Just to provide a bit of balance to the doom and gloom merchants out there, and whilst not providing any inducement to blow £85k+ that people haven't got, I would say that CTC is still a reasonable proposition as a way to get into the airlines - without kicking off a debate on integrated vs modular or anything like that, I would say that for the moment it is considerably easier to get into a well paid jet job through CTC or Oxford than self improving at the moment - it does cost a lot more, but if you weigh the initial outlay against the improved earning potential (even on flexicrew - crummy for 8 months then pretty darned reasonable cash after that) compared to a few years of good experience/average pay doing other flying it probably all works out fairly even in the end.
The ctc holdpool still has people swimming about in it at present, but the queue is now much shorter than at it's peak. Word has it that the FO requirement at easyjet for 2012 is again going to be about 300, and though nowadays this is filled by a mix of parc and ctc, and the imminent recruitment of experienced FOs, that still offers opportunities for a lot of people, and movement to the majors (even captains at Ezy are moving across to the bottom of the BA seniority list) will most likely mean that this will continue into following years too. On top of this, I believe that less people are being squeezed through the fATPL sausage factory these days on account of the tougher access to cash, so the future availability (12-18 months from now) of cadets for placement is likely to be somewhat reduced.
Hopefully turboprop guys will soon start to get sucked up into jet jobs - this will reduce vacancies for cadets perhaps, but then again those Dash-8s aren't going to fly themselves either...
Having said all that, it's still a lot of money to scrape together, and the prospect of years of hefty loan repayments isn't all that appealing....and though there is an element of a money back guarantee at ctc and oxford, there is no certainty about making it on to the line as a shiny new FO until that final line check is signed off in your training file....