There is a huge difference between "I'm giving up applying for sponsorships" and "I'm giving up on my flying training".

For the later I would want to offer encouragement and consolation. For the former I kind of say - so what?

I understand that there are very poor people who would make good pilots and just can't raise the £50k needed. I also think such people are quite rare.

It really isn't very hard to make £500 a week these days. A friends father pays that a week to labourers in his painting business. Cash. Two arms, two legs and the ability to get out of bed at 8.00 reliably are the only real requirements.

In 100 weeks you'd have £50,000. Call it 200 weeks allowing for paying your Mum some keep and necessary living/beer costs.

4 years graft and you are good to go. Less if you are willing to do a bit of taxi work in the evenings/weekends...

Cheers

WWW

:) If you are screaming towards a hill at 400knots luke in your current machine you certainly have some problems.

WWW has hit the nail on the head. It is possible for anyone to get the cash together if they really want to. The jobs may be horrible, hard work ****ty hours and the rest.

Its best when you start to presume you won't get a sponsership and work away to pay for it yourself. Then if you are one of the very lucky ones and a sponsership does come up you have a nice deposit for a house.

MJ

Is this not a wind up?

:ok:

... and the funny thing is, WWW, that after you've worked at that job that pays £500 a week for a couple of years you then have to go and take a bloody great pay CUT when you get your first airline job :(

Come to think of it, if I had a job that allowed me to save £50,000 over two years then I'm damned if I'd quit it to go fly some poxy airliner ... I'd do it for 10 years 'til I had a half mill in the savings account, invest it all at 10% p.a., retire at the ripe old age of 39, p!ss off to Fiji and lie on a beach drinking pina coladas all day (periodically getting up off my sun lounger to go flying in my little microlight-on-floats that I bought with some of my pocket money).

And once in a while I'd think of all me old mates working like dogs, flogging those battered old airplanes through the British weather all day and night... and I'd laauuughhh :p :p

And then you'll spend 2 twelve hour shifts making £150 after expenses if you're lucky. Take it from someone who knows and stick with the manual labour. It pays far better for far less hours.

Other than that I'm with WWW et al on this one. If you haven't got it then go out and earn it. Age may not be on your side by the time you've done that, but if nothing else you'll have enough money to enjoy your PPL privileges and fly.

Bets of luck to all

Or just buy a poxy terraced hovel somewhere and wait 2 years... oh sorry - thats been done already.

WWW

WWW. Jobs that pay £500 a week don't grow on trees. To get a job that pays that requires more than being able to get outta bed at 8.00am. A good degree in fact!

Plus everyone talks here about sponsorships being one in a million chance. Thats simply not true. CTC take 6 cadets a month, 72 a year. They plan to increase this further in years to come.

They base you against a standard, not how many people apply, so technically numbers dont count in their specific scheme. If you meet the standard you'll get it, no matter how many people apply.

Worth thinking about that isnt it?

Mooney12

There are loads of manual jobs around that will pay £500 week. Just need searching out, just like most things. Effort in - Results out.

Don't need to be so hard on this guy. He's spent 8 years dreaming about getting a sponsorship and playing Microsoft Flight Simulator so he doesn't get into any bad habits before the gravy train stops at his front door, and now he's at the end of his tether, poor lamb.

GET A GRIP! If its that much of a dream, then you sure didn't chase it very far! My guess is you'da failed the psychometric tests anyway for being timid and crippled by fear of failure.

Show a little backbone and get your hands dirty, try actually risking something to achieve your dream..... when you know what the real cost of an airline pilot's seat is, then you can come back here moaning about giving up on your dream!

You'll exit these forums to the sound of a thousand pairs of hands rubbing with glee thinking "Great! another one down, more chance for me!" (Then those hands will go back to flipping burgers, probably!)

Mooney12 - sorry but they do. Best way to get one? Don't bother wasting 3 years and £12,000 at a mediocre University.

Cheers

WWW

Great Expectations,

It is a GREAT shame that you don't have any higher EXPECTATIONS of yourself:

'it's just a job and any one can be good at it. I'm nobody special, but I'm ok at what I do...'

Anyone can do it.. can they.. I don't think so.. that's cos some people DON'T make the grade.
For sure, it doesn't make u, me, Sky Toddler or anyone else better than them but it still means that the person concerned shouldn't be sitting in Left/Right seat... the other one for the F/Es as well.. sorry lads!

You were sponsored, it appears and claim that most people are.. no they bloody are not. I would be flabbergasted if the ratio of sponsored to self-sponsored in the U.K was anywhere near 1:5.

I would love to hear what your airline would think about you saying it's JUST a job and anyone can be good at it... you're either sh1t hot at your job or disheartened by the high proportion of obnoxious characters on the flightdeck, me thinks the latter! Only kiding.

Redmania.. u want it, don't bloody give up. To go for the BE sponsorship your at least under 28, I've seen bods self-sponsored (integrated AND MODULAR) do it from 40-45.. never submit until the bitter twisted end:E

If anybody is in need of work that pays over £500 per week, look here .

