Phil,
I have always wanted to become an airline pilot like many people here. I have spent the last year or so planning on how to embark upon my pilot training after I graduated from university. I looked into (in great detail) a certain flight school that offered an integrated course. It was around 80K (which I’m pretty sure all the others are around that mark too). I attended aptitude tests, and had 3 or 4 financial meetings.
I had no money at all to contribute to the course, so I would have had to take the full 80K loan from a bank that the school is associated with. The deal with the finance would of meant that I would be paying back around £1100 a month normal payments, or I think it was about £950 a month ‘reduced payments’ (If I remember correctly, you could have a period of time where you repaid a reduced amount).
The loan had to be secured on a UK property with enough equity in it to cover the training cost. The loan required credit checks on both you and your guarantor. The loan also had to begin being repaid 18 months after the commencement of training (in other words the next month after you graduate from the course, you start your repayments, pretty soon!). I decided against it in the end, not because I have an issue with integrated courses, but just because I simply couldn’t afford to do it.
That’s just my situation obviously. I met other guys on the assessment days that were able to make personal contributions ranging from 20K to 80K! Depending on how much you can contribute means that you can reduce the monthly repayments quite considerably to more manageable amounts.
All the best,