AspiringAviator

Hey everyone thanks for any advice, I've enrolled in a flight school to get my PPL with Hope to fly regional/commerical in the near future. But now I'm freaked out thinking any future career in aviation is completely gone.

At the beginning of the year my wife and I moved to AZ from CA, about a week later heading back to CA I got stopped in my Corvette cruising along at 96 MPH in the middle of the desert and get told i'm under arrest for "Criminal Speeding" get to spend the night in jail for the first time in my life over a speeding ticket, found out AZ does not expunge your record for criminal charges so I spend $2,000 on a lawyer, fast forward 8 months and a **** load of court dates and I get an email today saying to review and sign for another $700 to go to trial..... over a speeding ticket?

The lawyer tells me even if we go to trial it will be an uphill battle, they could raise the fines even higher and ask for jail time, again over a speeding ticket, dont even know what to say.

At this point i'm just about ready to take the criminal speeding and have a nice day, $2700 for a speeding ticket? even more if it doesn't get dropped? I know friends with DUI's that didn't spend that much money nor did they go to trial.

Keep in mind this is with a Lawyer and a completely clean driving record not one ticket in my life (12 years of driving), had just moved here a week before, already spent a night in jail, sold the corvette, never been stopped again, first offense ever and they refuse to lower it from criminal to a regular speeding ticket.

Will it be impossible to fly commercially now with this on my record? Did I just kiss my future career goodbye?

Cant wait to wrap up this year and get the hell back to CA.

TLDR : first speeding ticket in my life, in one of the only states that does not expunge and charges you with a class 3 misdemeanor (lowest misdemeanor possible) criminal charge for anything over 85 mph, am I completely ****ed for any career in the aviation industry now?

rickair7777

Better than a DUI IMO. Obviously try like hell to avoid jail.

I suspect if this is your one and only black mark it would be of minimal impact, assuming you can explain that you were in the middle of nowhere on a desert highway (I've cruised at 120+ on a bike out there, hoping a jackrabbit didn't jump out in front of me).

But your age probably matters, best if you're under age 25, better yet under 20. They expect kids to do stuff like that, not so much 30-something+ adults.

USMCFLYR

You didn’t get a speeding ticket. You were arrested for ‘Reckless Driving’. That is worse than a speeding ticket. In most places I’ve lived, that is more than 20 mph over the posted speed limit.

DontLookDown

If you have 12 years of clean driving you should be able to get this arrest dropped. Maybe get a better lawyer

Excargodog

While I generally believe rickair is right, and you MAY be able to just put this behind you and move on, I’d be far more concerned about your total lack of insight here. Let’s look at your statement.


Your whole statement sort of reeks of lack of insight and victim hood. Nowhere do you even appear to acknowledge that you did anything wrong, that perhaps you might share a little bit of the blame, or that perhaps driving 96 MPH on a public road when you ostensibly want to have a career in the transportation business might not have been your brightest move. Instead it comes across as Arizona sucks, what right do they have to criminalize going 96 mph on their highways, and it was only an effin’ speeding ticket so what’s the big effin’ deal?

You come across as an entitled idiot with no insight and little impulse control who has learned nothing from the experience. Were I doing the hiring if that were the story you told, I’d blackball you in a heartbeat. For that matter, if you told this story LIKE THIS to your AME he might well defer pending a psych work up.

It’s said that integrity is doing the right thing even if no one is looking. That’s important in the transportation industry, especially in aviation. So is impulse control.

About 15 years ago a couple of our fellow pilots on a repositioning flight decided to join the 410 club, just for a lark.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/...ts/AAR0701.pdf

There was no necessity for them to go to FL410 on a repositioning flight. Probably if it hadn’t been a repositioning flight - if there had actually been other people aboard - they might not have done that. We don’t know. But at least having only the two of them on board kept anyone else from dying of their lack of professionalism.

And that’s what your attitude is doing right now, setting off alarms about your lack of insight and lack of impulse control.

But what airlines want is people they can trust, people with the integrity to do the right thing to begin with and take responsibility for their actions when they’ve made mistakes. They do not want people who whine that the rules are unfair. Going into an interview and telling a major airline hiring team this story LIKE YOU’VE TOLD US would not get you hired. It wouldn’t even get you the standard Thanks But No Thanks letter. It would get you the Don’t Let The Door Hit You In the Butt On the Way Out and Don’t Come Back treatment.

Now hopefully you are young and will have time to live this down, but if you don’t lose the attitude, you probably can indeed kiss a major airline career good-bye. And I do mean LOSE it. Just covering it up won’t be enough.

galaxy flyer

I suspect getting arrest for 96 mph in Cali wouldn’t be a “slap on the wrist” violation. It isn’t a joke and you’re not a victim of the state of Arizona.


Gf

SonicFlyer

Many times speed limits are BS. On an open, flat, straight road in the middle of the desert, this may be one of them.

galaxy flyer

However much I might agree with you, it’s illegal and civil disobedience isn’t a trait valued in pilots.

JamesNoBrakes

Well, the golden rule is, if you are going to go that fast, make damn sure no one else is watching.

When people tell me "wow, I'd get so many speeding tickets if I was driving that" I just shake my head. I haven't driven any modern car where you can't control the speed or aren't fully aware of how fast you are going.

wrxpilot

That definitely sucks, and most of us former gear heads turned pilots have visited the triple digits on occasion. I’ll at least admit I’ve been there a few times, particularly when I rode sportbikes. It was always away from everyone, and I was pretty young and fearless (mid-20s).

As usual, many of us are just lucky we never got caught. I’m sure some judgemental dork will be on here shortly to say how horrible you are, but I definitely sympathize and hope you’re able to get past this BS in short order.