Hello everyone!
As you can see by my name, I currently work as a Registered Nurse for one of the University Hospitals in the UK. Due to the current pressures being applied to the healthcare sector, I am considering a career in one of my childhood dreams even at the "late" age of 35. However, I have zero clues where to start! I'm spending my free time reading and researching, but most of it is confusing and I fear I don't appreciate a few things that I come across.
I am starting this thread just to try an un-clog my brain and if anyone could be kind enough to throw some guidance and advice my way, I would be very grateful!
I'm guessing this issue has been done to death, but I, too, am having issues with financing. While I am currently a British Citizen and living in the UK with my wife and two sons, the rest of our families are back "home" in the Philippines and thus, most of the financing options (secured against property in the UK) are unavailable to me. I'll have to find another way to raise the funds for this new "adventure."
Speaking of "adventure," I am planning to do this the Integrated way for two reasons - time and appearance. I've heard/read that airlines prefer Integrated as opposed to Modular so I'd like to stack that in my favor. I'm also currently employed full-time and I believe I can take an 18-24 month sabbatical and return to my current job while waiting for an airline offer; I'd rather do this than stretch out the training over several years. I don't mind job-hunting for a year or two as I continue working in the healthcare sector; I don't want to be juggling work and study for a year or two. With my current job, I can afford a reasonable loan on a 12-15 year payment term if I do end up with a CPL/fATPL but no airline job.
My next hurdle is the training itself. UK and EASA or USA and FAA? I don't understand either EASA or FAA enough to appreciate the difference. However, I am under the impression that US-based training is cheaper than UK-based schools and even UK-based schools go to the USA or NZ to do flight hours there, so maybe cut out the middleman and just train in the US then convert FAA to EASA license? I'll need to find out how that costs in the USA compared to UK schools, but most pages I come across are filled with so much jargon and abbreviations that I don't understand half of what I'm reading! Work-wise, I expect to be looking at either Europe, Middle East, or Asia/SE Asia for employment as I believe the US/Canada market is saturated with pilots and poor pay.
Currently, I'm looking at
2Fly Pro-Pilot as their training is around £70K as opposed to the £100+K for CTC and CAE Oxford, but like I said, I'm brand new to this so I'm still looking around for other schools to weigh my options. One of the flight schools in Florida that offer EASA training (Naples Air Center) estimates around US$45-50K, which is around half of 2Fly's £70K/US$92K, but 2Fly includes accomodations so I'm not entire sure how everything weighs in... for example, Naples Air Center flies out of Naples Municipal Airport which is tower-controlled while 2Fly flies out of Merritt Island airport which isn't tower-controlled.... but they also have an office in Fort Lauderdale and the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport is tower-controlled.
Speaking of schools, my next issue is how to determine whether a school is legit and whether their training is any good. I guess people can't say anything bad about CTC and CAE Oxford aside from the sky-high fees, but for the smaller, cheaper schools, I read about "shady" establishments all the time. In fact, one of my local flight schools (PPL only) is/was owned by a rather interesting character and I found out about his history here on PPRuNe! This is also one of the reasons I don't want to go too cheap --- "if it's too good to be true..." Another factor that I'm aware of, but I'm not very sure about the value, is how "connected" these schools are with the airline companies. CTC, Oxford, and 2Fly advertise their connections to airlines but a local flight school that offers CPL does not.
Whew! Feels good to be able to get this in writing so that I can review this and don't have to store it all in my head and maybe forget important aspects later on.
Thank you very much for reading this and like I said earlier, any snippets of wisdom or advice would be greatly appreciated! I will continue updating this thread as my adventure progresses.