Shouldn't there be some sort of '12 Step Program' for aviation?

Certainly
 

Occasionally it needs to be restated but I am a pilot after all. If Alaska Airlines were to call I would have to go. Working for that company is my dream. Outside of that most everything else is up for debate.

Skyhigh

I hope you do get that call from Alaska, but one thing is no longer up for debate:
By admitting that even today, knowing what you now know, you would pursue an airline career, you have forfeited the right to criticize others who do the same. Don't worry, we won't call you names if you follow your dream. :)

Never a secret
 

Tom,

I have never tried to keep this fact a secret. I think about flying everyday. For that matter I still think about smoking too. It has been over twenty five years but I still have fond memories of breaking open a new pack of Marlboros.

The problem is the consequences that come with those choices. I wanted to live so I stopped smoking long ago. I want to have a life so I have made it a habit to avoid dead end low wage life sucking aviation situations. (and that pretty much describes all of them these days.) As a result my family is happy and we life a life largely of our own choosing.

A pilot job like Alaska Airlines is a different situation altogether. Their largest base is within an easy drive of my home town, they pay a wage that is worthy of my time, and they fly to places I want to go to. The job would fit well into my ongoing personal life. I don't have to supplant everything else I enjoy just to be employed as a pilot.

Besides all that as a home town kid I always (and pretty much only) dreamed of flying for Alaska Airlines. Every other flying job I have ever had has been a miserable stepping stone to be overcome on my path to that one glorious goal.

Skyhigh

PS I have a son named Tom.

The 90%
 

It occurred to me early on that 90% of what can be gained in new skills and experience from an aviation job are achieved within the first year of employment. In the first year we go through ground school, the simulator, IOE, then 75 hours with seasoned captains before being fully turned loose on the line. After that there are growth and learning opportunities that lie in flying the entire route structure and every approach that is in the book. Around the time you have mastered much of what there is to do it is time for your first recurrent ground school and proficiency check.

The next three years flesh out another 5% of new experiences and challenges. After that the occurrence of something new can spread out to years. It takes the next 20 to complete the whole experience and most of that lies in emergencies, diversions to protocol and the rare off route trip to a maintenance base or something. In bush flying the last 5% usually means finally crashing and killing yourself.

After the three year mark the days become more of a war of attrition. Positive rate, gear up, heading select over and over again. Approaches are briefed from memory. Conversations between plots shift from what happened yesterday in the fight deck to what happened during last weeks overnight to the silence that comes from the malaise that is derived from endless years of repetition. The same stories get played out time and time again. No need to mention it to anyone. They have all heard it before. At the one year mark I could see the next 20 years of my life in the dull stare of my senior co-workers.

Is it really worth the next 20 years to gain that last 5-10%? I know that flying for the airlines was going to be boring but I expected that there would be surplus income and the time off to build an interesting life outside of work. Take that away and all you have is an endless chain of same stuff different day. That might work for some.

Skyhigh

Wow Sky, very nice posts. Showing some balance admitting you'd take a job at Alaska. I'll give you credit for that.

I think most of us here would go back into PROFESSIONAL aviation(still involved in GA so won't say I'm out of aviation) if the right opportunity presented itself. But sadly with all the furloughs going on its gonna be a while or ever... still waiting for that damn shortage :p...

There will never be a shortage of people looking for good jobs. There will never be a shortage of competition for good jobs.

College kid
 

When I was in college there was a guy in my neighborhood who was an Alaska Airlines pilot. I asked him "how does one get hired at AS"? He told me to go to the state of Alaska and fly the bush and went on to explain that they like to hire bush pilots. As soon as I could I was off to AK and even worked for many of the same companies that my neighborhood mentor did on my way up the ladder. Eventually I began to notice that no one else seemed to be getting hired at Alaska Airlines or anywhere else for that matter either. They just flew till they killed themselves or quit all together. After 8 years in the bush it was time to get out.

I met the next Alaska Airlines guy at the local dump. I asked him the same question. "How does one get hired at Alaska Airlines"? He told me that if I wanted to fly for Alaska then I had better get on with Horizon Air. I already had a better job at the time. No one wanted to fly for a regional but that is what I had to do so within a few months I was in class at QX.

I was hardly there two days before I began to ask about advancements to the parent company AS. My replay was "no one goes to AS from here". By the end of that sentence I had already begun to put together my letter of resignation in my mind but it was too late. I was stuck. It pays to study the path of those who actually get hired. Learn what they did, who they are and where they come from. Once I started doing that and studying where the profession was headed I knew that my peers and I were doomed.

