Originally Posted by
Lifeisgood
Sorry, just IMHO... Even a USair career is a lot better than commuting across the world to a bunker in the desert where they take your passport away.
Yes, you get to fly a 777 or 380 at 27 and live in the towers with a bunch of FA's. You will have some cool pictures to put on facebook, but it will get old soon and you will look back at it as waisted time.
Solid family (and life in the US) is where you will be happy..
As I posted before, I agree in concept that a young pilot should as a base plan go for a career at a major/stablished carrier. Regretably that is not the way this career works for the majority of people, only a few (percentage wise) of pilots do get hired and accumulate enough seniority to not become furlough fodder, but the vast majority falls into circumstances that send you on another direction, back at the beginning of the 90's I got hired at what I though was my career golden ticket, I came back to the US from a corporate gig abroad to my "last job in aviation
" the downturn of 91 changed the whole aviation scene, even the job that you now suggest as a good career path wasn't at all expected to survive back then. I certainly didn't plan to have to go back to the expat market and I wasn't waisting time, time would have been wasted working at a supermarket to wait for the aviation jobs to pick up again, mid 90's again went for another carrier job that didn't pinned out and then again at the end of 2,000 getting hired and 9/11 finding me in the pool and getting stuck in regional purgatory, What time you figure that I have wasted in my career? I have been very active in the pursuit of the mainline carrier job and in fact have been very lucky at getting hired, the jobs simply didn't materialized and that is the story of the majority of pilots, the career at the majors happen to a small percentage of pilots. For me the expat market has been a very good backup plan and I don't feel that time has been wasted, or you feel that I should have stayed in regional purgatory and wait for this so called hiring boom? Sorry but I don't subscribe to the idea that I should have stayed put and earn 40% of what I have earned in the same time period, not withstanding the fact that at 48, the time to start at the bottom of the pile has come and gone.
Another concept that surprises me is that people really believe that if you choose (by circumstances in life and not by original design) to explore the expat opportunities somehow your family life will suffer, or it will be unfulfilling in any way
that concept just boggles my mind, What makes you think expats don't have a solid family life? As a matter of fact, I know very few expats that are unhappy with what they are doing, I certainly enjoy it and I will look back on it as a great opportunity/ adventure and learning experience, not as waisted time. And of course I make more than double what my colleagues that didn't get furloughed or chose jobs that survived make. I'm not saying it works for everybody, but your theory that I'll be happier on reserve as an F/O at USAir, specially with the merger with AA looming (wait until they mix the APA boys to that east vs west feud, Oh boy, it is going to be interesting to watch) I think that is ludicrous.