If you're still out there UASIT, can you elaborate on this? I'm into IT stuff and was thinking about making the jump, with only hobbyist knowledge though I might need a credential to get my foot in the door.


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I believe that an essential element of preserving ones satisfaction with the profession lies in planning to be single your entire career. No kids, spouse, or extended family to have to pay for or satisfy. Sleep when you are home. Visit other single airline friends on days off. Jumpseat alone to far flung corners of the globe. Move when the career asks you to and the salary should be able to adequately support a studio apartment, cable bill, and Toyota Echo. And who knows, you might actually even make it to a legacy airline.

Apart from that if you have a family or want one an aviation career can make it very hard to be able to accomplish your goals in either category.

Skyhigh

 

Hard for you, perhaps.

You've been on about this lie for some time, that if one is a pilot, one must be single, live in a single room apartment, have no life. Was this you?

I have a family, live in a home, and am quite happy with my life as a career aviator. You never established a career. You abandoned it. How could you possibly know what's possible in a career? You're not qualified to say.

 

Been trying that for 15 years, want to help?

 

I agree there are situations that work out.

I flew with guys who had great understanding wives. They worked as long haul 747 pilots and were gone for extended periods. So long as the paycheck was direct deposited and the pilot was gone but a few weeks every other month things worked out just swimmingly. However when they were able to return to fly domestically they came home to a cleaned out house and legal documents on the kitchen counter. I do not believe it is usually a good thing to have a spouse happy to see their partner gone a lot.

A lot of pilots whom I have known were really married to the sky. Their spouse was just a life accessory. I do not know what your situation is however mutually beneficial relationships need to be maintained. Children need their parents. Some aviation job situations are able to provide for a stay at home spouse however under the current situation regional wages and schedules are often way to low to provide for that.

The result is that the spouse left behind has to work and survive as a married but essentially single parent. The off sided work arrangement can lead to resentment. In the past a flying career paid enough to provide for a stay at home parent. The spouse could follow the career moves of the pilot. As a working parent this often means that they stay put to preserve their career and the pilot must commute thus adding to time away from home.

A better plan is just to stay single.

SkyHigh

 

Great, I hope it is better than the regional grind. Most health care people I ran into in my skydiving days spoke warmly of the job, a few hated wiping butt.

One question though before you leave: why did you get into flying? Would you describe yourself as being in love with flying for the sake of flying or more into it for the promised payoff? Your answer will help me advise newbies.

 

How would you know?

What a ridiculous generalization that is.

You assert that pilots who began flying in the late 80's had it rough and couldn't have made it in a career, yet this board (and airline cockpits) are full of pilots who did just that.

You assert that a working pilot should be single, but nearly everyone I know, myself included, is married. My wife stays at home, incidentally. She could work, but we have a family life, and she's comfortable with that, in our home, not single-bedroom apartment.

I flew long haul, and when I came home I didn't find a cleaned out house with legal documents on the counter. I came home to a wife who picked me up at the airport, and we went out to lunch, then dinner. We had a great life while I was on the road, and we still do when I'm out and about. The difference is that as a working aviator, I spend a lot more time at home and have a lot more opportunity to interact with my family than most people in the work place. Even on jobs that keep me away for a period of time, I'm still home a lot more, and when I'm home, it's not just for a few hours of the evening.

The better choice may be for you to stay single. You can't really say what's best for working pilots who didn't abandon their careers, because you wouldn't know about that.

At the entry rungs, finances are tight, there's no denying it. It seems that you never got past that point, and don't know what lies beyond. It's too bad, really, because the career can be very enjoyable and very beneficial for those who commit. You just didn't stick around enough to find out, and now spend your time in false pretense to share your hollow expertise of what you suppose the industry to be.

But how would you know?

 

John,

I spent 20 years in the effort. Over that time I worked a wide variety of pilot jobs and had contact with hundreds of pilots whom I studied and followed in their careers. Beyond that I enjoy reading and analyzing aviation as an interest that I follow. That is plenty of time and experience to be able to hold an opinion.