Skyhigh

http://jdmanriquez.files.wordpress.c...r-mistakes.jpg
I think Kierkegaard said "Life can only be understood backwards, the problem is it must be lived forwards".
Sky, you did what you could. You took the tough jobs, used networking, followed advice, and ended up in a Cul-de-sac. Life isn't fair. Even though you ran aground (or actually maybe changed course drastically before you ran aground) your voice is valuable here. It gives one more piece of the picture so those following behind you can make a more informed decision.

I would hardly call talking with one pilot "networking".

Alaska pilot: "Go fly the bush. Then you'll get hired at Alaska."

SkyHigh: "I'm off to fly the bush"

8 years later... No Alaska job. Sky moves on. Meets another Alaska pilot at "the dump" ( a metaphor?).

Alaska pilot: "Go fly for Horizon. Then you'll get hired.

SkyHigh: "I'm going to quit my better flying job and go to Horizon."

Day 2 of Horizon job: NOBODY ever gets hired at Alaska from here. Sky is ready to quit.

Not a lot of critical thinking going on here, IMO.

Regards,
Clutch

We did not have APC back then
 

Clutch,

I agree. Hardly a network. I did not come from an airline family. We did not have APC back then. Information came through rumor, the university and flight school propaganda. Occasionally the few airline captains I ran into would give some tips. Most of it all bad. That is the reason we are all here. To share information and our experiences.

I wish this place existed back when I was wasting my college education on aviation. By the way, thanks for giving me this thread.

Skyhigh

Thanks
 

I believe that there are more stories like mine then there are successful ones. Most just fade away and fold anonymously back into society when it becomes obvious that their dream was a farce or they are forced to accept the cruel discount of flying for a regional, overseas or for a shaky B grade start up.

It is not fair that a lucky few get to advance to career nirvana while the rest must acclimate to a lifetime of marginal existence. We all try hard. I have never flunked a check ride, bent or scratched anything, am fit, hold good grades from a respected state university, and pushed myself through more than two decades of pure misery for this career. Why is it that my ilk are expected to just take it as underlings at the regionals? We do essentially the exact same job. We fly the same routes in similarly complicated aircraft. It is my belief that every single pilot in the regionals took that job because they all held dreams of advancement. Had they known that their fate was to be stuck at less than half the wages they would have made different decisions.

Life isn't fair. People need to know what their true odds of success are. What their existence most likely will be like in ten years. They need to know that they most likely will never be able to earn back the cost it takes to get there. It is not easy to recover from such a loss. Starting over is grueling. Most have everything invested into this career. The whole of my education and experience was as a pilot when the end came. It was by far my largest single effort in life. It possessed my daily focus from 14 years old to 38. It does not just go away. Nor should it.

Skyhigh

There's Still Time For You To Make it!
 

Sky:

I didn't come from an airline family either. Almost all of my college buds went the military route. I was on that path until my vision came up short.

All, I can say is I didn't make career altering decisions based on a single conversation with one person.

Some people may laugh but back in the 70's and 80's there was a little publication called FAPA that had a lot of very good info to get a person started on the job search. I'll admit that I'm totally out of the entry-level stuff now. All of my peers are either retired or Capts. for Legacy/SWA/FDX/UPS/B6.

I'm sorry that this career didn't work out as you had hoped. It seems that you had some unrealistic expectations from the start. I was surprised to see that you would still be willing to sacrifice your family to go fly for Alaska. First year pay isn't great. Plus, you might have to commute and be gone from home/family for days at a time!

I'm not sure how old you are but things are getting ready to bust loose! You should go get current in something multi-engine then do some research and find a regional that will offer a quick up grade. You could probably be competitive for Alaska in about 5 years! I say go for it. Dream Large, Dream Large! You could keep your real-estate business going on the side.

That's partly tongue-in-cheek but I really do believe that hiring will be going crazy starting about 1 year from now for at least the next ten years. Barring, of course any unforseen events. You could still do it.

Regards,
Clutch

Thanks Clutch
 

Clutch,

I did not have much to go on. I was young and did my best with the information I had. It did not seem reasonable to me that a university would create such a program unless their was sufficient demand for first officers in the marketplace. Why else would anyone blow the cost of a starter house on such an endeavor unless there was a good chance of receiving a return on your investment?

