Ok. No one appears to have answered your questions or offered their thoughts.
Your eyesight may present an issue. Your Class 1 medical will let you know soon enough.

If you only get a UK CPL/ATPL you'll be restricted to only flying G-reg aircraft. Unless the UK rejoins EASA, that will remain the case. If you want both licences, then you'll have to do all the exams effectively twice. Yes, it's nuts... Of course, when you have experience, you can apply to the Gulf states and they'll take care of the licence validation.

You've answered your own question about staying in London. You could be lucky, but I would bet on moving away from London for a good few years. I moved 10,000km.

New CPL salaries? As ever, it depends on what/how/where. Personally, I'd budget a salary from £25K upwards. If you start instructing, half that. Yes, it's that bad. This of course, assumes you get a job after you finish your training. If you don't, you'll have to budget to keep your Instrument rating and medical current. The IR skills deteriorate pretty quickly.

Considering US flight schools, but currently based in Scottsdale, AZ. I have a pair of degrees, no debt, and willing to take on my first loan to make this happen.
What are considered maybe the top 3 schools for quality of training and/or hiring potential & airline partner programs?
ATP and Aeroguard have come up often, both happen to be in AZ--do they make the cut? Skyborne in FL seemed tempting because of the Delta pipeline, but I'm slightly plartial to United or Alaska for personal reasons, but that doesn't matter if there's a clear choice for highest percent of working graduates.
Thank you!

In the US it really doesn't matter where you train. You can't go from flight school to an airline anyway. Your only choice is to become a Flight Instructor and get a job teaching for a year or two.

Ask this in r/Flying (reddit) for a better response, but from what I know. US is PPL -> CPL MEP etc -> FI instruct for 1500hrs to get your ATPL. Where you train etc doesn't hold much to any value, after all you've just spend the past 2-3 years breaking your back instructing in a 172! Go to the cheapest and count yourself lucky that your country gets aviation. Good luck

This doesn't seem to be such a hurdle in Europe, where we see people come out of an integrated ATPL(A) program and get FO seats with the airlines.
Why is that hour building such a crucial step in the US?

Because in the US you need an ATP to fly for an airline, in Europe you can be hired with a CPL.

Doesn't an ATPL(A) in Europe include the CPL part as well?
Most integrated training programs I've seen for ATPL(A) include a CPL with flight hours.

I'm pretty sure it does

Correct. An ATPL includes CPL and PPL privileges. But you can't get an ATPL straight out of flight school (unless you spend £1M+ renting a multi crew aircraft for 500 hours, which isn't really an option for most people!). When you graduate flight school you have a CPL. Then you get an FO job. Then you get 1500 hours. Then you get an ATPL.
So I'm sorry but you've never seen an ATPL integrated course - because they don't exist.

Hi everyone,

So, I want to become a pilot and work for the airlines. I do have the means of funding through a mixture of parents and then financing the rest. I am looking at integrated vs modular and even the generation EasyJet programme (I know it’s not very popular on here but I am still considering it as an option due to the conditional employment)

However my wider issue- I am a law graduate and have a training contract secured at a big London firm (so that will be one year of law school (funded) followed by 2 years of training on a nice salary which would help me save up more of my own money). Now while I worked hard for this I don’t want to fall into the sunk cost fallacy.

I am wondering what others would do because I have always wanted to become an airline pilot which also offers a better work life balance than presumably 60hr weeks in London. But I’m also aware that this opportunity in London is a very good one and gives the fall back option. But I will be commiting myself to 3 years for something I don’t really want to do long term. In addition the SQE is also going to be quite intense study so to know I’m doing that for the sake of 2 years is a factor especially when the atpls are also very intense.

Would it be worth being patient? (I am also in the process of applying for Irish citizenship so In 2 years I will have the right to live and work in the EU)

Become a pilot. Law looks horrific in the city - 60 hour weeks? Try 80. And how many people actually get to sit there on £150K for very little work by 30 for a company that won’t work them outside their contact when practicing law?..

You’ll kick yourself forever if you don’t. Backup? Pfft, if you need a backup job because you can’t land one flying then that’s the time to get one. It’s unlikely you’ll need one. Spend three years doing law but get a flying job straight away and you’ve simply wasted three years staring at a computer screen researching articles that you care very little about. That’s three years not on the top payscale as a training captain.

To all aspiring junior birdmen…….before you post here with your life history etc, obtain a CLASS ONE MEDICAL, then seek the advice.

8% of males will fail due to a colour deficiency.
Best to find out without undue delay, then think about plan B for those unfortunate individuals.

