Hi guys, as the title suggests I'm thinking of moving from Australia to the UK to finish my training. My wife and I have wanted to move there for some time, and she wants a career change so we thought we might do it now while the kids are still young. I'm a British citizen, and I believe my family can get permanent residency.
I have my PPL and am doing NVFR at the moment, and aim to fly for an airline eventually.
I was hoping someone could help me out with a few questions:
What is the next step once you have a CPL/IR in the UK?
Here in Australia one would typically either instruct, or go bush for a few years to build experience and hours. Seeing England is so small (comparatively), how big is the GA scene there? Do you do charter sort of work and build some hours there like you do here?
I could be wrong, but I don't imagine there would be the same sort of demand for GA there due to the physical size of the country...
If I'm correct, that would suggest a large demand for relatively few jobs. How does this work, do the airlines have lower requirements as a result?
I just want to make sure that if we do move it will be feasible to do so; otherwise we might put it off for five years or so.
That is the major one, once that is sorted I was hoping someone could point me in the direction of a good school. We don't necessarily want to live in London although I do have family there. I was thinking of Oxford as I have a friend there and it's not too far from London; however having said that we would be prepared to move elsewhere if it worked out better.
We would be looking for a good school where I can do my instrument rating and ATPLs (and the rest of my CPL if we moved soon), in a town where my wife could work and the kids could go to school. I must admit I'm fairly clueless about England outside of London
Any advice would be much appreciated.
They are really the main two things: Is it feasible in regards to training and career vs staying in Australia, and if we do it where do we move to.
The other things (visas, ICAO -> JAA conversion etc) google can help me with, but if anyone has any thoughts on the above I'd be much obliged.
Cheers, Dan.