After graduation I went on to see my college peers and co-workers fall from the profession in rapid succession. I believe that my generation who first hit the market after 1990 have taken it in the shorts where guys who started just a few years prior were able to convert to a good legacy airline more commonly. In addition, The regionals had not become the career sand trap that they have become by then.

Thank you for your encouragement regarding my dreams of Alaska Airlines. I still hold hope for something to work out for me as a semi-retirement fourth quarter second wind aviation career. I have noticed that if one were able to be relieved of the requirement of having to earn your entire a living as a pilot things get much easier indeed. My business ventures are working to serve those ends as we speak.

I too see opportunities on the horizon. Pilot starts are falling off a cliff and demand is rising, however I still do not think that wages or conditions will improve as a result.

Skyhigh

posts like these make me believe its better to go into the industry single with one mouth to feed rather than with a family to support

Pretty simple, when starting out in aviation, don't buy anything you can't eat.

GF

Bwahahahaha!

Oh wait, you're serious.

Let me laugh even harder

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

I heard Fedex was hiring Student pilots for their 10000 pilot openings.

DUUUUDE... seriously!!!

I take it you won't be applying then?:cool:

We are hiring 20/month right now. You're either qualified or you're not. Which are you?

Back in the day
 

I use to have a standard aviation joke that went; "out of my graduating class only three of us are still working as pilots. The rest are all happy and successful".

I can't really use that joke anymore.

Skyhigh

I like this quote.

Hopefully when the time and opportunity is right, you can still have a rewarding aviation career.

Thanks
 

Awesome. Thanks.

Skyhigh

I'm pretty sure I'm qualified....

MD-11 current & typed - check
1000 turb pic - check
121 check airman - check
Internal reccomend - check
No busts/impeccable aviation record - check
No invite to interview - check.

What you don't realize is there are thousands with the same/similar quals as me for only 20/month. Not exactly a deluge of hiring if you ask me.:eek:

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with you. There's a surplus of 1K+ TPIC, 121 time, internal recommendation, current and qualified space shuttle for no money types out there in the underemployed forest; regional types and even military types, both in and out of aviation, to fuel competitive hiring for the greater majority of this decade. The day the airlines come knocking down my door begging me to apply before they have to face the possibility of direct hiring kids out of riddle, is the day I'll concede a pilot shortage. That'll never happen. Combine all that with a much less frothy hiring materialization in the next 7 years, and in reality all that will happen is the regionals will fold and consolidate in a "pull the ladder up from the last one out" while the mainlines replace the retiring bodies and go through their own consolidation, sealing a hiring cycle that will keep staffing levels on par but stagnant until the next threat to the already thin profit margin of the airline business comes around the corner. In 20 years we'll have a new batch of 9-11/fuel hike/strategic bankruptcy "designated losers" decrying their lost gamble as they face furloughs in their early 40s. Round n round we go.

Airlines seem like a good gamble when you're young. If your shot at mainline fizzles out you're only out a decade. Not completely horrible reinventing yourself at 30. But reinventing yourself/weathering a furlough at 36-40 is a whole other proposition. To each their own, but that's what keeps me from considering it. I'm already at the money level I wish to preserve, I won't volunteer to endure that volatility in my 30s. Time's up, daddy's gotta get paid, I don't wanna be doing either job at 65 anyways.

Good luck to all and I truly hope the hiring is great and bountiful.:)

WOW 20 a MONTH!!!

I hope the flight schools can keep up.

I'll bet you'll blast through the pool of unemployed pilots in 6 months!

(still laughing at you)

I can't blame them
 

I can't blame guys at the top of legacy airlines for having no perspective on what it is like starting out today. Why would they care or spend even a minute really trying to understand?

The last time many of them had to look for a job is when Ronald Reagan was in office. I really wish however they would think twice before commenting with the knowledge that their words have the power to launch a thousand ill fated careers. I understand that it is no fun to toss a bucket of water on the hero worship, but peoples lives are at stake.

The podium is freely yielded to the legacy captain whose information is about as fresh as the day they got hired decades ago and are now only a fading reflection of how things were. I must give credit to the UAL guys though. They have been banned from speaking at my university for being too negative. They were only telling the truth, but the truth is bad for sales.

Skyhigh

The Future
 

The insight offered by sitting legacy captains is most useful as a historical reference not as a basis to project future career expectations on. Pilots starting out today could have as much as 40 years in the profession. They need to look to take a realistic look to the future in an attempt to gain insight as to where our careers are headed.

