I have been teaching people to fly for nigh on a decade now, been here as Wannabes Moderator for a good few years and in that time paid for my own ATPL and taught quite a few people for their PPL, CPL and IR. The very cheapest I have seen someone do it all for under the present rules is £33,500. He was an excellent student who lived in his own tent largely and hitchhiked to training establishments...
£37,000 is about what it will cost you if you don't balls anything major up like a CPL Skilltest or an exam series and need B&B's and food better than that available from an Aldi baked bean tin.
As with everything aviation related you should give yourself some safety margin and a £40,000 budget does just that. If I could not hand on heart get at that much money from day one I would not bother even getting a Class One medical.
I have been the instructor of a nice young chap whose budget had exactly NO slack. He failed a few early lessons and was terrified becuase he now knew he could not pay for his IR test. The stress of this worsened his performance. In the end he gave up on the course having spent £31,000 and not even gaining a CPL.
He would have achieved just as much for a lot less effort had he just gone into the back garden, with £31,000 of his parents remortgaged money, and set fire to it all.
You need to be able to go all the way in the training game. 99% of the way is totally useless. Too many people end up running out of cash at various stages and having to leave training to get more cash. Then when they re-enter training the first few bills are incurred just getting them back up to speed... enter now a vicious circle of the poorest student buying the most training.
Remember also that 98% of the graduates from OATS, CABAIR, Jerez or anywhere else in the last 6 months have not acquired a flying job. Don't be in too much of a hurry to join them. The backlog is going to take quite some time to clear although it will do so in time. Remember also that despite what people say there NEVER has been a shortage of qualified pilots with no experience. Aviation is the original Can't Get A Job Without Experience, Can't Get Experience Without A Job career.
PPL's and ATPL exams are fine for now. Further expenditure I would wait on. If you are in work now put the money in the bank for a while longer. Would be my advice.
As an aside the BALPA type figures of over 1,000 jobs lost are frankly incredulous. Its probably more like 300 guys who had jobs or who had job offers that are actually out of work. The industry is showing good signs of recovery - the holiday charter market ISN'T going to collapse so really the drama is now over barring war in the Gulf or any more WTC style spectaculars. Give it a year to mop up the experienced guys and then 3 years to clear the training backlog and I am confident pilot hiring will be just as good if not better than pre-Sept 11th.
Starting full time training in about a year would therefore seem like a reasonable plan.
Good luck with it all - the job at the end is worth it and the day I decided to quite my desk job was the most productive day of my life even though it felt quite scary at the time.
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