Chute:
I would agree its not the best time. I spoke to BALPA about this, and two very experienced captains said to stay out of the industry for the time being. Unfortunately for me it's sort of now (in the next year or so) or never. I couldn't find the money to do this with the financial pressures of house, car etc.
I would be tempted to say that those who graduated nearly three years ago ('08-'10) may have given up on the search. I have nothing to base this on, other than what I would probably do if I were in their situation - finding employment in other industries and climbing the ladder there perhaps. Just speculation.
I can agree with the figures you found on another thread - someone I knew said that out of his OAA class (or whatever it's called) of about 25, two had a job a year later.
WRT the figures from the CAE website, I understand that the boom in airline traffic is in the east. I'm not sure how they think it's going to affect the recruitment here; it might draw the experienced pilots to the east, leaving space for less experienced pilots to move up here or they might start recruiting flying school graduates (which they generally don't, with the exception of some MPL schemes).
Oxford and CTC are always going to be out to trick you. How could you run a company that turns over millions of pounds if your website read "don't bother. Try in five years time"? You would have to be very naïve to believe every word anyone says when trying to sell something.
Smartguy:
Surely nobody could be happy with a P2F scheme at Lion? Imagine having mortgaged your parents house for £100,000 and then having to
pay a company for the privilege of flying their passengers around? I might go as far as saying that it's worse than having no job.
Almost makes the Flexicrew contracts look like a good deal!
That being said, I have to agree with you on the flying school profit. If they didn't run at a profit, they couldn't do anything for long.
Pilot lad:
I know what you mean. I have a part time gardening business and I hate the fact that there's no guaranteed income.