How many of you lot have actually done something about getting a job ... rather than "applying" for them and whinging about how long you've been unemployed for?
Myself and a good mate of mine, got ourselves from 200 up to around 700 hours, by sitting on a little booth that we rented every saturday, in the biggest saturday flea market / car boot sale thing in Auckland, with some "learn to fly" signwriting we paid for ourselves, a video player and some model airplanes, selling "trial lessons". Typically generated about 5 20-minute trial lessons a week, of which maybe one a month would turn into a genuine PPL student.
Getting paid wasn't even a consideration. However after about 18 months of this, we had created about 500 hours flying and an ongoing little PPL customer database for ourselves, and the school was sufficiently impressed with our tenaciousness to actually give us the occasional student themselves.
After another 3 years of instructing I finally got turned loose on the multi pistons and actually started on my SALARY instead of my hourly rate, what a day to remember that was! 18 months of that and I got my first turboprop and the rest is history. I'm now on the A330 in the sandpit and that mate I used to flog trial lessons with, is on the B744 with Cathay.
Just because the airline market is ****ed doesn't mean there isn't a million and one ways to keep on filling the logbook. And if you keep filling it and don't lose sight of your end goal then someone will surely reward you one day.
At the end of the day, being successful in this business is not about who's the best, and not even about who's the richest, it's about who wants it the most and refuses to give up in the face of all adversity.