Originally Posted by
rickair7777
With the price of fuel, you can probably get all of your ratings for about $40K (including CFI/CFII/MEI), but this can vary by location.
People often talk abot spending "$100K" to get into the airlines because some folks pay that or more at the large schools...and they usually reget it.
You might have to buy some ME time at some point, and at the entry level you may not make enough money to live on, so you might consider that an additional expense also if you have to borrow or spend savings.
Most regionals prefer a 4-year degree, but will not enforce that when they need pilots badly enough. But you can assume that you WILL NOT get a major airline job without a 4-year degree.
Be careful about being to willing to work for little or nothing just to break into aviation. Employers have mastered the art of luring young pilots for peanuts...but too often the stability and acceptable wages that you dream about never materialize. Your attitude actually is considered a disease in professional aviation....it's called Shiny Jet Syndrome (SJS). The problem is that when you work for nothing there is a probably a middle-aged professional pilot who is going to lose his job to you because you're cheaper. Of course what goes around comes around...YOU might get replaced by a low-time 22 year-old after you are established, making good money, and have a wife, kids, and mortgage.
I'm just being informative here, but if you made that post on other forums you would receive profanity in response.
I am getting mixed signals from everything I read here. Some say that there is no way of ever making a career in aviation, all hope is lost, give up now, woe is me. I assumed that these posts were from the pilots that have not yet found the success they want, so I took it with a grain of salt. Now you are saying if I enter the field with an attitude of working hard and not expecting much right away, I will be stuck in the cycle for the rest of my life, while being a homewrecker of older, higher paid pilots.
Bottom line, I am in this for all the right reasons. I want to be a pilot. I am determined to get what I want. If me being willing to work for lower wages gets someone laid off I think that is truly a ****ty thing, but it is the harsh reality of big business as all of you know. I know young kids like me are probably detested by the more experienced pilots in the field, having SJS as you call it.
I don't expect to work for a major airline without a college degree. I may decide to get a bachelors in a flight related field and I might not. All I want out of this is to be doing what I love and eventually make a reasonable living. When I say reasonable, I mean enough to have a roof over my head and food in my stomach.