Hello everyone.

I’m new to this forum (literally just signed up) and I am a current aviation student looking for some brutally honest advise about if I should peruse the career.

I’ll try to keep this kind of brief, and will outline more details about it is people ask. Basically I am still very early on at a University flight school. Still working on my private pilot, and only have a few hours logged. Originally I had intended on going toward a career pilot, although I don’t know to what capacity. I currently work as a paramedic, and live along and support myself off of that income. (Student loans for flight school—although not very high as yet due to not so many hours logged.)

Yesterday in a flight operations class my professor was talking of the lifestyle and said “If you’re someone who is a family person and wants that lifestyle…well…you’re going to have to make some compromises.” I have been seeing a girl lately…still pretty early on, but, who knows? Maybe she’ll be the one. Even if not, I think I do want to have the kind of life style where at least, for the most part I’d be able to be home and around that family. (That’s not saying if I had to be away for a couple days I never could, but my professor spoke of her husband pilot being home no more than one week a month every month for the entire summer.) Moreover my girlfriend is in Med School—which is strenuous enough in and of itself—and aviation will just make a future with her harder.

I’m now beginning to reconsider if I should go this route. I did so some research prior to starting flight school and it looked like a really good career. I read a lot about the high upcoming demand for pilots soon. It took only a few minutes of browsing this forum to see that that does not seem to be the popular belief in the aviation field—and that the pay isn’t as good as most surveys I read seemed to make them out to be. I have considered other fields of aviation besides the airlines—possibly air ambulances, and other things, but it seems like the only way to make money is going for the big airlines and basically sacrificing a dream for a family.

So am what I am reading on this forum pretty much the product of jaded burned out pilots, or is it really that rough of a life that I potentially might only see m kids on weekends if that’s what my future holds. I know some people are laughing at me—cause most guys in their mid 20s aren’t worried about kids/wife/future at this age—but this are real concerns I am having. And it’s not as though I have no options in front of me if I choose to not be a pilot. I am registering to take a Critical Care paramedic course to further my paramedic certs. And pretty much the only classes I have left to take at my University are the aviation credits—all my gen-eds are done so a major change should not be so difficult and I, as of now, have limited aviation loans to pay off. I could switch to stay completely in the medical field and change to get my nursing degree, or aviation management or ATC. (My only thing is I have little to no interest in that…whereas flying is an absolute passion of mine…I love it to no end.) I’ve even just considered maybe getting my Private through a part 91 school and having it as a hobby (but unless I’m wrong…it’s a pretty damn expensive hobby…)

Anyway, I’m just curious to what people’s brutally honest opinions would be on this. I brought up some of these concerns to my CFI and he suggest “if you’re not going to do this, stop now before you put a boatload of thousands of dollars into this.” And I think I agree with that. So I’m curious to see what people who actively work in the field would recommend.

Thank you for anyone who took the time to read this Wall O’ Text and I appreciate any feedback. ^_^