Predictions are worth about as much as a cup of coffee but I believe that the near future will be dominated by UAV's, continued proliferation of automation and the rapid loss of the world market to China and other third world countries with lower costs and automaton population.

A new book on the subject is: China Airborne, By James Fallows. I have not read it yet but would like to. China has a goal to dominate global aviation. They are spending 250 billion over the next five years building airports, airlines, pilots factories and jet manufacturing. I believe that in ten years aviation will look nothing like it does today.

Skyhigh

My Career
 

My aviation career ended when I was laid off from my 757 FO gig at 37 with a wife two kids and one on the way. I was not furloughed. My company folded with no chance of recall. Mine was not the only career to implode with that event. At least half of the guys I worked with were not able to go on as a pilot either.

We ended up moving out of our house and into a two bedroom apartment on $1300 a month of unemployment insurance. I could have started over at a regional and taken my place at the end of the line again making less than a bag boy but I had a family to support. I just could not keep repeating the same cycle. I watched and learned from my senior co-workers. They had been destroyed and rebuilt many times over.

Get hired, climb the ladder then start over again when the merger, shutdown or furlough happens. As a result most of them had accumulated very little by the sunset of their working lives and left a trail of ex-wives and angry children across the nation. I did not want to go down the same path.

Starting completely over as a pilot is not easy. The entirety of my experience was as a pilot. My college education was in aviation and every job from 19 to then was as a pilot of some kind. Yet I knew that at my age and the economic situation that was going on at the time most likely assured that I would never make it to a good stable legacy airline.

The only logical choice was to somehow reinvent myself in a completely new profession.


Skyhigh

Your career failed. We get it. The only one here not ready to let it go and move on is you. You preach about legacy captains being out of touch but fail to recognize that a lot of the guys that disagree with your diatribes are guys that have been hired at a major since 2001, a lot within the last 5 years. Some of the disagreements come from guys currently employed in what you consider a dead end job at the regionals. Not that you'll acknowledge that point.

From reading your posts, I suspect that most of your troubles with aviation stem from your attitude. If you'd like I'll go back and find the posts where you admit to not really liking flying all that much, you just wanted a job that paid a lot that you didn't have to show up to very often. Maybe you thought that was your inside voice, but that kind of thinking manifests itself in other ways, a lot of which are pretty apparent at a job interview.

I know you view yourself as the lone voice of reason here, but perspective check: your story doesn't really serve to illustrate anything meaningful about the aviation industry. It just shows what it looks like to give up on something and regret the decision.

I would look into writing as a second (third?) career. Stephen King did pretty well writing the same novel 30 times; and in that respect, you're knocking it out of the park.

Compliment
 

Hey thanks man. I will take your comments as a compliment.

Skyhigh

Love aviation enough
 

People like to say that my problem is that I "don't love aviation enough". What does that mean exactly. I suppose it means that because I will not drive my personal and financial life over a cliff for this profession that I don't love it enough.

I counter with the opinion that I love aviation the right amount. I have expectations in return for my affections. I will not let it become an all consuming passion that destroys everything else in my life. I have seen people go completely overboard for the love of avgas. It has driven some to an NTSB report detailing their last moments.

My position is to back away. The whole problem with our industry is that it has become overrun with those who are more than willing to give everything and expect little. Balance needs to be restored. I love aviation the exact right amount. It is in its proper place in my life below myself, family, friends and finances.

Skyhigh

This morning
 

I spent part of my morning with a recently retired legacy captain, and you guys think I have a bad attitude. :confused: This guy spat black venom in reference to his opinions about the state of the profession. :eek:

Skyhigh

Deleted...simply not worth it.

A UAL captain, circa 1975 told me, "when I was a boy, the locomotive engineer was top of the heap, respected like no other. Now does anyone even think of locomotive engineers? That's where airline pilots are headed.". Right, he was. Read Mark Twin's "Life on the Mississippi", the first 100 pages is a pretty good history of unions and how they die.

GF

You know, I don't think anyone here has seriously suggested that you need to be Joan of Arc to be successful in aviation, but you should probably like it at least a little. A lot if not most of your posts suggest that you don't really enjoy it all that much, and if you're honest you will admit that.

I recall reading many, many of your posts that talked about how flying the bush in alaska sucked; how flying for horizon sucked; I don't really recall the 757 stories, but the theme there for a while was that flying airliners was nothing more than glorified button pushing, and there were more than a couple of comments that mention not really actually liking flying; you just wanted a good paying, easy job -- that you couldn't manage to get hired for.

