Agree with your sentiments re the job market Wiggily - but not re the EU passport, it's not really a big issue for EU airlines as long as you are legally allowed to work. I flew for 3 different UK airlines and got interviews with several more during my time there, including a couple of mainland Europe ones, and I have only ever had UK / EU permanent residence stamped in my NZ passport. Plenty of my fellow country men have done the same and quite a few of them didn't even have permanent residence, just 4-year ancestry visas.
I looked at applying for the passport, I even got as far as walking into the Immigration office in Glasgow one sunny morning, and there was literally a several hours long queue stretching out the door and round the car park. What a bleak horrible place that office was too, in some council estate out the back of Ibrox, bullet proof glass in the interview booths, battered plastic chairs bolted to the floor, huge burly security guards everywhere, more like a prison cell than an office. I never got to the front of that queue before the office closed, and I never got around to going back there either. (As a side note, it was interesting to observe that persons of my ethnic background standing in that absolutely massive queue, appeared to be in a distinct minority of ... 1
)
( ... and before anyone has a go at me ... my British wife holds a NZ ATPL, and she is just as guilty of stealing jobs from downunder wannabes as I was of stealing yours
)