LR2205

I agree. No offense to the bad speller in this thread, it's nothing personal. But I have a difficult time taking people seriously and/or treating them as professionals when their spelling/grammar is so terrible. To me it's like showing up to an interview in sweat pants and a t-shirt. You might be a genius, but it sure it hard to take the focus off those sweat pants. Again, nothing personal, but I would suggest maybe taking a writing/grammar/english class at your local community college.

In addition, and this is only meant to help you, when applying for a position to fly a $20+ million piece of equipement, I would think that they want good grammar skills at the least.

rickair7777

An AA will not matter much but may be better than no degree as far as a regionals go.

Doing an initial rating program which uses ME aircraft MIGHT have an economic advantage. The reason for this is that you will need some amount of ME time (100-300 hours) to get a regional job.

You may be able to get a job flying ME aircraft as a flight instructor or night cargo pilot, but some folks end up buying 50-100 hours of ME time just so they can apply to an airline.

If you were to end up doing that, it would have been more cost-effective to do a program where you earn your ratings in a twin. Since you would have to at least pay the cost of a single-engine airplane for your ratings, the incremental cost of the twin time in that scenario would be less than the hourly rate.

The trick is that you don't know early on if you will need to buy twin time later (hard to say what opportunities will exist in a couple of years), so you have to decide whether to spend more up front to get the twin time knocked out, or save some coin and hope to find an MEI/Night Freight job later.

The night freight people have been hiring almost continuously, even through the bad economy. It's not a pleasant lifestyle for most, so people quit for other careers if no airline jobs are available.

Also plan on need 1200TT / 100ME hours to get a night freight job, and 1500TT / 100-300ME for a regional job. Odds are good that you will need 1000TT / 50ME to get an MEI job.

2nd chance

Thank you Rickair7777

EYELS

I did it at 47. You sure you want to start abusing your middle-aged body? You sure you want to fly pretty much every trip with crewmembers who are considerably younger than you? You sure you want to work in an industry where there are very few smiling faces? You sure there isn’t something else you’d rather do that’s less stressful and on a flexible schedule while still giving you time to fly as a hobby? Just asking.

Marvin

Others may think differently, but in your circumstances I would recommend going the corporate route. There are a WIDE range of options in the corporate world. If you can find the right gig, you can do very well -- and in many cases, they will pay for some/much of your training once you get enough hours to qualify.

Definitely take the advice from a post above -- go get an FAA 1st Class Medical. If you can't get one, then that simplifies your decision.

My advice, if you decide to do this, would be to start working on the ratings & building up hours, and at the same time start networking with the corporate guys at the local airport. Corporate operations tend to hire people they know and like, and they will frequently give preference to someone they know and like over someone with a very impressive resume. Networking is CRITICAL in the corporate world, probably moreso than in any other category of professional flying.

FWIW, I am not a corporate guy -- I fly for an LCC, but I worked for a while at one of the larger corporate training companies so I had a good deal of exposure to the corporate world and corporate pilots. I think that, starting out at your age, the corporate route might be the best way to give you a shot at achieving a satisfying career.

I'm sure others will let me know if they disagree ... :-)