It is a depressing truth we face, I have been done that route several times in other careers in the past.
Having been self employed all my life since I was 20, I learned to live with this pressure early. It has hard not knowing what will happen tomorrow, you constantly see the bar get changed, for what you need to get in or not. If you haven't been used to pressures like this, it can really get to you. You are kind of lucky, but still I feel for you and all the others that are less fortunate.
We can all have regrets in our lives, I have a few, if I had followed my dream, instead of using my senses in 1991, today I might have been captain with a major airline like my friend who dared the step, and had the money to loose that time.
With this uncertainty in life we can not ever know what is the right step, right time, the right move to do, to make sure all goes good.
Personally I have one hope, one person, who has told me he will try to get me a job, it is 50 50, and the good thing I will know very soon. I will get a yes or no, I am prepared for the no, as this is the most likely outcome, still I will be very disappointed, even knowing the most likely outcome, but as long as there is life, we cling on to a positive outcome.
I might be one of the lucky ones in many ways, but I have many negative factors with me too. Debt free, good, a back up business, good, my age, very negative, no time to waste.
It seems like it is a game of russian roullette we are playing, companies coming toying and playing with our feelings, our emotions, our dreams.
Telling us to pay our TR, pay few hours for line training, maybe if we like you we will give you a job!
For them our money, our £30.000 is pocket money, for us it is one or more years of hard work.
I have heard of companies offering assessments, they will know how many pilots they will need to employ, so if they do plan to give 1 or 2 pilots a chance, they should not make 12 pilots go trough their TR and line training which they make the pilots pay themselves.
Would they be so squander this money on training extra pilots in the old days, when they would pay for the line training themselves?
Would they pay your training and just dispense you like trash! Expensive trash!
Having been self employed all my life, had people work for me, I would never treat my staff with such contempt and ignorance!
The other day I met a pilot, who had a great job on a private jet 737, we talked about getting into jobs etc., and got on to the topic of paying for line training and your own TR. And he told me he would not like to fly with a pilot who had done this, as it degraded every-bodies conditions, terms etc. Still talking to me he could understand, that due to my age I would want to find a way into the business.
But I don't want to have to go that route, but it easy for the experienced pilots in their jobs to tell us newbies what we should do, what I have noticed is that most pilots fully established, does not really know what it takes to get a job today.
There are a few that care, but most of them probably don't have time, they don't have interest of this anymore, which is natural.
There are even plenty of pilots that take advantage of newbies, with so called sim training, etc. Also many pilots are used to recruit us to these TR/line training programs, so my question for this why do these well paid pilots, make money on the naivety of new pilots, and then they complain of their degraded terms and conditions!
Should the profession take a better look at itself, and clean up from within. I have just finished my IR, and I am already fed up with it, I believe many are involved in backhanders to help each other, FTO;s , TR companies etc. It stinks, I am sorry, it is the truth as I can see it.