Pros & Cons of an Aviation Career
 

A friend of mine recently quit the industry because "aviation requires you to sacrifice a lot and just doesn't give you back enough in return."

I thought a lot about his words, and decided to come up with a Pros and Cons list. This could help those among us who are considering leaving the profession :) A few pros and cons I have come up with, specifically applying to airline pilots:

Staying in Aviation -

PROS:

- Flying jets is fun
- Flight attendants ;)
- The occasional fun crew
- The occasional fun layover
- Leave work at work
- Flexible monthly schedules
- Free travel & ZED fares
- Office view
- Satisfaction of a flight well-flown
- Camaraderie; aviation is a small world
- Beats sitting in a cubicle



CONS:

- Always traveling...can be tiring & difficult to maintain your personal life
- As safe as aviation is, there's alway the chance of an accident
- Job on the line every flight/check-ride/line-check/etc.
- Irregular working hours and days off..can be tough to have a "normal" life
- Radiation, fatigue and other health concerns
- No retirement funds other than 401K
- Contracts getting worse
- One accidental slip up with the law could be career ending
- Lower salary than other jobs that require similar education levels
- Lose your job at one airline and you have to start over
- Recurrent training
- Lose your medical & you're done
- Being a pilot is a lifestyle choice; not a job (could be a pro depending how you look at it)
- There are much easier ways to make more money & be home every night


Do any of these ring true with those of you who have left the industry? Please feel free to add your own thoughts to the list!

Spot On! Well summarized +\- list..., EXCEPT for the F/A's. I don't know very many Pilot-F/A relationships that have worked out well long term..

Feel free to add anything you want! Have you left the career or are you considering it?

Another Con is the seniority system. I'd prefer a method of career advancement that recognizes individual talents and accomplishments instead of just how many years you have in :rolleyes:

Who said we're talking long term ;)

Balderdash! I know dozens of couples who've made it work, long term.

While I may not make a whole lot, its still a sweet paycheck. At the legacy level it is decent pay. I don't what else I could do to make this.
If you are not at a legacy or good lcc then the pay is not so great.

Yazoo,

I voluntarily left the 121 world in 2006. I've been sleeping well ever since.

I think the list is pretty accurate.

What i miss most is the view, you simply can't beat it. Flying the jet was always fun too, and being in charge is a great challenge with it's own set of rewards.

The time away can be rough, or nice depending on your situation. A friend of mine with two young kids could hardly wait to get back on the road and out of the house after a few days off recently (kids were driving him nuts). The flip side of that is his wife is now at home with kids who are driving her nuts while he sleeps comfortably in the hotel.

The biggest downers of the career are likely job security and starting salaries. When i ditched, I was able to equal my captain's salary while being home every night. I now make a decent amount more than my starting pay and really can't afford to take the pay cut to get back in (i've done the math plenty...need to pay off debts before it'd be an option).

Slow financial gain
 

I did not like how long it commonly takes to make it into the higher wage levels. As a young regional pilot who wanted to start a family it was a punishingly long time before I could have made it to a middle class wage.



Skyhigh

What about retirement? How does a major airline 401K compare to a typical corporate retirement package?

This I completely agree with. My desk job is tiring and stressful. (And I find myself still at the office at 9PM surfing APC to live vicariously through you guys.) However whenever I get the urge to go get the couple more hundred hours I need to reach ATP mins, I realize that there are precious few ways to ensure your success in aviation. At least flying a desk I feel there is a pretty strong correlation between how hard/smart I work and my future advancement in the organization.

I used to agree with the seniority system being a con, but after almost a decade flying corporate and seeing guys let go who were only a few years from retirement...And other guys let go just because they weren't buddies with the chief or didn't brown nose well enough, I realize that seniority is beneficial to pilots. Unlike, say accounts for example, our skills aren't portable. We can't necessarily walk across town and find another job for the same compensation (unless you fly a highly desirable corporate fleet). Chances are we uproot the family, relocate, start over etc.

I used to say this. If I am at an airline, get laid off, and for ten years I am slinging French fries at McDonalds because I can't find anything else, once recalled it is the airline's job to get me back in the cockpit.

If I am laid off flying corporate and for ten years can't find another flying job, I'm probably done flying forever. I am so far out of currency it's unlikely I'd find another gig.

Most of the big boys put in about 15% of your pay into a 401k.

I would add, if commuting, esp. on reserve, it is difficult to just maintain your home. If a pipe bursts, or the water heater goes south, your spouse will have to handle it. I had some intermittent creeping mold in the corner of my house that I couldn't address for more than a yr. It turned out there was a leak in the roof that was allowing water to run down inside the wall. Cost $$$. HOI only covered catastrophic damage, not ongoing.

I don't care about travel, so free travel is worthless to me. Layovers are strictly hotel and back to the airport. I'm not a tourist.

