Originally Posted by BoilerUP

EVERYBODY thinks their path was the hardest...and the best.

Fact of the matter is in the "good old days" when it took at least 2500hrs to get a job as a gear ***** in a 99 or Metro, there were CFI jobs everywhere and lots of companies hauling checks in Barons and Navajos. You also more or less knew within a couple years of upgrade you had a great shot at United or American, or at worst bottomfeeders like UPS or Fedex or Southwest if you bought a 737 type rating.

A six figure income was reasonably expected within 5-7 years of getting your first turbine job.

Today, the cost of flight training has easily tripled in cost and the financial career payoff for that cost has all but disappeared so there are fewer students, there are substantially fewer "check haulers" to help build quality time, the military is pumping a ton of pilots into RPAs instead of actual airplanes and the great recession has put a severe damper on charter and corporate. Upgrades at many regionals are running a half-decade or more, due in no small part to the "Fair Treatment For Experienced Pilots Act", and attrition at the regional level has drastically decreased as increasing numbers of increasingly larger "small jets" have been outsourced and replaced small narrowbody aircraft at mainline operations.

The challenges facing up-and-comers today are different than they were post-Vietnam, post-Deregulation, Post-Gulf War, and Post-9/11.

But EVERYBODY faced challenges.