Originally Posted by
GogglesPisano
Dude, compared to what we went through in the 1990's, when you needed 1,200 TT and at least 250 Multi to even hope for a chance to buy an $18K/yr job at a commuter (probably a crapped-out 19-seater at that) You've got it easy. If you didn't have the cash to buy a job you'd need 2,500/500 to be competitive. That meant a year or two of hauling checks or 135.
Having to wait 2-3 years to fly a jet, my God, how do you cope?
In 1992, when I was working on my CFI-I, my instructor thought he hit the jackpot when he got hired by Precision Airlines to fly a DO-228 (19 seat unpressurised turboprop). He had over 4,000TT and had to pay almost $15k for the job. First year pay was under $12k.
I spent close to a year sending out resumes in an attempt to get an instructor job after getting my CFI and CFI-I and got no bites. Almost every response was along the lines of "If you had 1,000 hours or more of dual given we might be willing to look at you". I was out of aviation for nearly six years after that, getting my degree and working a "real" office job before a business trip spurred me back in to aviation just at the wrong time again - landed my first airline job in the spring of 2001...