Okay. I am a 15 year old in his freshman year of highschool. I want to become a commercial airline pilot without going through the military. What do i need to do to have a good chance of getting a job? (classes, collage degrees, etc...) Thanks

 

Get B's or better, spell check (college), go to your local flight school and take an intro flight. Flying gliders to start may be a good option as well. It's cheaper and you can solo at 14(I believe), 16 for powered aircraft. Degree discipline doesn't matter. What ever interests you, preferably non-aviation relation unless it's engineering.

 

What Slice said.

But a military flying background will give you a tremendous advantage in the airline business. As a civilian you will earn starvation wages for several years, followed by poverty wages for ten years or so. In the military your pay would be comparable to that of a higher-end degreed professional in the businsess world. Unless you are physically disqualified from the military for some reason, you might want to reconsider.

 

I'd agree that military is a good way to go but it's not like they take everybody who wants it. I've always felt it was pretty hard to get into.

Learn as much as you can as early as you can. Read books. Get a job at the airport pumping gas. Get a job and save money for your PPL at 17. Stay out of trouble. Plan on going to college (where and what your major is doesn't matter).

Check out this site, as it has a lot of info for a newbie. www.jetcareers.com

Also see this link to see how I did it.

http://www.jetcareers.com/content/view/65/132/

 

727 that's a great peice. Youth involvement is exactly what this county needs more of. I think American teens need a more solid means of character development than they have with family and public schools, and college has too much alcohol to do it, although the better schools have a variety of organizations. These organizations need to do as much as possible involve them. I got involved with one in college which has influenced me to this day. Now if only I had your success in aviation! I would like to fly for a living, and one day maybe will, but so far life has had other plans. The key is to find meaning in whatever you do.

 

What ever you do get the education a college degree is very important in this industry

 

I'm about to graduate high school so I'm in the same situation pretty much. All I have to say is - damn I'll probably want to go Private Pilot now. SO... basically what I'm getting is that if you become a pilot for a major airline you live out of a suitcase and have no real social life. I have also been researching aviation schools on a website and all of them have like 80%+ Male and 20%-women. I might reconsider the Major airlines and go for the small private jets. Go to a regular college and major in something else. Quality of life is way more important than some job. I want the college experience and don't want to miss out on it. After a couple weeks researching, the article posted above really revealed to me what I was thinking in the back of my mind all along. Being in the air for long periods of time would really take away from your life at home and once you age out of your mid 20's your college experience is pretty much over along with all fun times.

Yeah but my advice for you is to get the college experience-

as for me I dont know:
Maybe I'll go fly a black hawk in Iraq...

Be some kind of private pilot

get a DC-3 and do some coke runs between Miami and Cuba flying under the radar (JK JK)

 

I hear it is good money

 

Here is my two cents. If you can afford flight training on your own, Kudos to you because most of us can't. If you don't want military and can't afford it. Then you're going to have to get some serious loans $50K and up (mostly from Sallie Mae) for the actual flight training. Academics can be done from using government financial aid. Not to promote military service, but you can get the G.I. Bill that will cover 60% of training after your PPL. All you have to do is serve for a minimum of 30 months and you qualify. Thats how I'm doing my career training.