Yeah...lots of insane advice on this sub, really hope you don't make such a bold decision consulting internet strangers who could be anybody with intentions you don't know. Go talk to real people for advice.

An internet forum can cloud your decision since you risk overvaluing internet opinions, not wise when a training contract at a London law firm is at stake. Lots of older folks here, or people who've never worked in high skilled roles, that are out of touch. Nobody here will be accountable for your decisions. It's your parents money, they will be in this risk with you and nobody here will.

If you want to be a pilot and get trained without paying for it then join whichever air force your nationality allows you to! I too was a 15 year old wanabee pilot once. At 18 I joined the RAF, flew single seat supersonic aircraft when I was 20, was a 4 jet captain at 23, and have just completed my 50th year in military aviation(only in the sim these days though)! Of course if you want to just fly airliners from A to B then you'll need fork out a large sum of money unless you can get on an airline sponsored training program. Trust me, air to air combat or low level bombing is much more fun.

If you want to be a military pilot then do the above.

Sadly the above is as relevant as a BOAC 707 captain from Hamble extolling their cadet path. It’s really cool what you were able to do, but good luck being front line before 30 in today’s RAF… Get 1500 hours before 35 and you’re doing well. Again, if you want to be a military pilot that’s still fab. But the whole join the military then crossover thing to save some training cost just doesn’t hold water any more.

One thing you should figure out is if your potential law job will adjust for inflation or not, or if you are competent enough to put your savings into a reasonable investment that protects you against this. You don't want to end up wasting many years saving only to realize that training cost has increased by 50-100%.

Hi Pilot30
Well done on securing the law job first of all.
I'm on a similar track as to what you describe - but about 2 years ahead (I have 2 years of work experience done out of 3 year training contract). I work in finance (insurance/risk management). So far I've really enjoyed it - most importantly I've made friends for life (I am going to one of their weddings' next year!), I'm studying towards a professional qualification, and am getting lots of experience in an extremely challenging role.

Graduate roles like this in finance/law teach you a lot of things which fresh-faced cadets leaving secondary school and going to a flight school won't have or experience. Learning how to work in a team, work under stressful conditions, deal with commercial pressures and how to stand up for yourself are all extremely desirable characteristics for a pilot in today's CRM-focused world.

If you couldn't tell already - my view is that it would not be a waste for you to do the training contract and save money. I'm going modular and about halfway through my PPL, timing finishing my PPL with my professional exams so that I can hour build and take a loan out to accelerate the CPL/ME/IR/APS-MCC portion all in one go.
Whilst people (rightly) say you will miss out on 2/3 years of "training captain salary" - you will have enough years under your belt of flying by the time you retire, even if you are in your late 20s by the time you're in the flight deck.

Nowadays people our age want instant gratification etc. - I've satisfied my "craving" and FOMO by doing my PPL on the side every other weekend... It's very doable.
I don't think you'd regret doing your training contract - you might regret rushing into aviation so soon though. If you know you're going to get into it eventually, doing something else for a while will only make you a more attractive candidate (IMO).
My only piece of advice is to appreciate how difficult it can be to actually save money working in an expensive city like London/Dublin when you're young and enjoying yourself. But it sounds like all in all you've given the journey a good bit of thought.
Hope this helps a little

Impressive, the people I know who've secured training contracts are cut from a different cloth. To do that on top of flight training sounds incredibly tough.

I don't think it's bad having a few years experience in a high skilled role either.

How many pilots actually end up as training captains commanding salaries of £200k+ in reality though? Trying to jump ship quickly as possible to maximise career earnings when it's so far into the future that other things could bring to a stop is another thing to consider. You're not guaranteed anything.

But if the end goal, which is the important bit, is to be a pilot. Why bother?

Why not spend 20 years becoming a qualified surgeon. Why not 35 years, then get a licence and first flying job at 58?

Once you establish that what you genuinely want to do is fly aircraft for a living, I just don’t see why you would want to throw away years getting a bit of paper to put up in the hallway, which is likely all it’ll ever be used for.

As to your question about cash, training captains at most carriers will get close to that, it’s a well paid profession. Get that position at a BA/Virgin and you’ll be well North of £200K. Unless you spent 15 years building up a knowledge of litigating planning permission infractions, then you won’t have the time to get there.

I understand your view - but the "why bother" part for me isn't an option. I need a high-paying job to accelerate my earnings. If I could work in Tesco or work in a large insurance company in a corporate setting, I wouldn't ask why bother but instead, why not. My post centered around those for whom financing (loans, equity release etc.) aren't an option - ie. if you need to save yourself, you might as well make it a useful experience for you.