So, give me the honest answer please. How do you balance your personal life and flying? As someone who's younger and single, it's something I'm worried about as I look at making the move into this career. Will I ever be able to go out on dates, or will everything end up revolving around life at an airline, and being in different cities?

How do other singles make it work? Just reassure me that I'm not doomed to have my only love be the plane! lol

 

I always thought the limiting factor in getting dates was my face and/or personality

Out of curiousity, for non .mil types how many of you are involved with

1) FA's or other airline staff
2) Nurses
3) Teachers

I seem to see that combo a LOT...

 

I met my wife in college at an Arenacross race. I was ugly before getting my face reconstructed and I didn't get better looking.

She works for a motocross race team and spends up to 31 weekends a year on the road. She's an Athletic Trainer so it's medical field but not a nurse.

a good chunk of the other 21 weekends are skiing (her) or vintage/vet mx races (me)

 

I like your proactive perspective here. The challenge is real. And one of the biggest problems I've noticed is that people *outside* of the industry have a certain idea of what it would be like to date an airline pilot, but then they learn the reality is much different.

So, in my opinion, the best approach is to seek out someone who is *familar* with the industry, but not necessarily *in* the industry. For example, they might have a close family member who is an airline pilot. They already understand the challenges of the "lifestyle" plus dating an airline pilot increases the chances of your compatibility with the family members.

Admittedly, this approach narrows the available candidates, but if you're thinking about finding a long term partner, you really should be very selective. One failed/toxic relationship is just too costly.

But if you're just dating for fun, then you can afford to be less selective.

Good luck. It's a jungle out there.

 

Airline staff is easy, people tend to to date co-workers anyway. Crew married to crew (FA or pilot) is actually pretty hard if you have kids, you end up bidding oppositite schedules and you see her at midnight when you get home but she needs to sleep because she's leaving at 0600.

Nurses (or docs) are very portable career-wise, lot to be said for that. Gives you flexibility with chasing bases and upgrades without screwing the spouse's career. They can also flex to part time to take care of kids and then easilt ramp back up as desired later on.

Teachers do seem to be a fit for many pilots, but they may be anchored to one town or state by their pension system.

While young and single, it is going to be harder to do a lot of dating... if you hit it off she's going to want to see you again soon, and frequently and the schedule interuptions aren't going to work for everyone. Better to do longer-term relationships.

Dating on layovers isn't really practical. In the old days you could socialize with FA's but that's risky business in this era. I won't even go out with them socially unless I've known them for a while, other than maybe a non-drinking kind of activity with a group. Aside from FA's your only practical options on the road are probably pay-to-play or swingers. Yes I've seen guys do both, and been invited to join them

 

Thanks all for the insight.

As to dating on layovers, I'm sure there are always some other pilots that are handsome around! haha I probably have a slight benefit there, being female.

 

 

Yeah that could work at the regionals, where the CA's you fly with are probably on average 2-3 years older than you. Majors, not so much, unless you like to call them Daddy. Assuming you're not an older career changer.

Being female it's a different situation, I'd guess most dudes would be more tolerant of intermittent relationship schedules. If you want kids, you're probably going to want to hang out in a high relative seniority situation for at least a few years while they're little, so you're home a lot.

 

The job will only take over your life if you let it.

I have a strict Work is work and Home is my life policy. You'll never find me wearing a bomber to the gym or my uniform to the grocery store, even on the way home. On layovers I do my own thing and don't let myself get sucked into going to the same places with the same people to eat the same food and talk about the same stuff we've just been talking about the last Xx hours.

I have aviation hobbies but I tell people no airline talk, which, when you lay down the law, tends to chase the My job is my only life people away, and exposes you to a whole different side of aviation when you're not presented as an "AIRLINE PILOT!!!!"

It also helps that I have interests outside of aviation so I'm exposed to a wide variety of people, and initially when I'm asked what I do I just tell people I'm a consulting engineer and travel a lot for work. I still take dance classes (Tap, right now. I'll get the time step down someday before I die.), hike a lot, and have met great people just hanging out at the local bookstore. (It helps that I'm a bit of a loner and don't need people around constantly.)


This is a dream job. You get exposed to so many different cultures, have so much time off and have so many opportunities, after a while you'll think nothing of finishing a trip and going to another city to see a concert or art exhibit instead of going home, and while you need to be careful as a woman (preach on, Saorise Roman), confident, strong men or women will be attracted to and not be afraid of you, and I know a lot of great marriages in the industry where the spouse is something wildly outside of aviation.

 

To your point, I have seen some very handsome regional captains that are younger! Honestly, even noticed a few younger mainline ones too.