1. Get your fATPL
2. Get a job, earn some money
3. Meanwhile, keep flying
4. Pray the world becomes a more stable place in the next few months so that more people start spending money, boosting the economy, and pray that these people start doing a lot more flying.
5. The airlines will run out of type-rated pilots to hire.
6. Their requirements will be slashed.
7. You might get an interview IF you've kept current and in-touch with everything.
Sounds easy right? Well that's all it takes. £45k or thereabouts to fund your training in the UK. When you're done, be sensible, live cheaply, fly cheaply. It will take a while for numbers 4-7 to happen, but they will.
Yes, it probably does cost 90k to become an airline pilot, but most of that should be forked out by the airline. This subject has been done to death, but do not pay for a type rating unless you have a job set in stone at the end of it.
If you want you can go for the FI rating, but too many people have gone down that road recently to give you a good shot at employment. Once things really start to pick up, and if you don't get that interview, the FI-thing will still be an option.
All newly-qualified pilots are completely dependent on one thing: Airline passengers. Once they start buying tickets in numbers, jobs start to spring up right the way through the industry.
Let's hope it happens sooner rather than later..
abracadabra