chancha let nothing stop you from acquiring your license.
I got my FAA commercial license in 1998 at age 28 and only started flying professionally just over a year now.
I have always wanted to be a pilot but just never got round to taking that giant leap and felt after a while that I had lost the bug !
one day after a long and bumpy flight into Lagos coming back from a trip for the firm I used to work for in the middle nineties seating in the jumpseat of a bac-111 it all came back, you know!, the bug and I dumped everything a few years later and here I am today.
Although I work in my country Nigeria, and the pay and terms of employment are not as appealing as you have in Europe, I just have no where else to go or turn to, this is what I have always wanted to do and I get by chancha, and I do it because its in the blood and I'd rather be here than seating in the jumpseat of aircrafts saying If only or I wish this and that, cos you know what, that was what my life started to look like before now, miles of endless roads that only left me with a broken dream.
You have a point when you say lots of unemployed fully qualified pilots are on here and what you really need is some kind of statistical data to point out the number of unemployed/employed personel in the UK and Europe and hopefully the breakdown of the number of people out of training school who get jobs when times are better, hhmm well if you want to go about it that way in this profession I most tell you from my own experience it will not help in convincing you. Although the cost in getting the training done is great and most time paid for at a high price these figures you talk about have never encouraged me even when I was training so I left that aside alone and till today never look at them even after sept. 11.
I believe most pilots are born to fly yes the financial aspects of it is important, dont get me wrong, man most eat, but what kind of a bite are you looking for. What I am trying to say is never let those blown up stories of the flamboyant life style pilots live and how well we all get paid, its not always the case and that is how it is, we get by and some of us get lucky and get by damned well too £££
but work their ass out to remain in that position.
Ask yourself what you would like to be doing for the next 26yrs my friend and if you want to pilot as my mother still tells her friends " my son pilots" well then get going and you will have a carrier and you will get by and who knows maybe break ranks and join the jetset pilots. Remember, no one wants to leave a trail of broken dreams so join us at
The Blue Cafe up in the clouds.
From what I can see in your post, aviation is in your blood.
Goodluck with what comes your way
Zazoo
PS: You might want to take a look at this weeks flyer on pprune, Capt. Danny's story might be worth reading !