JB,
There is hope!
I was talking to one of the instructors out there in Jan this year. One of his students had just got his ATPL with 1000 Hrs (FAA) and got a job with an airline (I forget which one), which had a retirement age of 60 - this guy was 55 !!! So dont give up.
The airlines appear to be recruiting quite strongly at the moments, with job prospects in the airline & cargo areas. Executive stuff is hard to get into over there.
One thing I heard was interesting is that one of the airlines out of Vegas ( I can finf out if anyone is interested! ), is offering 250Hrs in the right hand seat of a twin turbo-prop for about $5000. The plane is essentially one man operation but this gives you the hours on your CV.
Hope this cheers you up a bit!
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Live fast..die young...leave a good looking corpse!