AWACS, if I may, the reason you are a catalyst for hostile posts is that ultimately we can't see your problem. It's something you've invented for yourself.
Look - you're incredibly young and yet you already have bags of flying.
You say that your ambition has always been to be an airline pilot.
Then you tell us you've got just about enough money to self-finance your CPL/IR right now!!
If you really want to be a pilot, then do it!!
Back in the days when people could come up for a cockpit visit there was a particular type who'd appear every now and then...the "I wanted to be a pilot but never got the chance like you guys" type. The implication being that somehow we'd been handed this wonderful job on a plate. With a little digging of course you usually found they'd been in a better position to be a pilot initially than us sitting there doing the job - but the point is - they didn't do it! But still they'd bleat on "if only I'd got the chance......" Of course, there are those to whom this genuinely does apply, but I'm trying to make a point, so bear with me.
And that is? Well, to try and demonstrate to you why we're getting irritated. We don't like people saying they've always dreamed of being a pilot when it's obvious to us that's not quite true.
Let me put it another way. Those of us earning a living as pilots know how hard it is to get here on the whole (always one or two jammy stories).
There's a certain assumption in your question that all you have to do is want to be an airline pilot and it'll happen. That's how it comes across. And generally it's just not the way things work.
There may not be an airline job for you in twenty years. That's why, if you really, really want to be a pilot, then common sense dictates that you can't possibly wait. The chances are, if you wait, you won't be an airline pilot. That's how life is. You get knocked off course by factors out of your control.
Sort of like wanting to be a rock musician but deciding to be an accountant for twenty years first.
It just plain and simple makes no sense.
Certainly not to those of us who've been through the whole thing.
Last edited by Maximum; 9th May 2008 at 18:58.