I do love the smell of smoke in the cockpit.

Traveling is part of the job. I can do it in an office, in a hangar, or in an airplane; it's time at work, no matter how you slice it. I'd rather be in the cockpit than most other places, though. Personal life has never been a problem with flying.
There's the chance of an "accident" anywhere, in any job.
The job is on the line with every checkride, as it should be. Many jobs have inservice evaluations.
Retirement has gone away in many if not most industries outside the government. Welcome to reality.
"Accidental slip-up" with the law? Don't break the law.
Lose your job at an airline? Shouldn't be worried about starting over; if you go to work for another airline, they don't owe you anything.
Comparable education? What education? Degree if you wish (not required in most cases), and the flight training? Monkey skills on par with becoming a ski instructor.
If you lose your medical you should be done.
Being a pilot may be a "lifestyle" to you; it's very much a job, and a good one, too.
Easy is as easy does, but conducting an airplane from A to B isn't exactly rocket science, nor a particularly demanding act. There are a lot of harder and worse ways to make a living.

If you truly believe that, you have no business carrying people around or even being a flight instructor. You are an equipment operator at best.

I appreciate your input, although it came across more as a harsh critique. Not sure I agree with your viewpoint but it's good to hear from everyone.

I truly believe that, and I have all the business in the world carrying people and cargo around, as well as performing whatever utility mission I might be hired to do, and yes, I also flight instruct.

I am an aviator, and yes, an equipment operator.

You're not?

Excellent.

I missed this reply somehow. No I am not merely an equipment operator. As an instructor, do you remember the FOI's? Something about the difference between rote, application and correlation? An equipment operator does not work on the correlation level. Does the term airmanship ring a bell? An equipment operator reads some gauges and responds to them, that is the monkey learning by rote. Airline pilots are way beyond that. I mean, i suppose you could teach anybody how to do an appendectomy too, so is the surgeon a monkey?

No sarcasm here- You may very well be very intelligent and therefore the job is easy. I on the other hand do not think the job is all that easy. In fact, I am constantly in the books re-learning things I have forgotten. You are probably more intelligent than me.
I do have multiple types (no checkride fails) an A&P/IA, CFI tickets and a dispatch license. I have even built experimental aircraft from plans. I have to study a lot and study hard. Flying is NOT monkey easy for me.

Bottom line, nothing destroys a passion for aviation, a love for all thing flying... Like a flying career.

How long it takes to get to a legacy depends very much on timing. It also depends on the person.

In what way?

In every way.

Exactly.........

Good list. WRT "no retirement funds other than 401K", some airlines (most notably FedEx and UPS) DO still have a pension as part of their total retirement package. Some others like fNWA have their pensions frozen.
For someone considering an airline career, above statement is true. Since you're seeking input from those who are currently active aviators, I thought I'd mention this little point.

For "lose your job and start over", I'd substitute "lack of lateral mobility." ** The later is a relevant factor for those who have seen their contracts significantly eroded coupled with a protracted period of career stagnation. If those things happened to anyone else, they could find another job with similar or better pay.

** Yes, there are contract jobs overseas out there, but for the over 55 crowd, the pickings are very slim. Plus they're not for everyone. (How many accountants or doctors would choose to pursue a position thousands of miles away?)

I agree
 

It takes timing and depends upon the person.

I had plenty of peers whose dads were well placed in an airline and as a result were able to get hired at a legacy while very young. Who you know and who you are play a major role in success in certain paths in life. If your dad owns a chain of furniture stores then be a furniture salesmen. If your mother is a legacy airline captain then be an airline pilot. It makes life much easier to have well placed allies and to stay within the conduit of opportunity.

"Don't follow your passion but rather have your passion follow you." - Mike Rowe

In summary - Go where there is opportunity for you. If you are just another nameless suburban kid with a pile of school debt to finance a long shot aviation career perhaps you should reevaluate?

SKyhigh

Retirement age is 65. You could get a degree, have a 10 yr career in another field, save some money, grow maturity, then decide whether you want to be a professional pilot. You would still have a 30 yr career ahead of you. You would also be able to avoid huge debt, if you're wise, and have a fall back career during the inevitable furloughs. I did this, and have had more staying power as a result, but I am almost ready to call it quits. I can do so, because I have no fear. Having that fallback take away a lot of the power any crap mgmt. tries to hold over you to accept less and less. I think it is KEY to work outside of aviation to gain perspective as well. Regional FO salary is truly unconscionable.

Me plain country kid whos dad was not a airline pilot who was smart enough not to finance a career and paid as I went. I worked hard and made smart choices and played the long game as I paid as I went and it worked out. Many out there tried to shorten the time between initial quals to legacy pilot by paying big bucks to go to a aviation mill college. May of us knew that was not a smart move and did not.