Here is something else for you to get upset about:

Last summer USA Today ran an article regarding what it costs the average family of four to provide for the full cost of the American dream. To save you the time to read the article the amount is $130,000. That is what it costs, on average, to provide for everything including savings for college and a self funded retirement.

Price tag for the American dream: $130K a year

No matter how lucky a new pilot expects to be in their career it is still very difficult to be able to expect to be able to raise a family and retire given the average career trajectory unless they are sponsored or have a spouse with a real job to pay for everything.

My story is well known here while you have remained a virtual mystery. I don't know if you have suffered a stagnated seniority list at a regional or are a trust fund baby. Perhaps you should list your credentials?

Skyhigh

PS I did not leave the career I was laid off from my 757 FO position when my company shutdown with a stay at home wife, two kids and one on the way. We had no health insurance and no job prospects anywhere at the time that could support a family in the USA as a pilot.

 

You've told us about your 20 years of failure, before. Yet you tell us you got in during the late 80's, and have recently told us how hard it was then. Your stories don't add up, not one of them. Lies, all lies.

In 1988 when you say you entered the aviation work force, nobody was getting on with a commuter without 2,500 hours or so. I remember well. Most had to go out and fly night freight, instruct, and do anything they could find to get enough experience to look toward a commuter, and EVERYONE knew it was starvation wage. Your story is very different; either you were the most uninformed, naive person in the aviation community, or your story is all lies. You see, I was there then, too. That is to say, I really was there. You weren't.

You've expounded at great length about the fact that airline pilots were living like kings back then, but the market went bust, leaving you high and dry. Not true. Apparently you don't remember deregulation. do a little research. If you don't remember deregulation, then you don't remember what it was like before that, and you wouldn't know...despite your pontification about king-like wealth and bounty. You simply don't know.

You claim 20 years of experience, and you also claim to have come from a family where everyone was an aviator, and yet you claim at the same time to have been fooled into an aviation career. You've said this frequently, about being tricked into your career; you've often called it "deceived" and "mislead." This, despite having grown up in a family of all aviators, and then you went 20 years, all the while deceived about your career? Hardly.

You can't keep your stories straight, can you? I was especially entertained by your tales of fire experience, because you surely didn't have it, and you had no idea what the hell you were talking about. Did you simply suppose that there wouldn't be anyone around with the experience who knew you were lying, and who would call you out?

So you lie about this experience, and use the lies to attempt to build credibility to decry the industry in which you failed. Not a very intelligent way to make a case, is it? You really should do a little research, first.

20 years of utter failure, and yet you pressed on, and one day the lightbulb simply came on? I don't think so. Not one iota of your story adds up. None of it.

You were 20 years into a career, and yet you were "studying" the careers of hundreds of others around you? Who does that? If you were really studying others around you after 20 years on the job, why is it that none of your information is correct? You couldn't have "studied" very hard, could you?

I'm not upset in the least. I'm not sorry about my past, and not here to whine to the masses. I'm not here to talk about 20 years of abject failure, and to spread sorry and misery, or to rain on anyone's parade. I'm interested in the truth, and you can't own up to it.

I'm not upset at all, but you certainly appear to be. Why else would you be sitting by the gutter in the tatters of a pretend airline uniform telling us to sit with you a while as you share your sorrowful tale of martyrdom?

We've already debunked this one, though you continue to spout it, over and over. With the average national income nearly a third of what you propose as the bare minimum to get by, the vast majority of citizens in the United States manage on far, far less than the numbers you propose. I already provided links to actual sources, with the correct data. The best you can come up with is a pop-rag op ed article ? Where are your two decades of studies? You never could address the links I provided to government sources for income, which clearly showed your assertions to be lies. It's already been posted, so there's no need to turn that leaf over again. You were already shot down in flames on this; repeating the lie over and over doesn't make it true.

My wife stays at home.

Sponsored? Wild foolishness. Entitlement, then?

