Salt in an already deep wound!

[VFE]

My advice to anyone recently qualified would be to get a decent paid job, repay as much debt as you can, whilst keeping reasonably current (once a month) at your local flying club. Even an instructor rating right now would be, in my opinion, a waste of money unless you can secure an offer of employment beforehand. Regardless, you will make the contacts and gauge requirements for instructors much better if you get down your local club and start making yourself available to help out in any way you can. They call it networking. You will meet faces and names who might be able to help you secure a job when things start to pick up. One thing is for certain - muck spreading CV's and logging onto PPRuNe every day will only serve to erode your enthusiasm, far better to spend your days helping out on the radio, refuelling aircraft and generally being on hand to assist your friendly flying club. If you don't have one then seek out the nearest and pay them a visit. Nothing should be beneath someone with a fresh licence and 250 hours, the straight forward part of the mission is completed and now the battle really begins! It is all you can do right now to stay in the loop and give yourself a fighting chance.

People are keen to help those who show willingness against the odds in this game - remember that.

Best advice I can give.

VFE.

[oapilot]

Skippy, going right back to your original point about bully boy tactics by your FTO, in my humble opinion, I wouldn't worry. Can only speak from experience but having fallen foul of my FTO for standing up on a matter of principle which affected my whole course, I found myself with a less than glowing end of school comment from the senior FTI.

I was devastated at the time, but really, the comment is only relevent (as someone pointed out earlier) if the FTO has a candidate selection process on behalf of its students with airlines who are recruiting.... Having qualified at the end of 2002, there were no airline jobs, so even those with glowing reports weren't getting anywhere. By the time the market started moving again, the airlines were more interested in guys and girls who were recently qualified and therefore more likely to be current and a better gamble, so the FTOs opinions were by then worthless.

I recall reading WWWs comments all those years ago and the man has a spookily accurate finger on the pulse of the market. You may want to hope he is wrong, but all too often he isn't.

In one respect, the length and depth of the recession is irrerlevant to those of you who have recently qualified or are about to be, and are looking for that first break. It is going to take some time for things to free up again and in that time there will be others pouring out of the schools with shiny new fATPLs and boundless optimism. Your challenge therefore is to not lose the motivation to get that first job, network all you can, find some cost effective way of keeping your skills current and most importantly take a leaf out of desk pilots book and find a coping mechanism to keep your sanity.

It IS worth the effort and if you do get a job you will love it (for an indeterminate length of time anyway).

However, be warned, not everyone will get a flying job and its random chance - the best guy on my course was first reserve after his one interview and never ever got another sniff of a job. Sorry for that sobering thought, but you have to be focused AND realistic.

All the very best.

oap

[Rj111]

There are clearly two prerequisits to becoming a pilot the hard way. You have to love flying, and you have to be literally insane.

I sympathise with the OP, but it also true that the industry owes you nothing and i don't think any of us can complain about the variety of hoops we have to jump through just to get... well, nowhere. Only we are responisible for our literally insane actions. If none of us indulged in those actions, the airlines wouldn't ask for insane requirements.

I have decided i shall just fly and gradually train for leisure and stick to my IT job. And if some opportunity comes along at some point in my life to make it to the RHS, then that is just a massive bonus. If not i will one day buy a nice little second hand C152 and wizz around in that at the weekends.

[VFE]

The differences in 'flying' a C152 and being paid to monitor and manage the sophisticated electronics of a modern jet are two seperate entities linked purely by the obvious fact they have wings and go up. I would suggest your plan is the most sensible yet as being employed to do the latter is about as far removed from 'flying' a C152 as you could possibly imagine yet remaining in essentially the same mode of transport. If it's just the escape which flying presents that you seek then I would strongly recommend you stick to your plan and save yourself thousands of queens heads!

VFE.