Bunglerat - what was your career progression path? I am in a similar situation - 30, kids, mortgage, can't really leave the city due to special needs for the kids but I want to break into aviation. At the moment I am taking my time and putting available funds into working on a PPL and eventually a CPL. It is going to take years, I accept that, there is just no other way short of a lotto win.
But, from all the reading on here and the digging around I have done, all the entry level work is up north. There just seems to be that gap between the 200 hours for the CPL, and the 500 or more most jobs seem to ask for, and up north seems to be the only way to plug that. Just curious as to what path you took that got you to the airlines without the northern rite of passage.