Originally Posted by rickair7777

What's "best"?

Most money, probably strive to get hired at FEDEX or UPS while young. Get a degree while working on flight ratings. Join an Air National Guard fighter unit immediately after college, complete initial training, return to part-time guard status and CFI until you get 1500 hours. Get hired by a regional, and network like crazy, especially in the military. Apply to FEDEX/UPS with 121 turbine PIC, fighter time, and internal recommendations.

If you want prestige and challenging flying, go to college (preferably on an ROTC scholarship or Annapolis), go to Navy flight training, get into F-18's, and eventually opt for test pilot. landing on carriers and performing various complex fighter/attack missions is certainly challenging and prestigious. You can even apply for NASA after all of that, although with the shuttle gone the "piloting" will be limited to maneuvering a capsule around the space station.

If that's all too much work or far beyond your god-given abilities, just have Daddy buy you a $50k car and four years at ERAU, get a regional FO job paying $20K, a big shiny expensive watch, and a pair of ray-ban aviators. On this track, it is absolutely vital that you avoid turbo-prop aircraft at ALL COSTS. I would not even apply to a regional that operates any prop aircraft.