I volunteer at a high school that has an aviation program, and here is what I tell the kids there:

1. Get your education first and foremost! Keep your grades up, don't let them slip. Grades may not seem important, but I can tell you, I'm being asked what my GPA is on job applications. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean High School GPA, but it follows through to college. A college degree is not just important, it's mandatory. Sure there are guys in these forums who don't have a four year degree and are doing quite well in civilian aviation, but that time is about to come to an end. It's no longer enough to just have a High School diploma, a four year degree is the new standard.

2. Volunteer! Volunteer in your community, volunteer at your school, give back. Why? Well, not only do you personally get satisfaction from helping others out, but you also get to learn and network. Remember that word "network".

3. Get involved! Join French Club, join Science Club, join Drama Club, join something. Don't just sit inside playing playstation all day. Colleges and employers want to see a "well rounded individual". The more interests you have outside of aviation, the more developed and diverse your personality becomes, the more people want to know you and know of you.

You'll notice I haven't said anything about flying, aviation or airplanes yet. I didn't go the civilian route, I went into the Air Force, they taught me how to fly. Some of the BEST training in the world, if not the BEST aviation training you can receive, and the Air Force pays you while you're learning. Aviation colleges are great, but expensive and the first thing that will keep you from an aviation career is debt. Most colleges have a ROTC detachment, and you cannot become a military pilot without a college degree. Or, there's always the Air Force Academy or the Navy Academy. The military isn't for everyone and once they train you up, you'll owe them ten years of commitment, but it can't be beat for experience and training.

But, rather than try to sell you on the military, go back to my first three steps and reread them. If you do that, you'll develop the interpersonal skills, the devotion and the discipline to become a pilot. Becoming a pilot is hard work, it's not for everyone, but it sounds like you got a good head on your shoulders and are starting on your way. There's going to be a lot of obstacles, roadblocks and adversity in your path, but hard work, optimism and dedication can get you through.

Good luck!

 

I tell them that there are people that win the lottery too, but would you PLAN your retirement based on winning the lottery? There is always the *exception* story - but you are safer playing the MAJORITY. In aviation - that means getting a 4 year degree win something if you want to be in the airlines.


Plus - as we are learning in the Alaska Airline hiring thread - it matters to some employers and it could certainly matter to some selection board if you are trying to get into the military on some level.

Concur 100% - AND TAKE LEADERSHIP ROLES in these organizations if possible. Reasoning? See above.

This is where I might disagree 'semantically' with galaxy flyer when he says "...give you the training for free...."
You may not pay an actual dollar cost associated with your training, and in fact get paid for it, but that 10 year commitment of your life and time is a cost. Many in today's 'give it to me now' society can't fathom such an initial commitment, and you can't just buy your way out of it.

 

Thank you for your reply. That was the impression I got. I did some instrument recurrency with the local crop duster. It seemed like there was a lot to do now in order to get into that type of flying.

As an interesting side note, the guy came in and rented our nicest twin to do the instrument work, and didn't seem to care about the cost. Not sure if it was the income he had or being single....but yeah he could not have cared less what the bill was that day.

 

USMCFLYR

'Tis very true, military training is "free" only in the out-of-pocket expenses. It cost me a broken back, several lost friends, and loads of commitment. Worth it all. As someone wrote, joining is writing a check to the Government payable for an amount up to life.

GF

 

All that is true, I've experienced the same. Lost friends, a bum knee, a bum wrist, and worst of all, the Poo Pond at Kandahar.

BUT, it's not all financially free either. Still have to buy PT gear, still have to pay for kneeboards, dollar ride gifts, there's Track Select and Drop Night parties to pay for and of course the multi-hundred dollar Mess Dress for graduation. All not directly related to pilot training, but for my friends on 2LT pay, with student loans to pay for, it put a dent in their budgets the entire year I was at UPT.

 

Ha! The old poo pond at Kandahar! Memories....

 

It's easier to get into nearly any segment of aviation than into aerial application. By and large, it's not an entry level job.

Traditionally, one had to show up with solid maintenance skills, conventional gear (tailwheel) skills, and certified. One loaded chemicals, worked fields, flagged, and performed other duties for several years, gradually working into a seat. Usually a cub with a Sorenson belly rig, eventually a Cat or Ag Wagon, etc. There are rare occasions when someone gets a first job in ag, but very, very rare, and very limited in scope.

