bryris

I am currently sitting right side at a regional airline. One of the bottom feeders....but not THE bottom feeder. You can probably guess who.

Anyway, I have been stuck on the fence ever since I got hired about whether I want to make this my career or not. I did all my flight training part 61 just for fun. I thought I might make it a career, but I never did it for THAT reason. I majored in Accounting and worked as such for 2 years and didn't like it that much, really. The problem wasn't so much the job as it was the specific place that I worked and I think it put a semi-permanent bad taste in my mouth about the profession. I worked to get all my ducks in a row to quit the job, did so, and began flight instructing, built several hundred hours of dual (loved every bit of it, BTW), and finally got hired at the airline. I commute a 1000 miles to work and back every trip - which gets old. I am halfway up the list and get 14-15 days off a month, hold a decent line, etc. It could be much worse, admittedly.

The problem is that I don't like feeling like a pawn on someone elses chess board. Pilots have been debased to nothing but bus drivers. The way we are treated by and large is beneath me. Depsite the negaitves of the accounting gig, I felt like a professional and was treated accordingly. I crashpad with some AA mainline guys and they tell me they are telling their kids to stay away from this industry. Their domiciles get moved at the whim of the company, etc. And to top it all off, I cannot RELY on this job for my family's livelihood. The money will be decent in time, but the industry is so fickle, I'd hate to have to rely upon this frail field to but bread on the table and keep the lights on, etc. I hate having to reinterview for my job every year, and the whole seniority thing sucks. If I move to a new company, I am so jr again and life sucks again and I am at risk of furlough again. In accounting, I move to another company and my experience comes with me.

So many people majored in Aviation something, and I didn't. I have another skill that will never go out of demand and with which I can make money reliably, be at home every night, have every weekend off, every holiday off, be with my children (when I have them) every night and weekend. And, my goal would be to pay my dues to learn all I could learn, then open my own firm and build a small client base and make my own path. With the airline thing, I'll always be working for "The Man", hoping my cell phone won't ring on the last day of a trip, etc.

The problem is. I love to fly way more than doing taxes. I could buy my own airplane (Decathlon or something similar) within a couple years and fly pretty regularly without an SOP, GOM, or needing a clearance to scratch my ass, which would probably keep me satisfied as regards aviation. Airline flying is't a lot of fun, really. Kind of boring. Should I take the accounting route, I surely won't retire with 30,000 hours in the log book, but I maybe....just maybe would have led a better quality life along the way.

I know that a job is a job and the grass, more times than not, really isn't greener on the other side. But this industry sucks in a lot of ways and I am afraid it'll never be GREAT. Decent, maybe, but thats it.

Thoughts? I'd like to hear from guys who worked their way up through the regionals and have "arrived" so to speak at their final job. Was it worth it? Even now? If you could have done something else, would you have?