Umm both Scroggs, I and others have advised people against paying their own type ratings on this forum. They are for the employer to pay for and bond you. There are many good reasons for this.
Fairness is only one.
There is no need to bandy about £60,000 as being the only way into aviation. If you choose to attend an Integrated course then that would be a reasonable ball park figure, sure.
But there is nothing stopping you going to Florida for a PPL and 100 odd hours for about £8,000. Come back do the ATPL exams for £1,200 distance learning. Do a CPL module and Instructor Rating for about £12,000. You have spent something like £22,000 and are perfectly employable at a small flying school being paid to fly aeroplanes.
Uni costs about £3,000 a year. So lets say you don't do Uni and you get yourself a £10,000 CDL from HSBC. You need to beg, borrow or steal about £9,000 to become an employable professional pilot.
Not a huge mountain to climb.
I managed to get a 400hrs out of the Air Training Corps/University Air Squadron system myself. There are numerous sponsorships run by the industry mostly under the auspices of GAPAN. They might help you along the way by paying for your IMC or something.
OK, so you've got no IR and no gold bars on your shoulder and you are going to be working in a knackered portacabin on the rough side of and airfield at the wrong end of the country. Sure you will live hand to mouth with barely enough to run a car and doss in a caravan. Sure you'll have to fly tired aircraft on boring repetitve sorties which are not really so safe in the long term.
Sure you'll have the kudos and prestige of an asylum seeker and you'll shop in Aldi not Waitrose. But.
But you are being paid to fly, you are learning all the time, you are logging hours and - and - you are meeting people and making contacts. Before you know it there'll be a sniff of a job on a Kingair that someone is rumoured to be leaving.... and you are away.
As a PPL FI i took home about £850 a month in 1999. In 2000 as a Commercial FI it was about £1,400. Not much but enough to get by. Looking back they were damn fun years work wise.
£60,000 bills and 757 first jobs need not be part of a very satisfying flying career you know.
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