I notice that you think that it is ok to pay for your basic licences.
I think there's a pretty clear distinction between paying for professional education/ certifications and paying for work experience.
However, when your profession is in great demand (i.e. not enough people interested in it as a career) organizations in need of qualified employees often provide education incentives or pay for your education outright while bonding you for a long term contract. This is just a swing of the pendulum in the other direction.
Still, I think being an airline pilot isn't such a great job that it's worth getting yourself so deeply in debt for. I think with that kind of money on hand anyone is probably better off on starting a lucrative business venture and flying for recreation. Now that I'm an airline pilot I miss flying the small planes.
I think the lure of scheduled airline flying in a transport jet is more of a fantasy than a reality. When you are doing it you wonder...yeah, it's a good job, better than most, but it can get pretty damn tedious after a while. It's sort of like having "two chicks at the same time"
Office Space -1999, I don't think you need a million dollars for that although because it sounds like fun and you may be tempted to pay for it. So you see all these cool guys going around with two chicks and you think....I wanna be that guy! It's the same thing with being an airline pilot...maybe that's why we all have so many ex wives. No disrespect to our female colleagues.
Funny how people set the bar to exclude themselves from the "bad" people who have ruined aviation as a career.
There are a lot of bad choices and misguided perceptions that hurt the career in general. I think pay for a job is just one of them. The best way to fight it is by educating people of the consequences and risks and also keeping the public informed. No airline likes bad publicity.
I want to be an astronaut. If there was such a thing as pay to spacewalk I would sign up tomorrow.
Since 2001 when Dennis Tito paid the Russians $20 million to ride into space I think about seven other people have paid to go into space.
There isn't, because the current astronauts won't allow idiots like me anywhere near a rocket.
Haha....I think as with most things, any idiot with enough money can get anything...an airline job or a tour of space. John Travolta went out and just bought his own airliner (and co-pilot with benefits for that matter), painted it up and wore a uniform. In the end he's still an actor.
The fault lies with the pilots/unions who watched it happen with the usual pilot "it won't affect me so sod 'em" attitude so prevalent in civil aviation.
ahhh....now we're getting into another discussion altogether....plenty of threads on this for which I have much to say.