Re: Aviation Career
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: rrflyer</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Sto,
I hate to discourage you about flying for a career. It is a fun job but its a job that comes with a large amount of sacrifice and I'd say for most people its simply not worth it to them. Theres not really great money in flying anymore and theres certainly very little prestige left.
You need to really look hard at the career progression of most pilots and decide if your willing to do that.
How bad do you want a family and kids? Because being gone for 7 months or more out of the year makes it terribly hard. Hell I'd love to have a dog or just a freakin goldfish but I cant because I travel 6 days or more at a time.
The free travel perk isn't really there anymore either.
I'd say if you are still interested go down to your local airport and see if they will do a Demo flight with you. Usually these can be done for around half the price of a normal lesson just to see if your interested in the flying for real.
Where in TX are you located? I may be able to help you out finding someone.
As for expense from getting zero to where you can really start working your probably looking at around 30,000 bucks for all your ratings etc... I dont know what ATP is quoting you but I imagine they quote for the minimum time required not the actual time its going to take you to complete the licenses.
For example a private pilot is only required to have 40 hours but most will take around 60+ to complete there checkride and recieve the license.
Most people will train until they get there CFI, CFII, and possibly MEI. At which time they will flight isntruct for a year or so. Then they will hopefully move on to flying freight, aerial survey, banner tow, etc... etc... all jobs that will probably pay around 18,000 a year.
After a year or so of doing that you may have enough time to reach the minimums for applying to a regional airline. Most pay at regional airline starts at around 18,000 a year again and you can plan on 5 days on the road then maybe a day or two off.
You may have read a little bit about a looming "Pilot shortage" this is something thats been preached by pilot mills for the last 20 years. I can tell you we are reaching a time in the next year or two where we are going to see a large number of retirements due to mandatory retirement ages coming to fruition as well as some hiring and rest rule changes that are being implemented by the FAA which will, Hopefully, create a vaccume of talent for a bit. Bit its something that guys who have been in the business for a while are going to be taking advantage not something somebody who just starts now will have much luck with.
As for Helo guys its even more of a bastardized life than fixed wing pilots and your going to be competing for jobs with literally thousands of ex-Mil pilots with experience that is very hard to come by in the civilian side.
I dont know much about the maintenance side of things except that pilots usually think mechanics are lazy idiots and mechanics think pilots are whiny pre-madonnas! But for the most part everyone gets along and has fun doing there jobs.
I would really recommended ATC to you again. If I remember right your looking at about 8 months of training before you can be accepted by the FAA at which time you'll go to OKC for some more training and then on to your station. Mandatory retirement at age 55 and 4 day work weeks where your actual work time during the day is about 5 hours a shift. Pretty sweet deal...plus becuase of the Reagan era mass fireing there really is a shortage of people coming into that profession.
There was a website called Jetcareers.com that had a forum for aspring commercial pilots and there use to be a good number of career changers on there as well. Might be a good place to go and get some advice.
The thing you do have going for you is your still relatively young. And even if it took you 4 years or so to get into a airline cockpit you'd still have 30+ years to fly one.....
As for the Military comments its still probably your best route. Tons of free training...good benefits etc... etc... Only problem is I believe 27 is the max age for fixed wing pilots in the AF, Navy, and Marines. Plus just getting a slot is getting harder and harder.
If your interested in rotor wing stuff I believe you can apply to Warrant Officer school with the army until your 30 or 31. But transferring that rotor time over to fixed wing job when you get out becomes challenging.
Its an odd profession and a bit of a hard nut to crack...let me know if you have any more questions.
Good luck
</div></div>
That's it in a nutshell.
Lots of discussion here:
http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/ If you love flying get a private lisc.