Originally Posted by
Crescentpirate
My friend is 20 and is in Cabair, finished his exams and all he has to do now is pass his flying exams and he has his commercial license. He Is, going to be a pilot a lot quicker than me
and after watching that video its made me relaise just how badly i want that job
Any pilots got any opinions on undertaking integrated?
I admire your desire to get into the aviation industry Crescentpirate I really do. I was the same when I was your age, dead keen to be an airline pilot and would have done anything (within reason!!) to achieve my aim. Fortunately for me in those days you could go on an AFI course with 150hrs and that's what I did. It was a long slog but I eventually made it to where I am now............................facing possible redundancy.
I hope you read the aviation press and keep up to date with happenings within the industry because along with the demise of XL, Zoom and SilverJet, airlines are looking at cutting back on their pilot workforce, sometimes quite dramatically. BA, Virgin and now bmi have announced pilot job losses..................79 captains and 50 F/O's at bmi mainline and 27 Captains and 22 F/O's at regional. bmiBaby has also lost somewhere in the order of 25% of its pilot workforce. That's a lot of very experienced and current guys being released into a tiny marketplace.
So yes your friend will be a pilot with a professional licence before you and I really, really do understand how badly you want to do this job, but the harsh reality is that your friend will be unable to secure a job (unless exceptionally lucky) especially when you think of all the young F/O's that bmi will release on the market with 500-2000hrs on the A320 and all the 737 rated guys from Baby.
It took me the best part of 11 years from gaining my PPL to securing my first RHS on a jet with a lot of sh1tty flying jobs in between (including going abroad for a number of years). All I can say is be realistic (easy to say but not to do within aviation) and read all you can here on Pprune and in the aviation/business press and don't make any rash decisions which you WILL regret