather than wait around.
If you look on this forum you will see several guys asking where can they buy line training for a 757 or a A320. Remember the idea of a commercial licence is to be paid to fly not pay to fly.
Remember if you can afford to do a type rating then you can probably afford to use the "surplus" funds to support living on an instructors wage for 6 to 9 months. So my advice is the instructors rating is the way forward. I would also like to point out that I spoke to a 757 sim instructor a few months back. The company he worked for had recently taken on some low houred cadidates whom had self funded the 757 rating. He said it saved the company little money because he still had to retrain them in the companies SOPs, further to this the standard of the initial training meant they still ended up repeating half of a type rating course.
Last edited by portsharbourflyer; 12th Nov 2007 at 13:06.