i luv aviation
I was going to say what HWB said - read everything and do some research first.
You rightly seem capable of, and interested in getting a degree in something that pays well and will enable you to enter this industry financially. Good start. My backup career ended up being a little longer than I intended thanks to the industry dynamics, but I'm here in aviation now finally - it pays to have a plan.
However, this industry moves in cycles. IF there is a BA scheme, or another suitable scheme running when you graduate, with finance guaranteed by the airline, why would you not apply for it then? A recruiter would ask you - aged 30 - why you didn't bother if there were schemes open at that time.
You need to think about what you are committed to, as your competition will have been thinking about flying from the time they were wearing nappies...
Do you recommend I go through the British Airways cadet pilot programme? the reason why I’m asking is because I heard the salary is much lower than those who didn’t join the cadet scheme and those who joined right out of flight school without any experience are started off from like 32k.
Details on finance are at bafuturepilot.com - BA no longer recruit from schools outside of the new scheme, and the tax benefits actually make it better than the old scheme.
Can those straight out of flight training be on 767 with BA? Would they be able to do non-European routes?
767 flying is mid-haul with quite a bit of ETOPS operations - no cadets. Airbus flies as far as Central Asia and West Africa, but have a read of the detailed BA threads in the T&E sub-forum to see the work patterns.
Do you really care about having flags on your badge...?!! Speaking a language is useless if you don't have the team skills and life experience the airlines are looking for.