I've decided on a flight school pre-training

10 Mar 2026

If you’ve been reading my previous posts, you’ll know I recently visited Aeros in Gloucester, and was quite sold on the place. Well, after much thought and some further reading/research, and no signs of the EasyJet MPL re-opening, I’m now pretty confident this is the route that I’m going to be taking to get my ATPL.

It fits in with my life much better than going off to an integrated school full-time does, as having to quit my job to go to one of those, with no guarantee of a job at the end of it is hugely risky when you have commitments like a mortgage still to pay.

With the modular route, I will be able to work part-time for sections of the course, enabling me to continue earning throughout, meaning that I’ll likely come out of the other end, with some savings still intact. I will not have had to borrow any more against the house, and most importantly I also will still have my current job to be able to return to full-time, after completing training, while applying to the airlines.

Overall it seems like a financially pretty sound option, the only risk really is how quickly I’d get onto and through an airline selection at the end of training.

So, With that decision made, I have now taken the first proper step towards this career change, and spent some money to book in my Class 1 Medical, which while expensive is an essential step, as I need to be able to be able to obtain one of those to be able to even consider this as a career. Pilot Careers Live (which I’ve already got tickets for) is the day after, and that’ll be a good chance to hopefully just re-confirm to myself that this is the right route to go down.

So, my current plan is

  1. Go and get the medical,
  2. Go to pilot careers live (again) for the low-down on what’s going on in the aviation world
    • (given current events at the moment, I’d be surprised if there isn’t some impact on the strong recruitment drive that I felt was there last time)

Assuming nothing has drastically changed, there’s no big announcements from the airlines, and there are no problems getting my medical certificate, I’ll then contact both work and Aeros about getting started ASAP

Very exciting!