Go to the lower part of the page and pick a company of your choice, clink the link, follow to Driver jobs/recruitment or whatever, apply, show up at interview with a pulse and a EU driving licence and your in!! No degree required, really they don't even care if you attended school!! They even pay all the training costs. (Takes aprox 2 weeks).

Many will also let you work part-time casual while you are learning to fly, heck stay full-time and work a 4-3 roster...

Downside, you will have to live in a grotty bedsit if you don't already live near London. (Some bus operators even provide shared accomadation).

This is just an example, there are many jobs just like this, so there is just no excuse it's all up to you..

Like I said before, just depends how bad you want it!

OTB :ok:

Your looking atleast 700 quid a week tramping in lorrys at the moment.

Its not fun but.....

I get payed 92 quid after tax for a 10 hour shift running a fridge over night for safeway when ever I want it. No crap just phone up and ask for a shift and I get one. The full time drivers get nearly 32k a year for a EU limited hours week. Degrees are for mugs I have always earned more using muscle or unqualified IT knowledge (which isn't an option these days) than my using my BEng.

Just try telling a school teacher that they could earn nearly twice as much driving a lorry than putting up with the crap that they have to day in day out.

The new transport regs are in soon and the exemption is now lost. There are something like 350,000 Class 1 license holders in the UK and only something like 150,000 in use. The average week is being cut down to 35 hours and currently there is already a shortage. Rates in London have been over 10 quid an hour for nearly 4 years.

mj

Love it!!

Agreed. It used to be a privilege, but nowadays it seems every Tom Dick and Harry are going to University, probably to have another few years of lazing about and delaying entering life in the real World. I've worked with 100's of accountants - 5% have a degree relevant to their profession - a lot don't have one at all!!

Going back to the subject, it seems a tough World in aviation. If you've been waiting 8 years for sponsorship rather than devising a plan of going about it the hard way, then I can only say you should forget the whole idea for your sake.

I pretty much agree with Luke SkyToddler, and would consider the general tone of his first post on this thread to be a reality check for anyone thinking of becoming a commercial pilot.

OK, great expectations, he does use a non-cuddly-reverse-psychology-cold-shower-tactic in an attempt to jolt redmania out of of his apparent resignation and self-pity, which in his reply to your howls of complaint he modestly admits to be an attempt to be "motivational" in his own "abrasive and obnoxious" way.

However reality itself can occasionally be "abrasive and obnoxious", and although there is a time and place for sympathy and counselling for every one of us, it is not in the cockpit when things are going badly wrong - a professional pilot needs to sort it out without recourse to such luxuries.

Be in no doubt that this requires above average levels of determination, as 747 Downwind eloquently bears witness.
Perhaps you are simply too modest to recognise this within yourself?

Cloud69 you are obviously unaware of how much can be earned as a licenced taxi driver in a city like Edinburgh or London. I drive a cab for money and work as a flying instructor for pleasure - although I enjoy working as a cabbie and get paid to instruct, those are the priorities which each occupation fulfills amply.

It helps to have a B plan (and even a C or D plan!) which needn't be to the exclusion of your A plan in any case - it might in fact help you acheive it. A few very practical suggestions have been posted above. On the other hand you might end up with an even more lucrative and rewarding career outside aviation which allows you to fly for fun.

Moreover, as mad_jock illustrates above, impressive job titles aren't everything.

Errr, £500 a week is about £30 000 a year after tax and NI contributions.

www - your living in a dreamworld. Getting a degree is not a waste of time. Everyone has one these days, so if you don't have one, your not doing yourself any favours.


£500 a week is an excellent wage which requires more than a 'pulse' to get.

Lets take www's advice, no go to uni and 'waste' 12k and get a 30k a year job by turning up on time with a pulse.

rubbish.

WWW,

I would just like to join the back of the queue to bash you :)

Your view is common to successful people who have dragged themselves to their goals through adversity. The world appears very polarised between the haves (good honest folk and not shy of a days work) and the havenots (lazy good for nothings). An attitude not entirely dissimilar to ex-smokers and their views of smokers if I may say so.

Mooney

Earning £500pw + requires more than a pulse, but it definitely doesn't need a uni degree, as several people on this thread have attested to.

The value of having a degree has decreased since I got mine a few years ago. Its still a "nice to have" thing on my CV, but if making a lot of cash to fund training is all you're interested in, its certainly not required.

btw I think you'll find that WWW does have a degree.

PW

But I don't, and nor do most of my colleagues in Virgin - and we do OK for money compared to most! Degrees are certainly not necessary to obtain a decent living, and it's perfectly correct to say that you can earn the money you need if you want to, and you're physically fit enough.

Right now the building trade is having a real purple patch; there are nowhere near enough brickies, chippies and plumbers and so the wages are very good for skilled, reliable tradesmen. If you want to earn the money to pay for your training in reasonable time (and you don't have the entrepeneurial talent to make money by selling things), then get yourself a skill that's in high demand yet doesn't need loads of investment (either money or time).

Scroggs

i have had my heart set on beig as pilot for the last 15 years. Therey has not been one day go by when i haven't imagined/dreamed/wished for/hoped for landing the job or getting a lucky break.

I've had more than my fair share of rejections but I'm not giving up and woont give up.

If you want something badly enough, you'll get it.