You are in a tight situation and going through what I call excessive loan with drawl. You are stuck in limbo right now. I have a couple tips/comments which you can take or leave.
Do not defer your loans. Defering is a temporary way to avoid the enevitable and the banks are counting on you to do so. If you defer for six months to a year- you will add thousands and the back end to your current loan.
Every bank has policies for adjusting monthly payments when your fresh out of flight training and fresh out of cash. Some will allow you to pay just towards the interest (similar to an interest only loan on real estate.) That way you will have a more affordable monthly payment and not acrue the tremendous amount of interest you'd acrue during deferment. But keep in mind - these interest only periods will only last a year or 2 and then you will have to pay interest plus princible. Also keep in mind that interests rates on on the rise.
As far as a way to cut down on the princible of your loan. When you make a payment write a seperate check soley towards princible its only has to be 20-30 bucks and that will surprisinly make a dent.
For private loans such as key bank consolidation is out of the question as probably is stated in the fine print. Cosolidation is more for credit cards and mortgages and government loans like stafford. Now if you own a house and have equity you can take another loan out using the house (equity) as corlateral and essentially throwing your school loans on top of you home loans with a lower fixed rate.
As far as bankrupcy. You can file all you want- but your co-signers will have to pick up the slack. A co-signer is stuck to repay the loan if the primary skips town. Many times parents or relatives co-sign without thinking of the possible weight that might be thrown on their back. New Bankrupcy laws are making it harder and harder to file. They are not letting people rack up tremendous debt and wash their hands of it.
What you have to do is sit down with a pen and paper and budget. Right down all your individual bills. Rent, Car, Utilites, Food etc. And figure out ways to drop monthly bills. Example- Cable bills high- drop the cable. Don't go out and spend money if you don't need to. Keep in mind nice cars and dinners are not an option anymore. Niether are a lot of other things you're acustom to.
Now this is not an attack on you. You are in shock right now and that's normal. As much as you worry, complain, have sleepless nights, fight with friends and family and get depressed over it- the BILLS WILL STILL BE THERE. Its like treding water with a ton of bricks.
When people take out very large loans the last thing they think about is the repayment policy. You say your loans are 1300 per month. Is this a surprise? No. This is just reality smacking you in the face.
There are no easy answers or silver bullets that will get to thru this. You just have to live cheap and struggle for a while. Just take it as a life lesson grint your teath and bare it.