u/luisjamesnelson

Hi everyone,

I’m 20 and a UK passport holder currently planning my route into becoming a commercial pilot, but I’m stuck on choosing which licence system to go with and would really appreciate some honest advice from people in the industry.

My long-term goal is to eventually move and work permanently in Europe (ideally somewhere like Spain/Portugal/Greece). I don’t currently have any EU right to work.

I’ve been researching both routes:

•UK CAA training pathway
•EASA training pathway

From what I understand:

•CAA seems to align more with UK airlines (Jet2, TUI, BA, etc.)

•EASA seems to align more with European airlines (Ryanair, Wizz Air, easyJet EU ops, etc.)

But I’m getting mixed advice online about whether an EASA licence would actually limit my options as a UK passport holder without EU work rights.

My main questions are:

1. Which route gives me the most flexibility long-term?

2. Is it realistic to start EASA training as a UK citizen and still build a career in Europe later?

3. Would I be limiting myself too much by not going CAA first?

4. How difficult is it actually to get into EU airlines as a UK passport holder?

My goal is to avoid spending £100k+ on training and ending up stuck in a limited job market.

Any advice from pilots or people in training would be massively appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

I’m 20 years old from the UK and currently a student pilot. My long term goal is to eventually move out of the UK and live/work somewhere in Europe, ideally flying there in the future as well.

I’ve been looking into different ways of getting EU citizenship or residency rights and originally thought I might qualify through Ireland because of my ancestry. However, after researching it more, it seems like it only works if your parent or grandparent was born in Ireland, whereas in my case it was my great grandparents who were Irish citizens.

From what I’ve seen, that means I probably can’t claim Irish citizenship through descent, but I wanted to ask if there are any other possible routes people would recommend looking into.

For example:

• visas/residency routes that could eventually lead to citizenship

• countries that are easier for UK citizens to move to

• aviation-specific pathways

•studying or working abroad first

• anything related to ancestry that I might have missed

Would appreciate any advice from people who’ve gone through something similar.

I’m 20 from the UK and planning to start my PPL in Spain soon. Long term I know for a fact I want to live in either Australia or America permanently, so I’m trying to figure out the smartest route from the beginning instead of doing everything twice.

Originally I was thinking:
- Do full EASA training in Europe
- Build hours/get into an airline
- Convert to CASA later

But the more I think about it, the more I feel like once you’ve built seniority at an airline and settled somewhere, you probably don’t want to move countries and restart.

So now I’m wondering whether it’s smarter to:
- Do PPL in Spain first
- Then move into CASA training relatively early
- Build my entire career in Australia from the beginning

The thing I’m trying to balance is:
- avoiding conversion costs later
- not losing seniority later
- but also not making early-career hour building/job hunting harder than it needs to be

For people who’ve actually done this:
- Would you still recommend EASA first?
- Or if Australia is the end goal no matter what, would you commit to CASA earlier?
- How hard is it realistically getting that first flying job in Australia as a low-hour pilot?
- If you could restart your career knowing you wanted Australia long term, what would you do differently?

Would appreciate honest opinions from people already in the industry.