It worked for some and not for others.

I had a j/s the other day that did the CoEX thing back in '96. He paid his $10k and flowed through to CAL. Now he is a 777 F/O. I don't think he has ever been furloughed or missed a paycheck.

Me, on the other-hand. Did not have the $10k for CoEx, even though I went to the interview in '96. I have been furloughed at least 5 times and have grown tired of starting over. Finally, hired by a legacy a couple of yrs ago. I was by far the most experienced person in the new hire class

Did I make the right decision?....ask me when I hit 65.

What me seem like a smart choice today could very well be a poor choice 10 yrs from now.

I understand the essence of this line of thinking but I don't really buy into it. The answer is: so what? Are you going to exercise analysis paralysis as a consequence of recognizing you don't have all the information you want available to you? If the answer is no, then who cares. The idea of asking oneself that at 65 is presumptuous to begin with. Nobody knows if one will make it to 65, nor if one would want to once in your 50s.

You know, for a group of professionals endemically exposed to getting bumped, displaced and laid off from work and demanding of perennial flexibility, airline pilots can be the worst offenders at one track minds when it comes to vocational choices. I was talking to a good airline pilot friend from work the other month regarding mulling over the viability of this career over a military/govt cheese one. He put it best when he said: "you know, if you end up not liking it or it settles into a long term schedule rut that doesn't work for you, you can always quit". And it hit me, people never think of that, but it's absolutely true. People have quit airline jobs for less before. Of course that requires one looks at it as a mere job, not a religion one would be blasphemous to attempt to leave.

The only part of that question that I value is whether it's meeting my personal and filial goals and expectations TODAY. If it's not, then I do something else until those are met. Do you like where you live? Do you enjoy the amount of time you get to spend with the people that matter to you? Does it afford you the stuff you want to consume with the people who matter to you? Those are the relevant questions. 65 may come and it may not. We've buried younger.

Time is the most expensive commodity and that's the one I have to maximize, even at the expense of material accumulation in infirmity. I sincerely value 35-45 more than 65-75. And if they told me to sacrifice solvency of one for the other I'll do it the same every time. That math should be self-evident if one truly understands opportunity costs in the context of human life stage progression.

I'd say stop thinking about the 10K you didn't have and your friend who never got furloughed. In the end to me that connection still assumes facts not in evidence, as it pertains to your career outcomes. If you're happy today, you're #winning. :)

I agree
 

I too could be an airline captain by now if I were willing to flame everything else in my life. We all make choices.

I never said that it couldn't be done only that the current price is to high and rewards to low.

Skyhigh

Or not.........

But you already know that Sh. Your sage comments are a large dose of rationalization mixed with a small percentage of fact.

The best thing you ever did for the flying community was leave.

The worst thing you've done is to keep coming back.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Sure, you could have been an airline captain. Could have been President of the United States. Could have been a lot of things that you're...not.

You quit. It's easy to say you coulda been a contender. But you never were. Now you haunt the forums, unsatisfied until the entire free world sheds a collective tear at the sorrow of your martyrdom.

Look, it's skyhigh. So sad. Don't you feel sad? I do. He tried so hard, and the world was against him. It's this terrible industry, don't you think? I do. The tens of thousands who are enjoying a successful career are mere aberrations, and we're fortunate that the good Lord sent us someone like skyhigh to save the minions from a fate like his. Tell it again, skyhigh. We're listening, we're with you. We grieve with you. Your tragedy is our tragedy. So sad. So, so sad. Don't you feel sad?

I feel sad for Skyhigh,

According to his stories of woe, he grew up in a neighborhood where everybody's dad was an airline pilot for a major airline. And every single one of those fathers had careers that ended in financial ruination and social isolation. So sad.

He was told by a UAL captain whom he just happen to be riding on his STOL Cessna 207 in AK that he'd never have a chance at working for an airline. So sad.

He actually said publicly that the C-207 with a STOL kit is a "tricky" airplane to fly. Now that really is sad.

All of the children of airline pilots (who lost their careers and lived on in social isolation) were subsequently hired by major airlines because their dads got them their jobs. So sad.

We could go on but the truth of the matter is that Skyhigh is a pathetic little whiner, and a big time loser. He comes here looking for sympathy. Here's a hint Skyhigh, you can find sympathy in the dictionary right between schit and syphilis.

Why did you have to go and do that? Now I'm really sad. I was going to spend the day sealing a fuel tank, and may be take off for a pulled pork sandwich at lunch time. I was really looking forward to that. Now I'll probably sit at home on the kitchen floor with my knees drawn up to my chest and rock back and forth, and mourn for skyhigh. Damn it.

