to harleyflyer,
okay so you have you frozen atpl book in your hand , its not that difficult to pass despite what they say , you will get it .
but the problem is what next ?
aer lingus :extremely difficult to get in there , best either as a cadet or having gained experience at another airline , either aer arann or ryanair .
aer arann : pay 17000 euros for a type rating in the hope they will like you . its a gamble . can you afford to live on that salary as a married man of 37 with a house , kids and wife. see ppjn
cityjet : they were running a cadet scheme years ago. again do they like cadet or ex aer corp ?
air contractors: again they seem to like experiance guys or thats what i have been told .
ryanair : 30000 euros for a type rating and can be based any where in europe. also age issue possibly here ,well rumored, what do you think the wife and kids will think?
instructor : probably better off renting a plane and doing you own thing if you are over 35 .
when i say experianced guys i mean guys with over 3000 hours jet time etc and not us older guys in our late thirties with a few hundred hours
its a totally different story if you are living in the uk , i believe there are more opportunities there than here in ireland. your choices are very limited here in ireland if that is where you wish to stay .
can you honestly see the wife and kids moving abroad with you ? pulling them out out of school . her leaving family and friends , starting afresh in uk or in eastern europe . and you working all hours of the day and spending little time with them. or another option they stay in ireland , but you are working 5 on 2 off and commuting back from eastern europe.
i myself been 39 and married with kids with about 400 hours . there are hundreds of guys like in the same situation . all the guys that i did the mcc course here in ireland with none of us have jobs .
all you have to do is go on linkedin and see all these guys over 30 trying to get jobs after a career change .
also its very interesting as you can see all the 20 years olds who have posted on linkedin that they are now pilots for airlines who supposely want experianced pilots only but yet they they have managed to get in to those airlines , despite very little qualifications !!
all this is from any IRISH point of view .
cheers