Not a very good time to train
 

Rather sullen and downbeat today. I'm 34 years of Age with all ATPLs complieted and financially capable of completing CPL and IR. Despite this, I now have severe misgivings surrounding my age and that of fellow competitors.

Very dispondent and would welcome honest suggestions as what one should do at this crossroads. :(

I am in my 30's and a few friends of mine are late 30's. None of us have proper flying job yets that earn an income to live on.

We were all modular too. We all tried applying to Ryanair but none of us ever heard anything via the SAE / CAE. I was told by the Oxford Self Sponsored chap that we did not meet the Ryanair profile. e.g. age :)

However I do know of people that have joined other airlines recently in their 30 / 40's but at the moment, the market has loads of low houred pilots etc.

I would suggest you keep your full time day job if possible, finish the CPL / IR. Go back to work, pay off any training debts whilst looking and stay current with the SEP and ME/IR ratings. Get yourself in a good position and network a bit.

Good luck with the training

34 yo with no previous pilot experience isn't an ideal age to start looking for a pilot job, but it's also far from being too late. What's your aiming point? if you don't have one how can you steer towards it?

A lot of your competitors will have started out with a rather glamourous idea of wanting to be a paid pilot and handing over hard cash to achieve the vision, but reallity has to feature at some point (unless some wealthy sponsor is paying) and the vision has to be focussed to how and where you're going to start receiving money back on your investment.

My advice to you to steal a march on your competitors is to focus now, push on from the dreamy world of training and handing over money. Start actually phoning employers, get a feel for the real market and what they want from you, are you networking contacts at local airfields or are you aiming at the big guys?

If you're really 'driven' to achieve this goal then be positive and go for it, plenty will fall out along the way and all of them will have reached this point. It's those with a plan that make it beyond.

If you have a strong motivation, if this is your goal and nobody would convince you to stop, if you are so busy with your training that you wouldn't even have time to go on pprune to find reassurance about your choices like you are doing right now, then go for it. If you ask around you and on internet if you should marry your girlfriend, that's because you shouldn't. Almost the same applies with our tricky industry.

Here is the advice: forget about it.

With the CPL money buy an appartment instead. Or even better a small farm that will be helpful with all the fuel crisis coming up within 10 years. Later buy a glider.

I am sure about 2 things: this is the best advice you could find here, and you won't follow it. Because people want to be told: "everything will be fine", that's why they ask "advice", not to actually get advices.

PS: 34 years is extremely young. You can do almost anything at 34 years old. Having the mind set, the inspiration, the motivation, the guts is what it takes. Not having 24 or 34.

Are you REALLY able to read that? Aviation After Peak Oil: is There a Future? - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com

If you are not able, it's fine, your are just like most of us, monkeys disguised with a hat, gold epaulets, tie, rayban:


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