Originally Posted by
sargeanb
Thanks for the replies all. I am still going to do my absolute best to get through the retraining and recheck. I've put almost 15 years, 7K plus flight hours, and many thousands of dollars into this profession now, so I at least need to give it my best shot and try to get those four stripes (and pay off all of those flight school loans a bit quicker.)
That being said, being 32, I'm still at the point where I can make a big change if need be. Flying has always been, and continues to be, a struggle for me. I think this last failure has made up my mind as far as progressing to a major, and I don't plan on being a regional lifer. I will look into corporate, but if nothing materializes there I think my days flying airplanes are going to end soon.
Although that's impressive, I'd caution anyone from ever thinking like that. It's the same reason we decide to go along with ridiculous government procurements after they've racked up a cost well past anything reasonable, because we figure that "well, we'll lose too much now if we stop", but in reality, stopping is the right thing to do. None of this means you should stop flying though, you could still do it on the side or do it in some commercial/paid function, but you also have to not limit yourself to the "major airline pilot track". To be honest, the whole civilian pilot thing is somewhat new and untested, for years the main feed for major airlines has been military pilots. While this is not the case 100% of the time, it makes up the majority of the cases, especially the further back you go in time. Think about all the other possibilities that aviation offers: management, safety, dispatch/control, maintenance, insurance, regulation, training, engineering, testing, and so on. Many people will instantly try to associate all these things with major airlines too, but people have to expand their horizons and think about how far this industry really spans. There are lots of things one can do and say "in" aviation, to pursue the love of it. In many of these cases, you can fly airplanes, or at least have enough money to do so for recreation. Good luck.