I think you quoted directly from my post last week, so I feel I should reply to help you understand my misguided optimism.
I am a University student studying IT and 18months ago I got a very good IT job in the middle of the dot.com collapse, when everybody around me was saying the end of IT is nigh. I am about to graduate in 2003 with a degree in an industry which has seen a 45% job market loss and into an economy which has the FTSE at a six year low. Graduate jobs are down 75% in some organisations and salaries are down 30%. Maybe I should just jump off the cliff now and save everybody alot of trouble. Or you could do what I do, and have been doing for the past 4 years which is analyse the situation, develop a risk plan and come to your own conclusions.
I believe there is Optimism/Reality & Pessimism, I feel your post is a semi accurate reflection of the market, people are out of work and terrorists are doing their bit to make us feel uneasy. However you seem to ignore that BA will be recruiting 1500 pilots over the next 10 years, that Britannia have just started a sponsorship scheme and that Ryannair are ordering 30 new 737's and hiring 150 pilots per year over the next two years, just to mention a few.
Your statement:
'how can I start my training now and ensure that I can still be employable in 2006 -7 should it be necessary'
well thats why I am getting a degree, to make sure that if I cant get a job in 2004 than I can still get a job somewhere, pay for some hours and pay off the loan.
If as you say "The USA could kick off the next world war" than not getting a flying job for a few more years will be the least of my worries, but more like oh my God I am prime age for national service where is the next Nuke coming from?
The reason why people like me come to very good forums like Pprune is because we are doing our risk analysis, working out whether we should invest 55 grand and where we should invest it. Anybody looking at the Pilot industry will be aware of the unemployment numbers, the same way I walked into my new firm 14 months ago at the same time 40% of the firms IT employees were leaving. To find out which school is best is vital, I dont want to be going to schools whose graduates are unemplyoable, you need to make yourself as attractive to the airlines as possible, and thats exactly what I am doing.
Thanks for the reality check, but you have been overtinged with Pessimism, if I were to listen to everybody who sounded as negative as you I would not have got a job 18 months ago in that dot.com collapse and there would be no point in me staying in University because I might as well dig out my cammo's and practice strategic exercises.