I am want to become an airline pilot (Read me if you're 15 years old)

[Chris the Robot]

This does seem to be a very good thread, the only airline schemes I would consider at the moment are BA FPP, West Atlantic (need a licence already)and Cathay Pacific (the last time I checked the latter required a degree). If I had a foreign language such as German I might consider Lufthansa or something. In the current climate I would not pay my own way through flight training beyond PPL (with maybe some ratings) unless I could easily afford to complete training and remain current without a job (I should say some may consider BA FPP to be pay your own way, though I don't really).

I would also be tempted to go for an opportunity such as the aerial survey apprenticeship and any scholarships (I believe a helicopter school offered one with a job at the end recently, though you had to have a licence to apply). Some choose to have a well-paid job but instruct part-time "for fun".

Of course the RAF, FAA and AAC are viable options for those wanting a military career, though it would appear increasing emphasis is being placed on rotary-wing and UAV pilots. Also, there are plenty of non-flying roles in the military which many would enjoy.

I used to work in shipbuilding as an apprentice but moved to a training scheme in corporate banking run by a well-known bank, I dropped also dropped out of uni. There are a lot of good school-leaver programmes out there that pay serious money upon completion, competition is fierce though. The Merchant Navy may be a good consideration for a transition to aviation later in life. I think NATS ATC is open to school-leavers too, though it might be a long shot.

Degree-wise I'd consider the following (assuming I was paying £9k a year for a degree) and I'd be looking ideally at a top-ten/target universities:
Medicine/Subjects Allied to Medicine
Law (particularly Corporate)
Maths (useful for Investment Banking or Consultancy)
Computing Science (Well paying IT jobs).

A lot of big accountancy firms do sponsored degrees, as do quite a few engineering firms. Particularly in engineering, quite a few people I've met or heard of seem to have worked their way up from the shop-floor.

I think a really important thing to consider with aviation is are you sure you want to do it. I've probably made a couple of mistakes career-wise and lost a couple of years of good salary as a result, if I had gone into aviation and dropped out, it would have been a lot worse for me (huge debt). Also, consider the sort of people that your target employers would want to take on in the same training programme as you, I didn't consider this when I decided to take a career in shipbuilding and simply didn't get on with many people I trained with, which was why I left that industry.