I would instruck until part 135 mins (1200), then get a job with Ameriflight, airnow, or Keylime

What are those places like to work for? I should have 135 mins in about 2 months...

The flying in the Caribbean is fun, that's for sure but it is a very expensive place to live.
Not for the person who is on a budget or has a family.
Good luck.
PB

Go to Ameriflight.. They have a base in PR as well.. www.ameriflight.com

Why do people do this to their families?

Do you think my family is better off if I stayed chained to a desk for the rest of my life and I was totally miserable? Either you have my dream job, or you are interested in the same thing. How does your family handle it? My goal was to join the DESO program at Cathay, but I guess I need to get some real world experience first. I have their published mins (over 1000tt with 250 multi and 935 PIC), but I know that will not even merit a glance unless I have turbine PIC. :(
I would LOVE your advice on how to gain what CX wants!

Proskuneho,

Maybe none of my business ... but here's my $.02;

Get your MBA and get a good job doing something lucrative like investment banking or something. While you are on your way to that position, keep flying. Maybe continue to flight instruct or look locally for a part time job in something turbine sitting in the right seat and swing the gear for a while. Or buy a small single or an old light twin when you can and slowly build some hours that way. Add to your knowledge by taking some aerobatic instruction. Look into creating a side business with your plane by creating a syndicate or partnership of some sort.

After a while, you will be in a financial position to buy yourself a nice aircraft and fly for yourself taking your family on vacations and really enjoying the experience of being a pilot.

Much better to own the plane you fly that to have a boss telling you when and where to fly.

I appreciate your desire to have a job doing something that you really love to do, but there is a terrible tradeoff when your career and your family's financial stability is in a totally unstable industry and often in the hands of some greedy morons who have neither the intelligence nor the vision to lead an airline down a survivable path.

I chose the path you are on and now regret it. Yes, I DO love to fly and have had many many wonderful hours aloft feeling that I was stealing from somebody when I was getting paid to enjoy steering a big jet all over the world. Now I, along with thousands of other pilots, are stressing over how to house and feed our spouses and children because fuel prices have spiked, or the industry is in a tailspin, or your company is mismanaged so badly that their best solution is to pay their strongest competitor a billion dollars a year to literally take business away from them while they fire a thousand of their own pilots (maybe you can detect a hint of bitterness here).

I had a student while I was flight instructing who took the path you are thinking about leaving. He now enjoys a financially worry free life and flies his family to vacations in his own Citation. On the weekends, he enjoys an occasional loop and roll in his Citabria.

Think twice before you leap into this industry. It looks sexy from the airport fence, but there is far more turbulence than meets the eye.

8

P.S. Then again, just be sure you don't go to work for AIG, or Indy Mac, or Lehman Bros., or Merrill Lynch, or ...

Well said.

I've got to agree, well said DC8Driver!

I too love flying and enjoy it more than anything else I've ever done...but the airline life has sucked that love clean out of me. Its no longer fun or even enjoyable. Its just another job that you go and do. You work long hard hours, live out of a suitcase, don't get to see your family and don't get paid much for your efforts (at least not for the 1st 10 years or so). I'm looking for the emergency exit right now...because I'm not going to last in this industry. It looked awesome on paper, but the reality of it stinks. The rest of the starry eyed dreamers on here will realize that in a few years too. I haven't met many 30 year pilots that are still totally in love with what they do. It pays the bills and its all they know.

The only perk I enjoy is the travel benefits. But its totally useless because I seldom have the time to go anywhere. When I'm not working I want to be home with my family and friends. Not sitting in an airplane or another airport.

You don't do this job because you love flying. Not for long anyhow. Not anymore. That glory is gone.

short-sighted gain
 

Exactly. I doubt I would be able to make that kind of money. My dilemma is that it seems like someone needs to be missing some moral scruples to guarantee that kind of personal financial success. I admit that I have met people who made millions the honest way, but most of the millionaires that I know certainly did not. I am not the type to backstab, lie, and cheat to claw my way up the corporate ladder to the place where I can buy my own light jet. Perhaps the largest contributing factor to my departure from management was the fact that another mid-level manager was undermining me to make himself look better. I don't want to play that game. I left middle school a long time ago. Two of the millionaires that I know told me that I was "too honest" and I would get eaten alive.
Meanwhile, "leadership" for some of the companies that you listed above have taken massive bonuses while their companies, employees, and investors all suffer huge losses. That's not my style. Short-sighted profit schemes will not make me happy. My conscience is too loud. I would be one of those guys who got fired for not "doing what it takes" (meaning something unsavory) to increase profits. Just as there are many pilots angry and disillusioned about greedy and/or incompetent airline execs, I feel disillusioned about what it takes to be "successful" in the business world. It seems the conventional thinking is so short sighted - make money NOW, no matter what. (And look what that has done to the world economy!)
I know that the airline life is hard. But at least my cell phone won't be ringing with everyone's crises every time I am with my family. Compared to what I did for ten years, I'm certain it will be less stress.
I agree that I need to finish my MBA as a fall-back plan though.

Thanks again.