The airline industry has fundamentally changed over the last few years and they are making the most of the people going blindly in to aviation training establishments... The practice of opening up ones wallet to these establishment with no comeback needs to stop!
The only way the industry will sort it's self out is if young guys and girls stop going in to the industry with blind hope and thinking that £60k later they will have a job, that is not the case and has never really been the case. If airlines are forced to restart sponsorship schemes then the industry and young pilots will be all the better for it (Skills/quality and financially).
I was extremely lucky in the start of my career and got a sponsorship but was meeting a lot of self sponsored pilots, of them only a handful have made it.... Sadly that wasn't always the best pilots, most were just lucky with their timing...
The other gamble is keeping a job, the industry is very fickle, companies come and go. This means that the £60k gamble doesn't make sense, people need to look at training to be a pilot with a business head on and not watching 'Catch me if you can'. When you look at the numbers they are stacked in the industries favour hugely!
If you are in the category that has to fly whatever then do things slow time and don't get yourself in to £60k of debt or ask family members for the money, there is a very real probability they will not get the money back from flying....
I am not wishing to sound overly negative, i believe i am being a realist... I had a privileged start in aviation but it has been a very bumpy road since, I've been made redundant once already and starring in to the face of another redundancy now less than a year on....
'At some point you have to call time on the dream and move on...'