I've also been following this and the upturn thread for quite a while now. What the guys who have been through the CTC course and are now employed with an airline are saying rings very true. My loan is unsecured and I'm very worried about how on earth I'm going to start paying it. I started at CTC at 19 a year after A-Levels and as such have no real fall-back. I was naive and went into the course without a real plan to pay back the loan if a flying job was not coming fairly quickly. When I started there were rumblings that things were not all rosy, the run on northern rock had just taken place etc. If my loan was on my parents house, I would be sh**ing bricks about what on earth was going to happen. I also admit that only when it became clear about the length of time it may take for a job to come along did I appreciate how big a 65k loan starts to look. In 16 months there its gathered 3k of interest.
I'm not due to finish for a few months, but there are at least 50 people in front of me for type ratings. The absolute earliest I think I'll be doing a type rating is this time next year. Thats if I'm lucky! Yes, I am on the pessimistic side, I do also think there are signs and rumblings that perhaps we are somewhere near the bottom of the trough. The FTSE has lost half its value, how much further can it really go?
I do believe the latest 2 cp's to head to NZ have been down on numbers, whether this is down to the finance or anything else I don't know.
To the people that have yet to start training and considering it, I would like to put my hat into the ring in support of getting a PPL to see if you do enjoy it. If CTC is your goal having a PPL will not hold you back at all. Do not get into debt you cannot pay back and DO NOT secure a loan on someone else's house. I truly do believe this to be sound advice. Take it as you will.
Finally I would like to say that however bad things seem at the moment, eventually they will become better. I don't believe we'll see the expansion we've seen in previous years, but I'm sure they said that during the 80's recession and the great depression in the 30's!