JohnBurke

How do you propose that be made to happen?

JohnBurke

You have never presented an alternative. Not once. You've never pointed a soul in any concrete direction. Your mission is to denigrate the field in which you failed. It's your career graveyard, and you'd like us all to stand about and mourn.

Provide that alternative. Lay it down, make it real. Can you do it? Thus far you've wholly failed. Show us the way, pied piper. Play for us.

Neither last, nor true, you get what you earn in this life. Your "career" is an excellent example.

You cannot speak, it seems, but to tell a lie. You've just told another big one.

Why can't you simply admit to bad choices, poor research on your part, little effort, and the simple fact that you quit, instead of constantly pointing a finger at the industry which you abandoned? The industry did not fail you. You failed the industry. Let's get that clear.

I find that I have many choices in aviation, as do we all. I can take a job in a wide body turbojet airplane, or I can fly a single engine airplane, and yet make a good living at both. Choices. Options. Opportunities. At present, I can make six figures in a single engine airplane, and that's not bad. Not everyone in aviation has access to those jobs, and they're not entry level jobs. One needs to choose the experience and background and training along the way which enable such jobs, but the industry is full of well paying job s which offer an excellent lifestyle, free time, and options. You made your choices; they weren't made for you.

Many of us have been furloughed, laid off. I was furloughed, and while many others in my same demographic who were furloughed struggled by on what they could get, I spent the time actively flying other jobs, turning wrenches, working hard, and making a good living...better than I'd been making before the furlough, in fact. At one assignment, I met numerous pilots who were furloughed out of airline cockpits who came by the hangar looking for work, and soon went their way when they felt the job was beneath them. It wasn't long before they came back again, hat in hand, begging for work because they couldn't find it...but the jobs were filled by then.

Many of them didn't have a background that enabled them to seek jobs elsewhere. Many of them didn't have a broad background or the qualifications in the industry that let them find other work. They hadn't kept up their instructor certification, or they didn't have a maintenance or utility background. They weren't prepared for the inevitable furlough, and it bit them. Now, of course, they're back in the cockpit, doing very well, making an excellent living. They could be forgiven for feeling that the industry had failed them, and had they quit and taken a job outside the industry (and thrown away the years of training and experience), perhaps they'd be as sorrowful and bitter as you. That would have been a mistake.

That was your mistake.

Lead away, your highness. You've maintained that it's all about living like a king, and you assure us that you're here to show a better way, an alternative way. Show us.

SkyHigh

John,

I started this career in the 1980's and back then we did not have much of an internet. There was a club called the Airline Pilots Association that produced a monthly magazine that chronicled how we were all going to be millionaires by 35. I remember clearly how once a year they produced a back to back comparison of all the legacy airlines in regards to their lifetime earnings potential. At one point UAL lead the pack with an estimated ten million dollars of earning potential over a 20 year career.

We did not have APC to turn to. All I got was soaring speeches from college professors about the coming "pilot shortage" and how we needed to take a lot of finance classes in order to be able to handle all the money we were going to earn. Aviation is a huge propaganda machine built to induce 18 year olds into blowing their future on a dead end. So, I did my research using the information at hand. Then I went on to live it for two decades as a full time pilot. During that time I saw stalwarts of the industry come crumbling down, unions broken, wages cut nearly in half, and meaningful benefits dry up and blow away with the wind. A major reason why I am here is to push back against the propaganda machine. The good news is that people are using the internet to learn the truth. As a result the next generation is not showing up to flight school. My work here is nearly redundant and obsolete.

I did not fail this career. It has failed us. Ironically it was my study of finance that that first tipped me off that something was not right with the garden. If anything I would like to suggest that perhaps it is you who has not done the research to fully acknowledge to yourself the situation that the career is in.

I posted some information for you below:


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

The Retirement Gamble | FRONTLINE

USPS mail carriers reported an average annual salary of $51,390, as of May 2011 or an hourly wage of $24.71. Most mail carriers -- 80 percent -- earned between $19.46 and $27.27 per hour, and reported annual salaries ranging from $40,470 to $56,720.


PS. I am not trying to live like a king I am just trying to live. The loss of my two best decades to a grossly under preforming career means that I have a lot of financial catch up to do.

SKyhigh

JohnBurke

You've prattled on about this before; you did no due diligence, made no effort, and apparently swallowed whatever you were told and heard what you wanted to hear.

Colleges have a product to sell. You do not seek out information about a new car from the dealer. You seek it from a source that doesn't have a vested conflict of interest in selling you the product. You didn't do that. You blame your failure to properly research your career on others, just as you blame your failure at a career on the industry.

There has never been a pilot shortage. We don't have one now. If you swallowed the load of garbage that Kit Darby peddled under Air, Inc, too bad for you.

I was working during the time you describe, as were many others who have called you out on your inaccuracies and lies before, and I've yet to see you tell the truth. Perhaps you really were that deluded that you believe what you say, but I don't think so. Don't blame lack of airline pilot central on your failure to learn the business. You've said before that you expected to leave school and be living like a king within a year. Utterly ridiculous. You've long expressed a sense of entitlement within the industry, and you blame the industry for failing to lay riches on your doorstep.

You can blame yourself for failure to put in the effort to succeed. Many others have done it. Tens of thousands. Why not you?

Aviation is an industry, and a multi-faceted one. You pay to drone around in your single engine Cessna 150. I get paid if I climb into a single engine airplane, and I get paid very well. Dead end? Hardly.

