Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight,
Flying in Oz is comparatively cheap and if you get the right instructor equal to the best you'll get any where else in the world.
You'll be trained to be a pilot, not
just an airline pilot. If nothing else, doing some hour building in Oz will be invaluable to your JAR CPL. ie you actually have to navigate and use the radio.
Hour building on a non Oz licence is a pretty simple affair.
Working in Oz is the tricky part. Unlike Europe you cannot log command (ie P1 u/s) time from the RHS so you have to get all the experience before going to the bigger airlines (Qantas being the exception). So, most people either instruct or head out the the north west and do a few years bush flying. This is great fun and you really get to
fly.
After that, you head to a "city" and do some twin charter eventually moving to a small regional airline for the turbine time. Then you look good for Virgin Blue or Cathay (assuming no recruitment ban).
Unlike in the UK, your initial IR does NOT have to be done with someone from CASA. This means you don't have to waste time waiting for one to become available.
So how does this convert to a JAR licence? Well, I think only the PPL is directly convertable.
The instrument rating will be converted at a minimum of 15 hours. You'll have to do the 14 joyful ATPL exams. (Having done the Oz ones, they will stand you in good stead to get through them). Then the IR conversion and voile, one converted Licence. Oh, you'll get a discount on the medical at Gatwick
if you have a CPL from somewhere else.
On the CAA's website there is a lot of info about converting licences and CASA's website is extremely useful.
Have a look over in the Dununda forum. There is a very good debate about CASA FOI's and Industry delegates at the moment.
Ok my conversion.
I had a total of 4500 hours, with 1200 on them on turbines before I started.
1. Medical. GBP189
2. I did a full time ATPL theory course at ATA. GBP3600
add GBP92/week for accom and food.
3. GBP718 for the exams. I got first time passes in all of them.
4. Sept 11 happened and nuked all recruiting.
When I first thought about it, all I had to do was enough flying to get up to speed for the IR test. Then the CAA changed their mind and said that I'd have to do another full IR with one of their examiners. Since I had a full Aus ATPL with over 500 hours multi pilot all I had to do was a type rating with an initial IR flight test. ***I didn't have all of this info when I made enquiries*** This ended up costing me a lot of time. Note, TRE's cannot do initial IR's, only CAA guys can. Again, not told this when I made enquiries.
5. Type rating with Streamline with eventually an initial IR. This has taken something like 5-6 months. Cost ~ GBP9600 + CAA fees.
6. JAR ATPL lic GBP176
During this the CAA changed their mind and now say you only need to do a min of 15 hours to convert an ICAO IR to a JAR one. This would have saved me probably GBP5000!!! ($15,000) However, I now have a JAR ATPL whereas the other way would have got me a CPL with single pilot IR.
So, not including all my living expenses, buying a car, shifting stuff from Oz etc, it's cost about GBP18,000. ($50,000)
For an idea, $50,000 would be more than plenty to get an Aus CPL with CIR (command IR multi), ATPL subjects and probably an instructor rating.