Not exactly an all-consuming passion.

You don't have to have give everything to achieve your goals, but you do have to have at least a little bit of commitment - which you also fail to demonstrate with your big-realization-two-days-into-the horizon-job story.

A lot of lawyers make great money, but I hate that ****. I probably wouldn't get very far in a profession I didn't care for either.

Twain would be astounded at the compensation now earned by the unionized river pilots who guide large ships between the Gulf of Mexico and Baton Rouge. The three unions that each have an exclusive franchise on one segment of the route are political super-heavyweights, and their members are paid accordingly. :)
Mile: 2,341: Out of the river, into the Gulf - News - The Mighty Miss - msnbc.com

I like flying enough
 

Clarification:

I liked flying enough to have endured 20 years of sacrifice, hardship and misery in its pursuit. The problem is not with my level of affection or dedication. It is with the rate of return on my investment. I akin it to marriage. Everyone is in love on their wedding day. It is the following years of indifference, indignation and infidelity that leads to the divorce. I was devoted and loyal. In return aviation drove me to poverty, loneliness and humiliation. It did the same to most of my peers and even went so far as to have killed a few.

My position is that at some point the profession for most becomes self destructive and you have to decide what is the most important to you. When I started my goal was to fly for Alaska Airlines. Not only because I loved Alaska and aviation but because I wanted to have a family and stable life that a good airline job can produce. I paid my way through college and flight school. Endured years as a struggling flight instructor and was repaid in my 20's by living in a hut in the middle of nowhere flying a Cessna 207. By the time I reached 30 I had advanced to flying for Horizon Air and living on $492 every two weeks. :confused:

Not what I was interested in at all. I have an abundance of love. My problem is that I have too much self respect to let beaten wife syndrome tell me that if I just would love aviation enough everything will be alright.

Skyhigh

Postmortem
 

For decades now I have done the autopsy of many a failed career (myself included) and have noticed a few trends and disease that most often leads to career discount or destruction. The biggest is probably career progression stagnation.

Airlines love to hire young success. They seem to like guy who completed flight school in his/her early 20's, spent a quick trip as a flight instructor before going straight into a regional. Once at the regional they upgrade within a year or two and then on to a legacy. The progression is so fast that there is little chance for calcification of their personal life (still flexible. not married) nor hardening of the attitude to set in . Not enough time in the industry to have picked up a few black marks in the record.

Simple, clean and single. The problem is that most of those things are out of our control. Start your career just before a recession and you could be out of luck before really getting started. Hire on at the end of a big surge and get use to right seat oblivion. The best time to jump in is right at the beginning of an upswing. My analysis is that every ten years there is a brief window of opportunity during the slack tide between down and up swings in the economy.

Time it right and it could be a fast and easy trip to the legacy of your dreams. Start just before or during a recession and you will watch in ten years as guys who just got their license a few years prior pass you by on their way to legacy airline ground school. To make matters worse the good jobs are shrinking. Threading the needle is going to be harder as time goes on. Not fair, but there it is.

Skyhigh

Does Love pay the bills?
 

I do not have a trust fund. My wife is not an orthodontist. Everything I have or ever will have must come from the fruits of my labors. Love aviation or hate it. If it does not pay then you are shorting your future. We all need to be paid far more then the job currently offers.

Skyhigh

Gee Sky, you act like every Pilot who has made it in this career, has a loaded spouse. You just can't grasp the fact that a lot of the folks who have made it in Aviation, worked their ass off and didn't give up. That is a fact. The lack of moral character in this country has driven us to the bottom when it comes to this career.

Gee brian, you act like every person who has won Lotto, has a loaded spouse. You just can't grasp the fact that a lot of the folks who have made it in Powerball, worked their ass off and didn't give up. That is a fact. The lack of moral character in this country has driven us to the bottom when it comes to winning the lottery.


Dude, we can't all work at a major; they keep downsizing. The odds of getting to a major are slim, much less having a career uninterrupted by furlough or bankruptcy. Sky tells it like it is for a majority of us. Nobody at a flight school is going to tell you your chances of getting a decent job are between slim and none. Aviation is like crack. It makes us feel good, but it slowly kills us. And before its done it usually destroys our friendships and families.

There are lots of lottery winners out there, sure. But most of us aren't and won't ever be.