SkyHigh

I can't say that my aim is to talk people out of flying. I believe that most who embark on training do not get a balanced view of the situation they face. All they get is Flying Magazine and Kit Darby.

I do not think that we should encourage other to pursue whatever silliness that enters their heads. Careful analysis is important for making such big life choices. Emotion can lead us easily astray. No one becomes a chiropractor, dentist or plumber because they dreamed of it as a kid. They did it to earn a good living. It is a measured sacrifice for a specific outcome.

It is one thing to learn how to play the guitar and take a shot at American Idol and another to blow close to a quarter of a million dollars and a few decades on a thin chance at an aviation career. There are no guarantees of anything in flying. You could lose your medical tomorrow and it would be all for naught.

It is easy on a forum like this to assume that my life is about typing on the computer. In fact I have moved on and have developed a nice life for myself outside of aviation. I visit this forum because it is a hobby of mine.

Skyhigh

SkyHigh

Back in the late 1990's and early 2000's I would frequent aviation employment conferences. Aside from the endless standing in line to hand a recruiter another sheet of paper on occasion I would attend a forum or two.

One had a HR representative from UAL who gave a speech on hiring practices and advice. She told us that at any one time there were between 16 to 20 thousand current and qualified pilots in the nation who were actively applying to the legacy air carriers. They all had equivalent levels of education and experience. Most applied to every legacy simultaneously.

I knew from my studies that the legacy airlines hired an average of 2000 pilots each year. At the time that placed the average qualified pilot at just shy of ten to one odds. So after surviving college, flight training, years of low wage experience building and the regionals to upgrade and 1000 hours of part 121 PIC a pilot reached a point where they only had ten to one odds.

That was ten years ago. Today the regionals have an even larger market share. There are also a legion of netjet type of pilots and a flood of military pilots that are due to separate from the military. On top of that the age 65 thing in addition to the shrinking legacy market and the odds are considerably worse.

To put that into perspective if your dream is to fly for UPS and all other conditions are equal you are competing against 18,000 pilots, or more, for the possibility of 100 job openings on an annual basis. 180 to 1.

Skyhigh

DeadHead

A Quarter of a Million Dollars???????????

What are you Helen Keller???

SaltyDog

That is where we are so very fundamentally different. I would pickup and move on (and I have many non aviation options that I would find employement and enjoyment).
The aviation experience as been a character builder, extremely satisfying and very instructive. I would pass on all that to others considering a military/commercial aviation career.
Good luck in your hobby.

SkyHigh

I think that the fundamental difference between us is that your stuff worked out and mine did not. You have not shared much about yourself however judging by your demeanor I would say that you were a military superstar that followed up with the legacy airline of your dreams.

When things work out the struggle to get there is referred to a "character building exercise". When your bills are paid the job becomes "satisfying". I did not experience those things. Most in aviation don't. I hope you can understand how disappointing that can be.

Especially after investing so much.

Skyhigh

SkyHigh

I had a conversation the other day with a college student who plans on spending 85K on his flight training plus another 65 to 80K on a four year degree. Add to that 4 to 8 years of lost earning capacity while working as a low wage CFI or regional FO and the total climbs rapidly.

250K is probably too low an estimate for the true cost of an aviation career today.

Skyhigh

hindsight2020

Oh come on brother, 3 years is nothing in aviation. You'll be back to engineering in no time, mark my words. And sounds like privately you recognize that. Yours was a calculated career change. A fully funded and insured-with-your-engineering-salary "life is a journey, not a destination" type approach to the private recognition that aviation is a fickle b$tch and you knew it going in, otherwise you would have not pursued engineering BEFORE you pursued aviation. But it would have been a completely different tune you'd be singing if you had done it the opposite way. I.e. going zero to hero about this pilot "yob", then deciding it wasn't panning out and now looking at 4 (really 5) years of engineering school while 10 years removed from your early 20s. You wouldn't be so copacetic about aviation being fickle then. And that's the difference between your approach to aviation and Skyhigh's.

From an engineering degree holder to another, let's not be disingenuous and pretend you and I are the epitome of the pilot demographic. We're not. The majority of folks want and do go zero to hero, sitting on factually flawed brochures of broken dreams and optimism-bias to rationalize their hardships with. Not prior career trust funds/financial independence/military pensions/guard-reserve jobs with which to subsidize this "cutsy" "life journey" of flying professionally until it gets retarded and then calling it an "enriching experience while it lasted" and par for the course. Like good engineers, let's get our boundary and initial conditions right before we go debate the results of that equation of motion A "career" you have to come in with all the returns on-hand BEFORE you're able to put forth the investment is merely and factually a HOBBY. I don't care how neat-o it is to do.

