I sypmathise with smartcol. Its a crappy situation - I have at least a dozen very good mates in the same position and I talk to them regularly. "I share your pain".
But the posting was poor. The FTO is contracted to train you to pass your exams and flight tests. You want career advice then you can have it. Simply pay for an additional post graduate service.
"even though I am willing to work for a small haulage company or similar"
Sounded just a touch to Regal. If - say - Emerald offered you a HS748 job I would expect you to leap at it and be very grateful.
My advice to you would be that which I have dispensed before here. Get a job in aviation on the ground that pays well. If a better paid job is available in your old job is available take it.
Use the money to pay off debt. Use the spare to keep currency on a sim. Use any spare time to generate contacts.
Don't become an instructor because jobs are like hens teeth unless you have an inside track to a job.
Basically all you have to do is wait for the market whilst retaining your skills and ratings and paying the rent.
Flypuppy. A touch unfair I think. I never ADVOCATED working for free. I DID explore the issue and illustrated that ideals are subservient to personal circumstance. I have a friend you can afford to fo it. It IS the best option for him. If I told him not to do it I would be loyal to my principals but dissloyal to my friend. A moral maze indeed.
I understand that the Wannabes forum has an important role to play in providing morale support to people at the bottom of the ladder. Its a role I have sought to cherish and expand over the years.
However. It is secondary to the role of supplying realistic advice from people who know what they are talking about.
What I wanted from PPRuNe in my early days were hard facts, justifiable opinions and reasoned arguments from people in the industry. Such things are so hard to find when you know little and nobody in the business.
I have good - childhood - friends plus ex-students for whom I care for that are out of work with fATPL's.
I know that they will make damn fine airline pilots someday. But the advice and opinion I give them is the same as I post here.
In September I called the hiring market pretty accurately as it has turned out so far. I rightly predicted the wages and unemployment levels for FI's in the UK in what is now the peak season. Several schools are paying no retainer and £5 an hour airborne for instructors who are on ad hoc contracts to avoid NMW. I also know personally of 3 FI's with no time who are unemployed and another with commercial instructing time at OATS who is having to work out of aviation as what is available will not pay his mortgage.
I don't particularly want to say I told you so. But I did. Unhappily.
The upturn is coming. Things will be pretty good three years from now I am confident.
Cheers
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