Originally Posted by
DashDriverYV
What did it take for you to get to this job? How long? How much financial cost? How much personal sacrifice?
The reason I want to start this tread is to find out the true cost to get the job. If we find by comparison that it is fairly easy and any one can do it, we may be asking too much for this profession to ever be a profession again.
What I hope we find is that no mater what road we took to get here, it was at high cost, we did do something not everyone can do, and we should not sell ourselves short and continue flying airliners for low wages.
Be honest in you assessment of the path we take. We cannot compare ourselves to other professions such as Doctors, if the path is entirely different.
I began flying at age 15, washing airplanes trading for flight lessons at the local FBO. I slowly got the private done by age 18 and left flying for a while. While working my way thru school, I slowly paid for the Instrument rating. I quit college due to cost and took a job as a mechanic’s apprentice at the local FBO. While spinning wrenches, I bartered my time with aircraft owners doing oil changes and the like to fly their planes for the cost of gas. After a while, I had the hours to get the Commercial rating. I moved some planes around the country for a broker to build a few more hours. I paid in one lump sum for the Multi Commercial it St. Charles Mo. I got a break thru networking flying cargo for a year in 310s and 210s 135 VRF.
I applied to only one airline, Mesa. The training was done in Phoenix and I would not have to pay for a hotel room during ground. I was 25 years old.
All said and done, I have no student loans, I paid less than $15,000 for all of my flight training, but it took a long time.
For many of us that had to worked full time while going to school, while getting our ratings, it seems like it took longer, but in someways it was a lot cheaper.
I remember sitting there studying for my commercial at an FBO a few hundred miles from base, and a couple of kids from a very popular school (spelled with 3 letters
) came in. I started talking to them, turns out one of them had been flying less than 4 months, and he already had all his tickets and was building split time in their twins, and the other had never been in an airplane (ever) until 1 month before. Total cost for those guys for just their ratings and time $85K, my total cost without "microwaving" the process was a third of that, including my degree. Am I any better than those guys because it took me a long time to get to where I was going? Absolutely not. Am I better financially? Actually, yes, I was lucky enough to get hired later that year and I have 4 years left of my loans. How much do you think those guys have left?
It's all about perception, I still enjoy the gig, despite the ups and downs, but working for decent company under a good contract has made that possible.
goaround