I think realistically once you’ve made the decision to do it it’s hard to steer back away from it. Aviation has that hold on you in life. I’ll try to answer all your questions as unbiased as I can. For reference I am a 36M UK based long haul pilot.

- The path you’re going down is high risk, there’s no doubting it. You’re going down a privately funded and exceptionally expensive training route that may well net you one of the best careers possible, or just a bunch of debt and disappointment. At the moment the job market is moving fast, there are opportunities opening up everywhere and my airline is hoping to recruit literally thousands of pilots over the next few years. We tend to be the catalyst for the job market (for better or for worse) so when we hire, the whole industry keeps moving.

This is great news now, but the market is fickle and controlled by world events. Covid was an awful time to be an unemployed pilot as many of my colleagues found out. So if it takes you 3 years to qualify, nobody can tell you what the industry will look like. If it carries on like now you’ll be fine. Does the orange man blow up the world? Maybe not so much.

With that said it’s a superb job, it’s a hard job, but it’s a great one. You’ll give up a lot of your time at home and the toll it takes on that side of life is sometimes hard, but I would do nothing else with my life. In fact I’m completely unqualified to do so. This is where you also have an advantage, you’re qualified as an engineer so if it all goes wrong, you’ve got a back up… many of us don’t!

Nobody can tell you if it’s the right thing to do or the wrong thing, not without knowing about all aspects of your life and finances. With that said do it for the love of flying, not for the money, or for the perceived glamour, do it because flying is the only thing you can see yourself doing in life, that’s how you make this career the best decision you’ve ever made.

- Integrated schools are few and far between from what I gather these days, Oxford and L3 (or whatever they were called at the end) all went bust leaving mostly modular schools left. Many of them have started trying to get deals with airlines now too. Modular has flexibility, is cheaper and these days isn’t seen as the “lesser” choice compared to when I was learning in 2012-2014. I’ve got a few mates going modular through places like Euro Flight Training (I think) and they’re all incredibly optimistic for jobs.

- Respectfully I think you’re probably underestimating the enormous difficulty and time commitment to training, especially tha ATPL theory. The volume of studying you have to do is more than anything else you’ll have done. Think of it like a degree in 6 months. It’s hard work, I personally could never have done it distance learning, I had to do it full time because I wouldn’t have had the capacity to do so. Keep this in mind if you plan to work. Additionally consistency is key, flying once every now and then is difficult to progress quickly, in the latter stages is highly recommend taking some time off work and hammering out the CPL or latter stages of the IR to keep your hand in so you’re not spending 25% of your time in the air going over last lesson.

The training is incredibly consuming of your life, if you’ve got a full time job and a family etc bear this in mind.

- At the moment 34 is fine, when the industry was in a dip many would have said you were too old. Say you’re 34 now, qualified by 37, you’ve still got 28 years career in you before the CAA say no more. Airlines will look at you differently to some 21 year old, but that’s not a bad thing, you’ve got the same license but you’ve also got life experience and skills that a free from school kid doesn’t, use that to your advantage in an interview.

- Would I do anything different? I’d probably have saved myself £8k and not done my FI rating, that was a bit of a waste. However I went the modular route, within 3 1/2 years of qualifying I was flying a 777 for a living and now I’ve got myself 5000+ hours and built a career I am proud of. Back in 2012 people would have said that was impossible because I didn’t go integrated. So no, I’d not change a thing. But you are not me and I am not you, so our outcomes may differ.

As I said at the top it’s a high risk high reward career, especially when you’re a little older. I’m now very detached from the world of training and I fly an airline and fleet where I fly with no zero hour pilots, so take everything I said with a pinch of salt. Get down to the flight schools, try to look beyond the marketing and trust your gut. Speak to students past and present, enjoy the process of training and if you get to the end of the PPL and think it’s the only thing you can see yourself doing then do it. If you feel a bit “meh”, save the cash, climb the ladder of engineering and maybe fly for the fun of flying with your PPL.

My advice for going forward:

- Get your Class 1 medical as a priority, you’ll be surprised what they pick up, I failed mine first time around as an example
- Do your PPL and see how you continue to enjoy it
- Go visit all the schools, not just some of them
- Be realistic about the costs involved
- Speak with other students, there are loads of things that exist now compared to back when I did it, Discord groups etc.
- Research everything, you can’t have too much knowledge before you hand over your cash.

Good luck, you’re in an exciting place right now and if you make the right decisions you could have a pretty fucking cool life ahead of you