Your major can give you a slight advantage if it is a challenging technical major (engineering, computers, etc). It does not need to be aviation related.

***NOTE: Aviation colleges will tell you the exact opposite of what I'm about to tell you. They will be lying and they know it. They have an incentive to lie to you; I do not.

Aviation specialty colleges are not sufficiently prestigious to influence hiring decisions. Several are perfectly good schools but typically very expensive for what you get.

There are two possible advantages:
1) Connections. You'll meet a lot of pilots at such a school and theyt may be in a position to help you later. There are limits to this, in that the people you meet are only a couple years older than you and will not be much further up the ladder than you are when you need their help.

2) R-ATP. You can an R-ATP with 1000 hours rather than 1500 if your graduate from an aviation college with flight training, so it will save a few months of flight-instructing. Probably not worth the high cost of those schools.

If you want a school that will stand out at any job interview, go ivy league, west coast equivalent (Stanford, Cal, UCLA, USC, Cal Poly), or military service academy.


Highly variable depending on airline and equipment. Typical regional day...

Report at 0600, brief, check Wx, shoot the breeze with crew. Head out to airplane at 0610, do preflights, including additional "First Flight of Day" checks. Load Pax, finish W &B manifest (typically digital not paper these days) push back at 0645.

Fly 3-4 legs, typically 1-3 hours in length with anywhere from 40 min to 2-3 hours between legs.

Finish at an overnight around 2-3pm. You have six hours to eat, exercise, whatever before bedtime.

Get up at 0430, report to airport around 0600 and repeat for 2-3 more days before going home.

Domestic layovers can be as short as ten hours, or as long as 30 but usually about 12-16. you normally have time to do what you need to do (eat, exercise) plus some time to do what you want. On very long layovers sometimes folks will rent cars and do whatever there is to be done at that location (ski, hike, etc).

International layovers are typically around 30 hours, could be longer. In civilized areas you can do whatever you want. In non-civilized areas it may be too dangerous to leave the hotel (some parts of africa, mexico, central america, etc).

Hotels are usually adequate to great for regionals, although some bottom feeders may have you staying at a motel six or worse. Major airline hotels are always adequate or better.

Hotels are provided by the airline. You also get $1-3 per hour for the whole time you're away from base to offset expenses such as food.

Typical path would be 1-3 years CFI after college, 8-10 years at a regional (4-5 as an FO), and then hired by a major. Major airline career progression is totally out of your control, once hired it's all based on seniority, pilot demographics, and the economy. The experience of current pilots will not be the same as yours.

You have nothing to worry about. I have written extensively on this topic, and without typing many pages suffice to say that automated or single-pilot airliners are a very long ways off. No airframer is building or developing such airplanes and no government is planning to allow it. It would take decades even if somebody decided to do it today.

Even if they go single-pilot late in your career, as long as you're senior enough to be a Captain you'd still have a job (although nobody to talk to on long legs).

Departure and arrival are pretty busy, and you're not allowed to do anything else. In cruise flight with the autopilot on you can relax. There are rules about what you can and can't do, but the rules are more for public appearances as opposed to reality. If you tried to stare at the panel for hours on end you'd fall asleep.

Always wanted to, had family members who flew in the military.

The career progression has not worked out as planned, mostly due to post-9/11 industry problems and military reserve duty. It should be better for younger folks due to massive mandatory retirements over the next 15-20 years. Even if the economy sucks, they'll still need to hire pilots.

Work on your private pilot license before you commit to a career. Somebody who has never flown has no business spending a bunch of money of school/training.

Also look in to the military, if you are compatible with military service that is usually the best path to airlines. In this order...

1) Air National Guard
2) USAF Reserve
3) USAF Active
4) Navy Active
5) USMC Active
6) US Army