It is a critical moment for the airline industry. Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer, has warned that 558,000 commercial pilots will be needed globally by 2034 to meet a surge in demand for air travel. That equates to 28,000 extra jobs a year.

The cost of training is substantial: it can exceed £100,000 for those who undertake a full-time 18-month course. Many, like Mr Audlin, opt to study part-time to reduce the cost by tens of thousands of pounds.

Some experts have said that airlines will struggle to meet the shortfall if more is not done to support new pilots financially.

“The industry needs to get its act together,” says Jim McAuslan, general secretary of the British Airline Pilots Association. “Everyone is outsourcing the responsibility to the individual who has a dream of being a pilot, but if there’s not enough investment by airlines and by the government, then we are not going to have enough pilots to fly UK plc in the future.”

The problem has been accentuated by a change in the way pilot training is funded. Twenty years ago, airlines mostly paid for training, or pilots would join from the military. However, as cuts have been made across an industry that often struggles to be profitable, the financial burden has gradually shifted to the trainee, and most have to cover the cost with bank or family loans.

A trainee can rack up debt of between £70,000 and £100,000 for initial training with no job guaranteed at the end of it. If they go on to train on a specific aircraft, such as the Boeing 747 or Airbus A320, they have to find another £30,000.

Some airlines help by running sponsorship programmes, where the airline guarantees a loan that is repaid over time once a trainee begins work with that company.

British Airways and the low-cost carrier easyJet offer this arrangement but these schemes have limited places. BA takes between 50 and 100 trainees each year, but this will not meet the 360 commercial pilots it must recruit in 2016.

Captain Henry Donohoe, head of flight operations at Emirates, the largest of the three Gulf carriers, has made plans to tackle any shortage. This year it will start its own three-and-a-half-year training programme, which will have an annual intake of 160 to 200 cadets. It needs to hire 450 pilots this year.

While Boeing has warned about a shortfall in the future, the current picture is more complex.

In many regions, such as western Europe, an adequate number of people want to become pilots and in some countries there is even a surplus. Reports suggest that the average unemployment rate for pilots in Europe is 16pc.

Regional carriers are likely to be the most affected by any shortfall because bigger carriers can entice pilots with larger salaries and the appeal of working for a global airline.

For some, a shortage of pilots is not apparent. Risalat Rabbani qualified last September but is struggling to find a job.

“The real shortage is actually in the experienced pilot side,” says the 27-year-old. “There is quite a huge saturation of new pilots who have done the training but are stuck in a day job because they’ve not managed to get a flying position.” He trained part-time to cut costs, which came to £60,000, and works at iPilot, a flight simulator company.

One of the frustrations for pilots who have trained part-time, such as Mr Rabbani, is that many airlines restrict their intake of direct-entry pilots to graduates from the big training schools, such as CTC Aviation and CAE Oxford Aviation Academy, which train pilots through an integrated course that typically takes 18 months.

Boeing’s research shows that demand will vary significantly between regions over the next 20 years. Asia Pacific will need most pilots, an estimated 226,000, which represents almost half of the total shortfall. This reflects economic growth in countries such as China, where air travel is becoming possible for millions of new flyers.

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, March 14th, 2016