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Old 05-09-2012 | 06:00 PM
  #13  
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JamesNoBrakes
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Originally Posted by Luv2fly123
I am new to this whole thing, however I have been reading different forums throughout. I am 17, President of my Junior Class in High school. I was just wondering what the best approach(s) would be for me to get to fly a scheduled airline. I have dreamed of flying since i was 5 years old and i am still extremely passionate on fa filling my dream. I cannot see myself doing anything else in life at this point. I have been flying for 3 years on and off with financial stresses periodically.

Long story short. I am not going into the Military so what are some things I should consider doing?
You should think about how you are going to support yourself working for an airline at 25K/yr (some are even less). That's right, 25 thousand per year. You can not get hired by a major airline unless you have thousands of hours of jet/turbine time, the usual way to build this is by working for a regional airline. The problem is that major airlines are not hiring or expanding, so pilots don't really "move" to these jobs after working are regionals for a few years. The pay does go up a bit with regionals over time, but you max out little beyond that initial pay usually, only when you move up to captain does it get somewhat better, but you have to put in so many years at a regional that you have to go back to the first question, how are you going to support yourself making that small amount of money.

If you have a good idea, then go to college, even do something aviation-related (do not recommend just focusing on pilot-degrees, get something you can use outside of being a pilot in the wonderful world of aviation, as a backup). Many of the big universities like UND and ERAU do try very hard to prepare people for airlines, hold them to high standards, instill knowledge, but realize it's just the "initial" pilot training, this doesn't get you jobs at airlines, what gets you jobs at airlines is thousands of hours and experience.
How to get that is always the issue.

Is it that you dream of flying, or you dream of flying for an airline? Those are two different things.
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