Bull****.

In fact, there's a trend away from the four year degree in some cases today, as cost has far exceeded value.

Did it? I'm still doing it.

"Bush" experience doesn't mean much in an agricultural context.

It wasn't any easier to get into ag when I started than it is now. The biggest difference is that there are fewer jobs, with the industry smaller, and bigger turbine aircraft doing the work of a number of smaller ones. Less movement. A little less opportunity.

When I started, I was all-tailwheel, and I had an ag background. I did aircraft maintenance. It's all I did in high school...fly, turn wrenches, etc. No social life, very dedicated to my work, move to accommodate the spray season, you break it you fix it, lots of handling of very toxic substances, lots of hours inspecting fields, driving tractors, repairing trucks, and working into the dead of night in small Kansas towns. I flagged, I mixed, I hauled, I drilled, I drove, and I flew.

Ag work doesn't have much dual available. It's a plane-side single-seat cockpit checkout in most cases. Your first dual is your first solo, and you're gambling the rest of your career on the outcome. Groundloop an airplane, catch a wire or a wingtip, or tear something up, and you'll be looking for another job for a long time to come, if you survive. When I started, the national aerial applicators association ran an article about ag stats; back then the average lifespan for a spray pilot was seven years (counting those who lasted a lifetime, and those who didn't make it through their first season). Something to consider.

The flying is the easy part, and the smallest part. Aircraft maintenance, crop inspection, chemical recommendation, handling, etc, are all important parts of doing ag work.

There are a lot of different aspects of ag work, from spraying corn and row crops to fertalizing pine trees in the winter, to seeding and treating rice, to spraying coca on Colombian hillsides, to working wild fires. Lots of different specialties, lots of different unique opportunities.

I gave a flight review this morning in a Cessna 180 to a young man (and when I say young I say fifty years young) who has been flying about a thousand or so hours a year doing fire and fertilizing trees. He's been doing that for ten or so years, and had a long background doing other things prior to that. When a job comes open, many times he will be your competition. Ten or fifteen thousand hours of ag. The main ag airplane out there these days is the Air Tractor 802, which is the largest single engine production commercial airplane today, at about sixteen thousand pounds (gross). Fourteen hundred horsepower, and more than half the weight is useful load. They're not really stable, not really something to trim up and forget. They're not pretty. It's nearly impossible to find a job in an 802 without 802 experience. People like that young man are the competition for those jobs, with thousands of hours in 802's...and it's not just the time in type; it's the mountain time in type at low altitude while dispensing economic poisons and doing other related duties, that counts.

A single drift claim during a spray season is enough to cause a law suit that can put an operator out of business. Being a foot off altitude or a little right or left on a field is enough to cause skips and drift, and that's enough to lose one's pay for the year, destroy the employe, and ruin one's career. Some of the flying is in the daytime, and some is at night. It's precise, much akin to flying an ILS, every 30 seconds, but with obstacles and an obscured windscreen, often in wind and occasionally in weather.

It's demanding work. It's rewarding work, but it's by no uncertain terms very demanding. I found myself using a cane to get around last year because my knees were swollen and painful from constant rudder work. It gets that way. I love the job, and always have (given drifting from different types of work at different times, as the needs and seasons have allowed), but generally speaking its not entry level, and its still the closest thing to barnstorming-era flying (albeit done professionally) left today. It wasn't easy to find work when I was young, and isn't so easy today (although the time between my applying for my current position, and being called was fifteen minutes).

Don't believe that a degree is the key to the future. It's useful, but there are a lot of people with degrees plying the register at McDonalds. My brother, who graduated top of his class and owns two veterinarian clinics, recently put out an ad for a new doctor. A young woman showed up with three hundred thousand in debt, and wanted sixty five grand to start. She was asking nearly double her worth, and far more than she could bring in for the practice. She was disappointed to learn that after all her hard work, she'd have to work several jobs for years to even scratch the surface in getting ahead. Do what works best for you, and I'd never discourage college, but don't let anybody tell you that you're going nowhere without it, because it's a bald-faced lie. It's simply not true. Do what's best for you. Try several paths. You'll find one that works best, but find the one that works best for you, not for anyone else.

