Deskpilot, from your last post:
not enjoying my career as I have the past 10 years
it seems as though you do have another skill to fall back on should the worst happen. Personally, I think this is vital and there are still too many people out there selling their soul at HSBC for a career in the clouds.
There's been much written about the current economic climate and I'm certainly the first to admit that I'm no expert; but simply from my own experience (currently redundant, albeit voluntarily) I know there's no assurance in anything.
Flying
is seen as a romantic career and that's a view that's not going away soon. The harsh reality is that there are real, commercial, money-making corporations out there who's first line of cutbacks is the workforce. It's encouraging to see BA has specifically not cut back from the flight crew, but one can one speculate at how much longer they can justify 56000 worldwide employees in these hard times. (Incidentally, what's the percentage of those that are flight crew... I've heard about 3000, so that's about 5%..?)
Having said all that, I'm about to head off to Jerez to start an ab-initio course with BAe. I've had 8 years in the IT industry, my own house for 6 years (no prizes for guessing where the funding's coming from!) and a very supportive family. Who knows what state the airline industry will be in at the end of '02, but I'd like to think I'm well prepared for the worst... obviously I'm hoping it won't come to that and I'm gonna work damn hard to make sure it doesn't, but I'm under no illusions of "falling into" a right-hand seat in 15 months' time.
Just my 2¢ worth...