Originally Posted by
galaxy flyer
You might poll that 70,000 and see how many recommend an aviation career to you or their sons/daughters. I'd bet it is a minority.
RJ F/Os are getting on 7-8 years before upgrading to CA. It is slow going.
GF
Due to the nepotism at most of the majors the sons and daughters (especially daughters!) of airline pilots would be foolish
not to go for it.
8 years to El Capitán? What am I missing here? I see at Skywest it should be around 5 years to upgrade and making 60k; American Eagle, 4 years and about 60k. $5,000 a month doesn't seem that bad for a 20 something yr old, or even a 30 or 40 something yr old for that matter.
Originally Posted by
Cubdriver
by your own claim this statistic means 50% will NOT work for one of the majors and you know what that means (low paying regionals). That's not very good compared to engineering. You also neglect to mention the heavy additional costs of getting pilot ratings
Say for whatever reason, you don't make it to a major and are faced with the apparent "worst case scenario" according to many; stuck at a regional. Well aww darn, that means your pay will only cap out around $100,000; Shoot, I guess you'll never make it out of the projects.
Yes, there is a cost to getting your pilot ratings but when you put it all in perspective I wouldn't call the cost heavy. You should be able to go from PPL to CFI with under $20k. + 3 for the MEI and make it $23,000 approx. Now let me add the fact that the only educational req for the regionals is a HS diploma. What does an engineering degree cost at a reputable university? Double that at least.
Originally Posted by
Cubdriver
You also skipped over the not-so-little things like not getting home daily as a quality of life issue, fairly high risk of furlough, risk of losing a medical, and the overall competitive nature of the major airline jobs.
Furloughs are scary, but what job is immune to a slow economy? Layoffs happen in a free market economy. As for the competitive nature of the biz, tell me what job I can safely apply for with no risk of rejection or competition from others.
Loosing your medical; I agree, this risk is unique to pilots. All one can do is try their best to stay healthy I guess. Living out of hotels half the month is a negative (more for some than others). No arguing with that.