Originally Posted by
VacancyBid
Aiming for the airlines at your age is probably the wrong goal. There's a lot of interesting and/or decently paid flying outside the major air carrier environment. Charter, flying for private owners, instruction, etc ... Airline flying is 100% about seniority; why try to play a game you can't win?
I'd be perfectly fine with charters or private, etc. Would love to have a pension, but realize I'm probably too late for that anyhow.
I'd recommend looking at a couple items that give people trouble
1) Health. First thing I would do is book an aeromedical consultation with an FAA designated Aviation Medical Examiner (AME). DO NOT APPLY FOR AN FAA MEDICAL. Pay $150 to go see someone who can give you one and just ask him to go over the process with you and see if there's anything that would prevent or delay issuance of a first class medical. This gives you information but entails no risk. If you actually apply for the medical certificate and make a mistake, you can get lost in red tape for years.
Will do - I am pretty healthy - slightly overweight and slightly high cholesterol.
2) Time. Realistically, 25 hours a week is probably a minimum for study, travel to an from the airport, pre/post-flight activity and actual flying. Forty would be better and you would progress most rapidly at something like 60, approximating the full-time commitment of a high school or college student to all academic and extracurricular activities. Which leads us to
Would love to do full time if I can, I know interest rates are super high, making loans super expensive. If I didn't have kids to support, be less concerned about the debt. They're 13 and 15, so while kid expenses will go away, there will probably be college expenses.
3) Money. Flying is expensive. Especially when learning about it takes TIME that presumably makes it harder to make money. If you have $50K to put towards buying an airplane and another $50K in reserve for ownership and operating expenses that will be the cheapest overall route towards getting your ratings. (This assumes you have access to an airport where you can store and maintain said airplane and instructors who will teach you in it). Which leads us to
Anyone want to give me a loan at a decent interest rate :-)
4) Location. Do you currently live close to flight instruction, entry level jobs, mid-career jobs and destination jobs. Probably not. So how easily can you move to take advantage of such. The career path of a go-getting 18 year old might be 1) someplace sunny for flight school 2) someplace else to be an instructor 3) some beach to tow banners at 500 hours 4) Omaha because that's where the carvan freight job is 5) Indianapolis because that's the junior base for a regional 6) some other city closer to "home" as seniority allows. This isnt, at all, the only way to do things. But if you need to stay wherever it is you are for work or family obligations that places significant constraints on your career path. They may not be bad constraints but they'll definitely be relevant to planning.