For those who posted Petroleum Engineering as the "big money ticket", there is a similar thing in that field to aviation.

Start off at a service company, and try to get on with a major.

If you don't get on with a major in 3-5 years, you get branded a service company "lifer" and would take a major pay hit to got to a major at first. So a lot never leave.

I made $115k or so last year working for Baker Hughes. (Service Company).
I was on the road 330 days last year. I had 20 actual days off all year, weekends, vacation, holidays all together.

I was also working 14-18 hour days, 90+ days without a day off. And the second a customer so much as balked at the bill or "your trucks left ruts on the access road" they would dock half your pay (half-ish was salary, another half was "operations bonus", so ****ty, but legal).

Leave on a "2 week job". Come home 4 months later. Be home 36 hours then go to Africa for 2 months.

F. That. Noise.

If it was $250k a year, it may be worth doing for a year or two to pay off student loans, buy a house cash, etc.

But for $115. No way.

Also, if you think Airline company management sucks.. BHI owes me $6k in pay, and I'm having to sue them for it. Why? Because my company issued laptop, that was 2 years old, has scratches on it, and my company iPhone has a small crack in the screen (can't even see unless it's out of it's Otterbox) and they "have to take the cost of replacement" out of my final check. Nevermind it's lived on oil rigs for the last two years and the scratches are only cosmetic.

Oh, and to buy that exact laptop new from Dell is about $1200.

 

That doesn't appeal to me as a very persuasive argument against aircraft ownership. Are you an aircraft owner? Because I gotta tell you, I am, and your numbers are waaay skewed by the fact you assume the entry point to GA is a 160K airplane.

If you bought a 160K airplane that burns 7GPH (i.e. an LSA or Cessna 162), then you're doing it wrong.

I've posted my numbers on this board before, but to reiterate, if you own a 40-60K airplane that goes 130-150kts and burns 8-13GPH (btw between where I live and where I go, gas is between 4.50 and 6.50, which means if your average fill up is at pumps that cost 7/gal, you're again, doing it wrong), insurance, the same hangar cost (which admittedly is low for urban areas) and an amortized nominal mx of 5k/yr, you're looking at 12-20K/yr depending on how many hours you fly. That's an airplane that gets you 500NM in four hours or less. That's 12 hours each way minimum in a car btw, accounting for the fact you can't drive to your destination great-arc.

Both my Piper WarriorII and Piper ArrowII all-in costs have been below 15K/yr. On the WarriorII I flew 265 hours in one year no less! More typical use should be 100 hours or less, which is what I'm on trend to fly on the Arrow this year.

As to overhaul costs, more like 25K for a to-new limits on an injected four banger, less for carbed small bore 4-banger. You can slip and crack your neck on the bathtub. That risk doesn't deter me from taking showers while living. Worst case scenario catastrophic engine failures (which don't happen often in the aggregate) don't deter me from owning and flying private aircraft.

--break break--

As to the engineering jab, well of course! I didn't suggest one go get a pedestrian job that pays peanuts, like engineering. That wasn't the point. The point was that if you're not going to enjoy your job as much as flying an airplane would, you gotta get a job that makes a heck of a lot more than flying an ERJ whilst giving you the time to afford recreational aviation. Working the oil rig support jobs doesn't count, when you have to be gone 330 days a year to get 115K. If you were home every night for 115K then that would be construed as a good job, and I know first-hand you could afford private ownership on that money. But 115K gone 330/yr is not a good job, that's called the [pedestrian] military. I wouldn't do that, airplane or no airplane. Don't kid yourself, that's just paying for my wife and her lover to live well in "everyone wants to move here" Florida while I hump it in South Dakota or wherever the eff. (no disrespect intended your way, E2CMaster)

I'm not suggesting airplane ownership is cheap, but it does beat flying an ERJ for 50K/yr. Making six figures as a pilot is easier money than earning it as a pedestrian, BUT, it's a lot easier to attain a six figure job in the first place as a pedestrian than as a civilian airline pilot. That's why I bring up private aircraft ownership. Now, if you're in the life position where you self-assess that the aggregate sum of your talents, the education you can honestly successfully complete, and/or your inclinations towards work, only net you at best a 65K/yr job in the real economy, then perhaps it would be reasonable for that individual to pursue a starving pilot career. At that point I'd agree, you're not foregoing anything. I just happen to believe I can command more than 60K/yr as a pedestrian, so flying an ERJ for 50K is a grave opportunity cost to me if I wasn't making six figures flying airplanes.

