Originally Posted by
Levirosenthal
My main issue is the money and the risk of getting a specific major like Commercial aviation that is so expensive. How would somebody go about getting an aeronautical engineering degree getting a job in such field then working up flight hours until you have enough to apply somewhere regional or something like that. How would that work? I am a senior in high school just trying to pursue my dream right now but I am a little lost.
In the past I would have said hands-down get a degree is something marketable (any engineering, accounting, computer science, etc) as a fall-back position in case of furlough or medical problems.
An aero-space engineering degree would be great, the background knowledge will help you as a pilot and it's still a viable fall-back degree since airline hiring/firing does not tend to correlate directly with employment in aerospace engineering. Plus an aero engineer can work in other tech fields as well.
But today there are a couple advantages to a flight ops degree:
1. R-ATP: You can get hired at a regional with 1000 houirs instead of 1500, so you'll get started a few months sooner.
2. A few legacies now seem to grant some preference to graduates of the big aviation universities.
Is it worth the big bucks? Hard to say. If you end up going out on medical you'll wish you had a marketable degree and less debt for sure.
If in doubt get a real degree.