I am 40 years old. I would like to be a pilot. If someone will (subject to my successfully passing the requisite exams, getting an ATPL and showing that I'm competent at handling the heavy metal) pay for my training from ab-initio (ok, I have 11 hours) - and I'm not even asking to be paid a salary during that time - and then agrees to pay me a realistic salary at the end of it, I will happily change careers. Even my wife would be happy for me to not earn anything for a couple of years, but she's not so happy about not having anything coming in, AND racking up more debt, AND having no guarantee about anything decent at the other end.
I'm reasonably bright (3 degrees (including a Masters) and MENSA membership), fit for my age (I run a 4h29m marathon and looking to improve that this year), good sight (tested last week) and clearly very interested in aviation (which is why I am on PPRuNe). From now, I have 25 years to ICAO retirement age.
The fact that airlines were sacking people and closing cadet schemes when I left school still dogs me.
My point is that the training regime is almost exclusively slanted to youngsters - you either get on the ladder straight out of school, or forget it. Hence the industry is cutting itself off from a vast number of potentially excellent pilot candidates. I would be happy to have a pay-back bond (ie. we'll pay you well, but leave within 5 years and you pay us back). Indeed, us oldies have generally sorted out sh!t into only one pile and are more likely to be very solid contributors for the full 20-25 years; we won't train up, get jaded at 45 and nick off to open a pub.
And before comparisons with other industries are trotted out - I did my law degrees part-time, they were not expensive and I could work in a related industry at the same time for realistic money, in Australia there is HECS-HELP for academic studies (but not for flying). I am not saying that competence should be dumbed-down - more that there are people other than spotty 17 year olds who'd like to fly, but like you 'managers', we may have houses and kids we need to pay for. A trainee lawyer (and I know several in late-30s/early-40s) goes back to zero, but it's for two years and the cash is still pretty good. And after the two years' training, the earning potential goes exponential and it's not unreasonable to look at a partnership within 10 years or so.
But there are lots of us and we could solve your crewing problems in a reasonably short time...
Last edited by Taildragger67; 13th Mar 2008 at 13:53.
Reason: Fixing typos