You wouldn't know about making a successful career or the ability to create one. You have no credibility.

Apparently you don't read well, or simply suffer from difficulty with basic reading comprehension. B747 captain, and a fairly broad range of aviation employment activities that run the gamut from flight instructing to crop dusting to flying fires, law enforcement, ambulance, charter, fractional, corporate, etc. Five FAA certificates. A maintenance experience history longer than my flying, and I've been flying since my mid teens. The only relevant part of any of it, whether it's time spent in Iraq and Afghanistan or flying approaches into Hong Kong in inclement weather, is whatever my current employer needs, at any given time. I work more than one job, and do more than one thing both because it's lucrative, and because I enjoy it. I also enjoy considerable time at home; recently I took a month at home with no other duties to do nothing but write. Why? Because I could. That's what aviation duties do for you, and there is a very wide field of duty from which to choose. Again, something you wouldn't understand.

Am I working for a regional? Not hardly. Nor do I have any need, nor intention of doing so.

Trust fund? Nobody gave me anything. It's been earned every step of the way. Perhaps that was your problem. Far too much a sense of entitlement.

Previously you worked for ------- (a regional) as a FO, I believe, and now you were a 757 FO? You carried on at great length about the inability to get past a first officer position at -------, and your inability to move to ------- Airlines. Was this you?

You claim you were laid off as a 757 FO; many were furloughed or laid off over the past few years (and it would have had to be in the past few years, if you got out of college and started your flying career in 88, and spent 20 years on the job)...so you lost your job during the time when everyone else was losing theirs? I was furloughed, too. You quit aviation, and I went to Iraq and kept flying.

That same time frame, before I went overseas, I was out of work three weeks before picking up duties turning wrenches, which lead to charter, and a check airman position. Airline pilot after airline pilot, freshly furloughed, came by looking for work. I had a single engine night freight position, carrying radioactive materials, available, but often flown in a twin due to weather. None of them took it; they turned up their noses and moved on. They came back not long after, saying they'd take anything, but it was too late. The job was already snapped up by someone who knew better.

That's the difference, you see. Those who quit too easily, who expect life on a silver platter, and those who are willing to get in the trenches and make it work even in the lean times, even in the down times. Not too proud to do whatever it takes. I suspect that if you had any career at all (and given your inconsistencies and your frequent lies, I very much doubt you did), you were typical of those who turned up their noses at the job and moved on, only to find that they weren't going to get fed with the silver spoon.

You rabbet on about the low wages and the inability to raise a family, pay for a car, pay the bills. If you had the slightest inclination what I get even for single engine work (it's six figures), let alone other assignments as well, perhaps you'd be shocked. If so, it wouldn't be because your experience tells you otherwise; you didn't have the experience to know, and you still don't. You never will. You'll never be able to command a salary like that, because you walked away.

I'm not going to break down my finances for you, nor am I going to post a resume; unless you're interested in hiring me, you really have no need to know. Unlike you, I don't spend my time on a semi-public forum posting endlessly about my sad state of affairs and crying to all who would listen about the martyrdom of my failed dreams. Unlike you, I'm living them, and my employers are quite happy with my resume; enough so that they pay me well, treat me well, and I enjoy my jobs. It's a shame that you don't, but perhaps if you hadn't quit, you wouldn't be so unhappy all the time.

How many years will we continue to hear your drivel before you've finally satisfied yourself that you made the right choice? When will your cavalcade of self-affirmation end, that we may no longer year the ignorant preaching about the failure of the industry?

Make no bones about it: the industry didn't fail. YOU did.

 

JB, how many years of low wages, job swaps, time building and so forth did you endure before you reached the threshold of "good" money (define "good")? One of SH's better points is how long it took him to get there- if 20 years passes with no end to low-paying ladder climbing, it is natural for someone to start looking elsewhere besides aviation. Aviation is not a religion, it's a profession. If I understand him correctly this is all SH is saying, that the event clock in his life expired while the ladder looked endless.