 

It's not the key to the future, but at a minimum it's a ticket punch required for a lot of aviation jobs...especially jobs handed out by larger corporations.

Unless you know for a fact starting out that your aviation path will go down the road less travelled, you had better get the degree. If you're smart, you'll get one that will give you a fallback position. There are also many vocational trades which can serve as a fallback, but most of them will not help you get pilot jobs.

There's all kinds of talk about the cost vs. benefit of college these days, and I happen to agree that the math is questionable when you're talking six figures and years of debt for a "Fill-in-the-Blank Studies" degree...you can get a waitress job right out of HS, no need to spend all that time and money on a BA first. But corporate america is still status quo, so degrees are still something most of us need for the time being.

 

There's no doubt that a degree has merit, but not for all segments of the industry, and in virtually all cases, not at the entry level phases of the industry...which can last a decade or more.

It's very possible to begin one's career and complete a degree (if one is so inclined) online.

While one may wish to seek a degree in an external discipline, there are more considerations than simply having the degree. A 4 year degree in most cases is inadequate to qualify one for a profession; additional schooling is generally necessary. Many college graduates, in fact by far the large majority, do not work within their major field. That is to say, a liberal arts major who is working in the mail room of Barnes and Hitchcock, working the way up to a clerk desk, or the Political Science major who is a sales consultant for Franklin Ford isn't necessarily there on the merits of the major. The degree may have been a deciding factor in the employment, but not necessarily the discipline.

In aviation, nobody cares about the source of the degree (save that it be from an accredited institution, of which there are multiple flavors), nor the discipline. Whether one was an astrophysics major, a political science major, or one got through on an aviation discipline is quite inconsequential to a GIV job or a major airline application. A few target areas (such as Astronaut) look for science majors, but very few do so.

A business degree will get one about as far as anything these days, and there are many business disciplines. Computer programming and various computer science disciplines continue to be in demand, as to family psychology certifications. In many cases, post graudate work is desired, but not at all for aviation. Having a masters over a BA or BS makes little difference in competitiveness. It may make one more marketable, but if one excludes aviation to the tune of concentrating on a post-graudate degree, one may well be throwing away one's aviation career in the process. Far better to get through those early lean years of entry level work, and hammer out the degree while sitting at an outstation all day for Ameriflight, than to put off the flying for another seven years while one works toward a degree one may never use (or that one intends to use as a fall-back).

A degree is not necessary to seek employment with a regional, and it isn't necessary to seek an upgrade. I've noted before that the loftiest position I've thus far attained in my checkered past has been that of 747 captain...and that I did without a degree.

I don't encourage people to forgo an education. Quite the contrary. I will say, however, that if one intends to pursue aviation and still wishes to have a degree, the two are not mutually exclusive unless one goes to school full time. In that case, pursuit of a degree makes it exclusive until the education is over (unless one is doing an aviation degree...which makes for some very expensive flight training). Getting the training done inexpensively, getting one's career established, and hammering out the degree on the side makes a lot more sense, for a lot of people. It's becoming increasingly popular today, particularly as many programs are offering considerable credit (ACE, etc) for FAA certification. ERAU offered me 89 credits, I believe, based on my various FAA certificates. Not all were applicable to the degree, of course, but that's a lot of money not needing to be spent on credits, and a lot of time not needing to be spent doing redundant bookwork, to say nothing of a lot less time needed craming for tests in subjects one will never use, and paying for texts one will never likely read.

There is more than one way to skin a cat. Some are more effective than others.

 

Plenty of good advice has been offered; though as far as continued education, don't discount the value of an A&P certificate. It is finally being recognized as at least the equivalent of an AA degree by many companies and it is a major feather in your cap for landing a pilot job. It is especially desireable from the lowest entry level job to the top of the corporate world. It also shows that you can perform, at least, some minor maintenance, save them from getting ripped in a shop, supervise maintenence away from base, and that you really know what makes the aircraft tick, or not tick... If you want to fly in the corporate world; you could get your flying ratings and a job in corporate maintenance department, earn the A&P there if you don't already have it, then you are pretty much a shoe in...