VariablePitchP

Your age here isn’t the problem, at all. You’re in your 30s, you’ll have 25 years of career if you want to. What might be worth considering is having a really careful reset before your start training. It’s basically going back to school, and it’s fairly full on. Not particularly difficult, but quite intense.

Jobs market wise I’d caution about going into it with blinkers for just a Dublin base. Unless you grab Aer Lingus out of the gate you may well be somewhere else for a few years. Did you apply for the Aer Lingus cadet scheme? That’s your golden ticket. Otherwise BA/TUI, any scheme you can get on is worth a look as your first job is the hard one to get. Get 500 hours and you can then apply almost anywhere as a direct entry pilot, not a cadet. Makes a big difference.

Are you prepared to spend 12-18 months flying from Gdańsk, Inverness, Faro, wherever it may be, before you can settle where you want to?

AdamSt205

For 15 years I was working for a large manufacturing firm working my way up from the shop floor to a decent managerial position. Ended up getting made redundant in 2020. Changed jobs for about a year but found them all a bit rubbish and the people around me terrible. I looked for a quick way out and ended up retraining and doing my HGV Licence and have been doing Class 1 lorries for the best part of 3 years now. I love the job compared to my old site based roll. Job satisfaction, travelling all over the country, the journey and everything is fantastic. The Hours do not bother me either as I have been used to that all my life. The only thing is the pay which just isn't good enough for what responsibility you have and the future looks the same. I am not really grumbling as I have a very good life and I am in a fortunate position compared to most in this country but after my redundancy it has opened my eyes a little to possibilities. I guess it is very easy to get into a rut with life as it was in my old job instead of pushing forward.

I have done a couple of flight experiences over the years and was a bit of flight simulator fan in my 20's and absolutely loved it but never thought I would ever be able to do it due to cost. I have a general love for engineering, absolutely love my cars and have a very mechanical mind and skillset. I self taught myself to do pretty much everything from welding to stripping and rebuilding engines. I would say I am a very good learner and pick things up quickly. Out of the 100+ drivers at my workplace I am consistently in the top 10 with the KPI's they measure us by. I am also very safety cautious and rule regulated person (My father was a career solider of 22 years) so I think I would fit into the pilots workplace.

Academically I was quite good at school getting 10 GCSE's A-C with A in Maths and Science. I did AS level in Maths and BTEC Diploma in computer programming. Unfortunately my father got cancer and died when I was 20 and it turned my life upside down a bit. I had a child at 21 with my now wife and was just looking for a job to provide for my family. I have worked hard throughout that time to get to this point where I am looking at still working for the next 30+ years and what I want to do with that.

I started browsing about flying and what is needed. I always new it was going to be expensive but there seems to be a lot of different ways to get on the ladder which seems a little confusing.

Financially it is not a problem for me. I have been very lucky with investments and buying my house directly after the financial crash. I have about 50k of capital in cars that I could sell and my mortgage is basically finished so could easily get another 100k on top of that. I can also do add hoc HGV driving all around the country on my days off if needed. That being said I would rather get the most thorough learning that will most likely land me a job at the end rather than the cheapest option out there. I am also under no illusion that this will be long and I will most likely be 50 before I even get the possibility of captain.

I have both UK and Polish passports and my wife is Lithuanian with right to live in the UK so we are pretty fluid in that respect although I would rather train in the UK. I also have a camper van and am totally used to living in a truck so I am quite flexible on being able to travel the country for training although i currently reside in Lincolnshire (About 10 minutes from RAF Coningsby).

I was initially looking at generation CAE MPL easyJet but it seems a couple of posts on here say it is not very good and doesn't live up to its promises?

It seems during March/April a lot of the big carriers start their recruiting is this worth waiting for or am I looking at a impossible lottery with that one?

Am I too old and should just forget it?

CAVOKpilot

Hi there, certainly not too late at all, just a matter of how much you want to make it happen. Once you’ve made 3 posts you should be able to send/receive inbox messages (I think). Be good to exchange some messages, happily talk you through things. I went the modular pay as you go route. I didn’t have all the money required to start, so that worked for me. I would recommend modular, as can do it around work commitments, and by sounds of it you could afford to progress through it quickly. Happy to discuss how I did it. Drop me a message when you can. There are a few other users on here that have good advice, I’d expect to see them drop on this thread fairly soon. Lots of guidance available but ultimately your drive is the overarching factor. Each journey is unique and a lot of it rides on your determination and yourself as a person. Hopefully talk soon.

VariablePitchP

You’re not too old..!

Glad that’s out the way, you could easily be flying a jet by 40 and a captain on the other side of £150K by 45.

Congratulations on getting to where you are now financially, that sort of outlook may make the Modular route a no-brainer for you. Have to be all over it in terms of your admin and driving yourself forward to finish the training. But that doesn’t look like it’ll be a problem, so you’ll get fully qualified for maybe £65-70K realistically. If you were 18 years old with nothing more than Call of Duty on your CV then having your hand held by an integrated school for an extra £25K might be worth it, but you don’t need that.

You make a good point about the airline schemes. The sponsored ones, BA TUI and Aer Lingus so far would be golden tickets. No financial risk, direct route to the flight deck. They haven’t necessarily opened March/April time, from memory BA’s first iteration was last autumn(?) You can’t be missing them though, there’s already been 5 open wings across the UK industry in the last couple of years which it looks like you’ve not been applying for. You need to carpet bomb those applications and put your all into them. You could be doing a PPL and starting the Modular route with hour building on the side whilst you do that, would be an option. Then if they don’t work smash the ATPLs out and sprint finish the commercial licence.

Easyjet MPL? To be honest most of the hate it gets is probably routed in a bit of jealousy that people can drop the c.£110K into it and go straight into the RHS of an A320. It got a bit prickly over covid, but in reality all you’d have had to do is just wait it out and it was all fine, and that didn’t effect that many people in the grand scheme of things. It gives you a rapid route to getting your 500 hours of jet time. Once you’ve got that in the logbook you can just bin easy and head elsewhere to a BA/DHL/J2 anyway, whatever takes your fancy. Consider it anyway.

And in the grand scheme of things, if you dropped £100K and nothing came from it, would it actually be life changingly bad for you. Based on what you’ve said, probably not? You’d have some more mortgage, but meh. Alternative is to get to 60 and kick yourself until the end of time for not giving it a go. Play your cards right and instead you could be sat in the captain’s seat of a wide body aircraft by that point.

AdamSt205

That is a great outlook and thanks for the advice. Now to start putting the hours and research in .