Just for clarifcation Scroggs and I have been advising POSTPONING the start of expensive training for 3 - 6 months.
Yes the industry will bounce back. But guys with 200hrs and cheeky grin will be the very last to benefit. From what I saw of the early 90's recession the nadir of 1991/2 meant that guys with very low hours started getting hired reguarly by about 1995. 1996 was getting better and 1997/98 were the years when there really was a lag between demand and supply and those holding a CPL/IR were getting jobs with what seemed ease. By late 1998 supply had responded to demand.
All this by way of anecdotal insight watching lots of friends at the time.
The problem becomes acute when you graduate with high debt levels and low hours. The debt needs servicing and so with a lack of jobs you end up being forced to return to what you did prior to training. Or stacking shelves.
At the same time your IR is expiring and a renewal these days will cost you - what - £1,700.
You can't afford to fly so your skills - honed intensively - begin to deteriorate. Recruiters know this and are unlikley to be impressed with a CV stating 200hrs from 9 months ago. Even if they are the sim assessment is going to be a nightmare when you haven't handled for months.
You consider ducking off into instructing but suddenly there are fewer students as career orientated PPL see the market and decide to wait. Compounded by your coursemates thinking likewise and your canny flying school owner picking and choosing and paying accordingly.
Am I the only person who remembers flying instructors working just for the hours and no pay in 1994?
After a year or two of this hopelessness you are forced to give up renewing the IR and let it lapse. Servicing the debt is all you can manage and now with lapsed ratings and even an expiring Frzn ATPL your chances of riding the upturn are minimal. At the same time you are getting on in your desk job and starting to earn money that is very often impossible to abandon as you get older and get responsibilites.
You are now lost to the industry and bitter and twisted towards aviation in general.
I've seen all this happen.
I think it is only sound airmanship to advise caution at this time. Caution manifesting itself in delaying any of the big financial investments. Delaying. Not abandoning.
I hope this pans out well I really do. But, coming home tonight listening to Radio 4 news the 2nd item on the agenda was the perilous state of the airline industry. Thats one hell of an indication of the gravity of the situation in itself.
Fingers crossed. The canny will position themselves perfectly for the upturn. Just how they achieve that is a mystery to me though.
Good luck,
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