 

Sorry E2.
You're not allowed to tell stories of how other jobs in other industries have challenges/problems, long work days, time away from home, poor relations with management, etc.... Because we all know aviation has a corner in the 'worst career ever' market
Thanks for a dose of reality.

Here in OK I know the husband of a couple who works in the *majors* with a petroleum engineer type if job I guess. I'm not 100% sure if the job but he travels extensively - enough that there were some years that I'd rather have my USMC schedule - but overall he seems to be happy and has recently taken a job with a firm in Houston. Since he, his wife, and both families are are local, it must have been quite lucrative to lure him away.

There are challenges and rewards in every aspect of life.

 

Hind sight really is 20/20. I thank you for your candid response. I have never owned an airplane (as I’m sure you can tell). Those numbers I came up with was a possible scenario I used for what I thought I could try to afford in terms of the amount of time I would like to fly and how much the aircraft could cost. BTW, the aircraft in question was a mid 80’s beechcraft F33A Bonanza (not the greatest choice for anyone’s first foray into aircraft ownership). In any case, the latter half of your counter point to my cost of ownership you said you averaged about 15k per year spending on a GA aircraft. That’s a heck of a lot of money for a hobby; especially on what the OP would assume would be his/her starting salary. With a salary that low there are so many more priorities that have to be addressed before you can begin thinking about flying GA for a hobby, i.e. rent/mortgage, household bills, retirement planning, etc. Eventually our engineer will make great money allowing him or her to pursue GA as a hobby. However, most professionals put in more than 40hr. per week, leaving our OP with precious little time to fly. Ultimately, my argument for being a professional pilot is this: assess what’s more important to you, flying or money. Sure, you could be a GA pilot making fantastic money in whatever your chosen profession is and maybe cobble together a few hundred hours per year if you have that kind of scratch, or you could become a professional pilot and fly just about everyday for the rest of your life (or until you retire at 65, or get furloughed, or get your medical pulled) and the money will come for you as a pilot…eventually....if you're persistant...and lucky.

 

Let me put it this way, I'm making 80%+ of what I was working the oil field, flying King Airs, and have 6 months off a year. The actual loss of income is being more than made up with being able to go back to SELRES from the IRR, and I'm not killing myself with drilling either.

(Bare minimum Reserve pay is $15k+ doing 4 drills/mo averaged out over the course of the year for an O-4 over 14)

 

Very true. But the big (really big) difference in airline aviation is the seniority system...if you wind up in a bad situation, you can't just make a lateral move and keep your position, income, and schedule...you start over at the bottom slinging gear for someone who may be half your age.

 

Hate to say it, but it's kind of that way on the outside.

Try getting out of the military at 33, and going right into the job where guys who have worked there since college are. Not going to happen in most places.

I got paid essentially the same, worked the same, and shat on the same as a kid who graduated from school a month before I got out of the Navy.

 

Engineering can be lucrative, I know several at Boeing that do quite well. They get to travel to different countries to work on projects, do investigations, etc. It's not a "sit at your computer all day" job, unless that's the one you hold out for. The bigger aerospace manufacturers know that they have to move people around and not just keep them glued to a computer.

 

I would never argue that the seniority system is both the saving grace and the biggest detriment to the airline pilot. It would seem to be one of the major factors in LUCK determining a person's eventual career outcome over many other weighted factors - and that is well.......life if you chose to play the game.

 

Yes. It's a necessity because without it pilot duty assignments would be at the whim of managers or schedulers, favorites would be played, and life would not be equitable. All of that actually played out in the distant past, which is why the seniority systems came about.

The downsides could be mitigated or eliminated by a nation-wide seniority list but as everybody knows that's probably a bridge to far.