To put it in perspective, your example is even less applicable than SkyHigh's to the aspirant because you subsidized your entry into aviation with another career! If that is the de facto price of entry in order to not fall flat on your behind to pursue aviation, then people need to own up to it and advertise it as such. But that would crack open the "hobby" jab and people are not about to be labeled "amateurs" for all the responsibility they carry out and for such little money for a hardship, so they mask their sugar money and sources of financial solvency in order to distance their pro-aviation employment arguments from that accusation. SkyHigh merely points out that absent these artificialities, your so loved profession is a fickle stinkin' façade of a "yob" that requires people to be as willing to do away with it as they were to get into it, when the going gets tough and food needs to be put on the table and daddy has to stop playing pilot for sunsets and ILS's. But that construct, the "I became a heart surgeon so I could save money so I could become a lesser paid corporate pilot" approach, won't fill the seats at ERAU/Purdue/puppy mills/mom n pop FBOs. It will just merely uncover the insolvency of the profession and people will figure out that as cute as it is to fly, it's not quite cute to gamble your life away for, when you could have just gone thru the trouble of becoming a heart surgeon in the first place and flying on the weekends....

I find Skyhigh's inject on that account a extremely sobering and valuable among a sea of people who discredit his POV on the basis of "attitude" when they had subsidies of their own.

wrxpilot

No, I don't think I'll be going back to engineering anytime soon. I've been in aviation off and on for over ten years, but have been doing it as a full time professional pilot for just over three years. Not a long time, but it's long enough for me to say I really enjoy it a lot more than engineering (which I strongly disliked). In my three years, I've worked as a CFI, a charter pilot, and now a corporate pilot. I've had ups and downs, prick bosses, flown POS airplanes, have scared myself a few times, and have dealt with the insecurity of wondering if I was going to be laid off at the end of the week (on multiple occasions). No doubt I'll see much more, but that's pretty much how life is. Whether I'm in engineering or aviation, there's no guarantee that my job and a secure life are permanent.

I'm a third generation professional pilot, and the fourth pilot in my family. I knew very well how financially reckless it would be to get jump right into aviation without any sort of backup plan. I also had to pay for everything myself. Every single dollar, from engineering school tuition, car insurance, food, rent, etc. Because I was fully responsible for my financial affairs, I thought far ahead about how to enter professional aviation. Being capable of using a calculator, I ran a few numbers and saw the fallacy of shelling out $80k for flight training and then attempting to pay it back as a CFI or regional airline pilot. It's simply NOT possible, so I decided to stay completely out of debt by spending YEARS on my flight training, busting my ass to be overly prepared for my flight lessons and checkrides, and being as frugal as possible with my training. It wasn't fast, it was A LOT of work, and I had to fly a lot of crappy airplanes. But it made it affordable for me. Anybody else could have done the same thing I did, but they'd have to work their butt off and be patient. In these days of instant gratification, that's a baffling and unknown concept to WAY too many people.

Yeah, it definitely would've been different for me. I'd be broke and, apparently, ****ed at the world. Good thing I planned my life better.

If the majority of "folks" have those expectations, they are seriously flawed. Except for a couple of brief intervals in the history of aviation (the late '60s and mid '80s I think), it's always been a tough road that required dues being paid with no promises. Ever read "Fate is the Hunter"? Aviation has been a VERY tough career since the beginning.

It seems you think I came into aviation as a subsidized yuppy, with nothing to lose if I didn't make it. I left a good, high paying job in Colorado, sold what I could, and packed what was left into my six year old Honda. Because I paid off all of my credit cards and my car loan, I only had $4,000 in a savings account. I drove down to south FL with only the verbal promise of a dispatching desk position at a small flight school while I worked on my CFI. It was one of the scariest things I've ever done in my life.

Well, that's not true at all. When I quit engineering to become a full time pilot, I was no longer getting an engineering salary. How was I subsidized? I had to pay all of my bills and rent with what I made as a CFI when I first started! As far as using engineering to pay for flight training, well that's something that anybody in this country is free to do. There's nothing stopping anybody from getting a degree in a marketable profession first, and then paying for flight training as I outlined earlier. You (incorrectly) call that subsidized. I call it planning ahead.

Seriously? There is PLENTY of information out there for those willing to get off their butt and do some research. If anybody is willing so throw down $80,000 or more in flight training without doing a little bit of investigating on their desired career, they've got only themselves to blame for their future problems. Relying only upon the slick advertising brochures at Flight Safety or ATP is just... Well it's not very smart, to say the least.

Again with the subsidies... All I did was plan ahead. I also didn't take jobs I couldn't afford to work at (kinda goes with the whole planning ahead thing).

He (and apparently YOU) need to quit blaming everything and everybody else for YOUR problems. We live in a free country with A LOT of opportunity for those that are willing to work hard and make it happen. You and Sky aren't owed anything.

If one decides aviation isn't for them, and they become a heart surgeon instead I say good for them! At least they made it happen and weren't whining about how unfair life is.

It's a shining example of what's so wrong with our society today: My life sucks and it's everybody else's fault! It's absolutely pathetic, and you don't even realize it. How sad.

Superpilot92

Skyhigh = Broken Record

we get it, aviation sucked for you so it should suck for everyone else. move on already

Aloha

Ok enough now. If you are looking for sympathy, you are probably not going to get it from your brother pilots. No quarter given and none taken. Many are in the same boat as you. If you are unhappy, man up, and move on. Make some moves and improve yourself and your situation. I am done with this thread. You have had your shoulder to cry on.... now wipe your tears and make something happen - or whine yourself into the unhappy existence that awaits you if you do nothing.

"The best of the free life is still yet to come, and the good times ain't over for good",
Aloha