You did no research; the results of your gross blindness and failure to comprehend either speak incredibly poorly of you, or you just didn't try. Listening to ra-ra speeches by salesmen is not due diligence. I began flying while in high school and began flying commercially upon graduation. I had zero illusions and the industry was quite clear. If anything, it's far easier today than it was back then, and many curtain climbers who finished flight training and fell into a professional cockpit have no realistic sense of what was long required to make the career go.

You came on my radar when you began describing flying in the firefighting industry. Your statements were ridiculously inaccurate and wrong; exactly the opposite in almost every case. It's a business I know very, very well, and one you clearly do not and did not. It was evident from the get-go that you were lying about your experience and background, and at the time I called you out on it. You quickly moved on to something else, as you didn't know the material. We can discuss every other facet of what you claim to have done tit for tat; flown the back country and the bush. Whatever. Seaplanes. Airlines. I've done it, too. The dismal experiences you claim at every step of your career as it spiraled down the drain are not typical, but they do paint a very clear picture of you and the effort you put in. Like most things in life, you get back out of the industry what you put in.

The title of the thread is a clear assessment of your agenda here. You claim to be showing the way to others, yet you've never done it, and as we'll see in a moment, you've nothing to show. The thread of the title is about crushing dreams. Don't follow your passion, you cry. How it must pain you to see so many others living your dream. You could be doing it too, had you not quit.

Again, you cannot speak but to tell a lie, though you are right that your work is obsolete. It was outdated and pointless from the outset, because your "work" is a lie.

People are not "showing up" to flight school? Hardly.

People not "showing up," of course, would equate to an impending pilot shortage, and supply and demand would indicate a corresponding elevation in pilot pay and incentive concurrent with reduction in supply, which belies the point you think you're making.

There's no question that you failed in your career. You did abandon it, after all. You didn't abandon a success, did you?

Which aspect of my career ought I fully acknowledge? The successful raising of a family on my aviation earnings? My six figure salary? My satisfaction with my job? The travel I've been afforded? The experiences that I wouldn't trade for anything? The co-workers with whom I've been honored to do this job, and the aircraft I've been fortunate to fly? Should I fully acknowledge the satisfaction of illuminating a target in the dark in Iraq, or should I acknowledge the pleasure of breaking out at minimums at gross weight on a blustery winter day, needles crossed, runway where it should be, before going to a good hotel for the night? Perhaps I should fully acknowledge the deep satisfaction and pleasure I take from smoke in the cockpit, the smell of fresh pine or sage as I fly down a canyon and get paid very well to do it, or the satisfaction of finishing a day knowing I've done something to contribute? Which of these aspects am I not fully acknowledging? Shall we expand on them at length in order to meet your demands for disclosure?

Which of these aspects can you describe in detail based on current, personal experience in your successful aviation career? None? Not really a successful career for you, was it? Again, you failed the career and the industry. The industry in all its facets is still here, active, working. Just without you. It isn't suffering for you absence, either. The airlines are doing fine without you. Firefighting is doing fine without you. Bush flying goes on without you. Instruction goes on, cargo flying, corporate aviation, etc, all without you, and not because the industry is dying or failing, but because you quit, and the industry didn't skip a beat or take note. This big catastrophe you describe isn't in the industry. Its in you.

Oh, yes, I know. You've tried to float this lie here many times, asserting that nobody can live for less than one hundred thirty thousand dollars a year. I've presented all the numbers necessary to shoot that down in flames, and you have been shot down in flames. It's interesting that most of the population lives well below those numbers.

Do you make that amount? One can't live on less, you've told us many times. I know a lot of people who do. In fact, you go on to quote numbers for mail carriers that are careers making half of what you say is necessary. You can't even keep your own lies straight. We needn't validate your lies by further discussion on that.

Wait a moment. You just told us that you're here to lead the way, to show us the alternative. If you were let down by aviation, and couldn't live like a king, and you're trying to lead us away to an alternative, a better life, don't you have that life to hold up as a shining example? You mean you're struggling to live, and yet your are the poster child for those who would leave the industry to follow?

You claimed that you entered the industry to live like a king. That was your standard. Now you claim that you're not trying to live like a king. Your're just trying to live. You've lowered your standard appreciably. Leaving aviation, your standard has been lowered from living like a king to barely surviving, and you come to us with this, touting the desirability to follow? Surely you've got something better than this. You offer the alternative, remember?

What is this alternative that you offer? Show it.

kevbo

Anyone with the basic opportunity to be a pilot could do much better in other endeavors. If all you want to do is fly then by all means be a pilot. Aviation seldom provides an average return on investment. The partitions are high around any good job.

JohnBurke

"Basic opportunity" does not equate to capability, options or opportunity, skills, training or background, means, or anything other aspect of doing much better in other endeavors. It's also thoroughly without context.

Do you mean to say that one who has a "basic opportunity" in aviation has an opportunity to make more money in another endeavor, or to progress farther in another endeavor, or some other standard of "better?" What is a "basic opportunity?" A first job? The money to pay for training?

It's difficult for aviation not to provide a return on an investment. Spend fifty or sixty grand on flight training, and after you've made fifty or sixty grand from flying, everything thereafter is return on investment.

My brother is a professional. He owns two practices. He hasn't enjoyed the same disposable income or as much time off as I have. he enjoys his work just as I enjoy mine. We don't compare incomes. My opportunities in aviation don't give me opportunities in his line or work, and he's unable to come do my job.

We both came from extremely humble circumstances. We can both look at where we've been, see where we are, and sleep at night. I wouldn't go back and change a thing. Neither would he.

Those who have no desire to remain in aviation should find other work. If it's not for you, it's not for you. No shame in it. Move on. Find something else.

In the meantime, end the blame game, take personal responsibility. It's part of being an adult.