Gah. Well, I have to congratulate you for managing to complete the whole lot in under £30k, that's genuinely commendable. However, if you or anyone else can be bothered to trawl through the previous 90340987409809809834 pages of Int Vs Mod then it would seem that a more realistic cost for mod is in excess of £40k. Indeed I found several posts the other day from WWW [here:
http://www.pprune.org/forums/archive...hp/t-7271.html] stating that back in 2002 he figured it would cost at least £37000. Further, if you believe the figures included in that post, we can see that Cabairs integrated offering has gone up by 27% - if we assume the same factor rise in cost of modular, then it's likely to cost (based on WWW figures) more like £47k these days.
If we stop the obsession with comparing the most expensive (or one of - depending on how the exchange rate makes FTEs offering look) integrated with the cheapest mod, then you can do integrated at Cabair for a touch under £60k. So, comparing that with the seemingly more normal £40-£45k mod costs, £15k or more saving is definitely not to be sniffed at, but it is a different picture than the commonly posted view that it's hugely (C.£40k) cheaper.
Indeed, when you say (and not trying to start an argument) that you completed the mod route for >£30k...almost everyone I've ever seen that claims this conveniently forgets to include the cost of their PPL or hour building in that. So one does have to ask, does that actually include the full cost of 0-fATPL?
Propheads comments about having paid more than £70k more for the privilege of working for Ryanair, again shows why this is so polarised....the answer is that the int chap or chapess HASN'T paid £70k more....again the fact that the mod guy has to pay the SSTR also has been missed off. Add that to the nominal but likely £47k and suddenly you've got our Cabair integrated guy who's paid £85k to work there, versus your mod student who's paid £72k to work there....suddenly it's not so very different...
One final thing to add into the mix....MikeCRs post indicates that he is qualified and working....which in turn implies that he DIDN'T try and get a job in the employers market to which my earlier post relates.
Overall, I'm not trying to defend integrated, or slate modular. It's just the whole thing is SO deeply polarised that it's impossible to get unbiased views. Modular is a great route that offers many benefits, but then...so is integrated.