I'll try to sum this up as best I can.
My mum is a teacher and has a student aged 17 who wants to be an airline pilot. As far as I am aware he has never done an actual flying lesson, but nonetheless he has decided he doesn't want to go to University and his parents are remortgaging their house to pay for him to go to a top-tier integrated flight school. My mum was curious about what I thought of this and how it compared to what I wanted to do and other methods of training.
I'm 15 and am (slowly) taking flying lessons at a small airfield in the hopes of getting my PPL at 17, as well as flying and gliding with Air Cadets, as I want to take a more modular route towards, eventually, my ATPL. I know for sure that I want to fly and I'm fairly sure I want to fly for an airline, but I'm remaining open towards fields like cargo flying and instructing. I am also set on going to University first. I
personally feel as though I could gain more life experience and make better decisions if I complete my licenses modular-ly alongside things like cadets and education. I love flying but I'd like to build experience and qualifications rather than becoming a fully-fledged airline pilot as soon as I possibly can.
However, I'm really interested to know what the difference really is, as I'm still young and most of what I know comes from what I've read, people I've spoken to and the advice my flight instructor can give me. My understanding is that modular and integrated training produces the same standardised end result so it doesn't really matter, but are there advantages and disadvantages of each? Am I making the right choices here?
