If I'm guilty of sidetracking this thread too badly, somebody tell me off. However:-
I work full time in aviation, it happens in my case to be a combined Engineering / Flying / Managing role, which largely suits me well. I have only for short periods of my career ONLY done engineering, for most of it I've flown as well - this has required a mixture of qualifications and that hasn't personally given me a problem.
However let's take FFF for example - he's a bright and technically capable chap, who flies a lot (and presumably well although I've not shared a cockpit with him and therefore can't really judge). What if FFF decided that he wanted to build on his existing experience and do some combination of...
- Designing his own perfect aeroplane and setting up a company to build, test and sell them.
- Working on an airfield as an Air Trafficer (a strange ambition but I suppose possible)
- Working in some technical / flying combined field such as test flying.
Now if you are planning to become a pilot, there are numerous mechanism available to aim for anything between PPL and ATPL whilst doing another job. I believe that similar mechanisms exist to gain ATC qualifications in your own time.
Yet there's not a hope of his becoming an aeronautical engineer without giving up work and studying full time for an absolute minimum of 3 years. For anybody with financial commitments, this is absolutely impossible.
A couple of years ago, with another moderately significant aeronautical engineer I wrote a joint and open letter to the aeronautical universities - also copied to the main aero-eng publications. The letter basically said that the UK aerospace industry was being crippled by this. And not a single response, nobody published it, nothing. I'm increasingly of the view that this lack is doing two things:-
(1) It prevents any existing people (pilots or engineers) in the aerospace industry making the move into design / certification / flight test / etc. where their experience would be useful.
(2) It basically means that aeronautical engineering is effectively closed to people like, say, Flock1 who might want to build upon an existing maths or science degree and go set up his own company to design and build light aeroplanes.
I'm getting to the point of thinking it's so serious (I know from practical experience that it's virtually impossible for any light aircraft company in the UK to recruit a competent aeronautical engineer) that I should go and become an academic on the condition that I can pursue this from a university base.
Sorry, rant mode off. You chaps go back to the happy assumption that the only important or interesting aeronautical career is in flying from A to B in an aeroplane that magically appeared from building full of people with no aviation interest.
G