No, now that I think about it, may be not. It is really sad (I mean terribly so), and tragic, and in fact a horrible way to go, but all isn't entirely lost. Not for me, anyway. I can still have that sandwich, and I will be spending the day at the airport. I am doing something that I enjoy and it does pay embarrassingly well. Today will be a bit messy and I may spend part of it higher than a kite (toluene does that), but it beats the hell out of sitting behind a desk, and the flying is spectacular. In fact, I should have a really, really stellar day. So...I'll try to pause briefly for some fresh air, and make a note to mourn for skyhigh, even if for just a second. It is very sad, after all.

I just really like you guys
 

Hoss, John,

Naw, I just really like you guys and enjoy your constructive criticism. Where else can one get such a harsh dose of honesty but from their true friends like you guys.

Those of us who may be stuck at a regional or who may have lost their families and financial security in the pursuit of aviation need tough conservative guys like you to tell us "how it is". To remind guys like me that "we just are not good enough" and how the earnest "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". We need to know that position and nepotism only makes things harder for true Americans like you.

Keep it coming. You can do better.

I still harbor thoughts that I can do better than what aviation is currently offering. It still seems like an unworthy place to invest myself. Tell me how 9-11, airline mergers, and the age 65 thing was my peer groups fault. Tell the young tales of how guys just a few years ago were getting into the regionals with just a few hundred hours and now they need the extra punishment of 1500 hours and expensive ATP training added to the pile. You need to continue to beat us down until we understand how we are too arrogant to experience down grades and pay cuts at the legacy carriers. We need to strip down our personal lives and expectations till there is little left and lay it upon the alter of aviation if we expect to succeed. Modern aviation is not a profession where one should expect a financial and personal life return but more of a calling, a religion. Only those who can put the blinders on will prevail.

Help us to learn.

Skyhigh

No, you don't. Nobody could tell you anything. You spend your time whining and placing blame on everyone but you. Entitlement and lack of responsibility are your calling cards. It's the industry's fault, but never yours.

Yes, you've said so a thousand times. You've said many times that aviation used to be the place where pilots lived like kings, but no more. So you got out.

How's your life now, king?

The only one who has said such a thing is you. If that's what you believe, then say so.

It's all about placing blame and finding fault, for you. Always in search of somewhere to point the finger.

When something is in the road, you go around it, or you stop. You can hit it at your peril, but that may end your journey. Likewise, when your career hits a challenge, you can do something about it; move to a different company, seek greater levels of certification, take a different position, lots of things, or you can whine that the sky is falling cry "poor me," and blame the industry. You choose the latter. It's all about fault for you.

This is why you didn't make it as a pilot. As pilot in command, we learn that the buck stops with us. It's our responsibility to ensure the safe outcome of the flight, and as employed pilots, it's OUR responsibility to take care of our careers...not to wait for the career to take care of us. You don't seem to understand personal responsibility.

You do seem to understand martyrdom, as you've wholly embraced it.

The ATP has long been 1,500 hours. Get over it. Punishment of 1,500 hours? Again, this is why you failed.

Young tales? What are "young tales?"

There was a brief while when the little curtain climbers managed to climb on with a regional with a few hundred hours...and many of them are stuck because they didn't bother seeking experience and qualification first, and lack the experience to bounce elsewhere without falling back. That's the consequence of attempting to run before you're able to walk, or walk before learning to crawl.

1,500 hours IS low time.

Who owes you an ATP, and who owes you 1,500 hours. Go figure out how to get it on your own. If you can't do that, good riddance, because you definitely don't belong in aviation.

That would be a colossal waste of time. By "us," we refer to you.

You didn't come here to learn.

You've nothing to teach. Not even failure, though that's your legacy; you would have to admit your failings before you could learn even from those, let alone teach it.

Your faltering attempt at teaching isn't really so; it's merely a twisted gospel of disappointment, with nothing to offer but lies and incorrect ideas.

I just want know what fantasy land our whinny little drama queen lived where virtually every other dad was an airline captain? What flight school did he attend where airline captains continuously came by and spread false hope and industry sunshine. The really funny part however is when he gets pasted into corner under a ton of his own BS he invariably tries to dig out with the time proven poor me schtick and the pathetic, I thought you guys were my friends line...

You are fun
 

You are fun Hoss.

So what you are saying is that aviation has always been a miserable hole to throw ones life into and we should be happy to pull our selves up by the bootstraps and jump in?

You are right. I Sadly do hold higher expectations of myself. It is pathetic that I will not give myself to be cannon fodder for the profession.

You should give the motivational speeches at aviation universities. I am sure that your assertions about the profession would clear the room far faster then I could.

SkyHigh

No not really but I am not surprised that you interpret it that way. What I am saying is that your are full of it. There is no way that your background stories are factual and if there is the slightest amount of factual basis in them, you've embellished them to a high degree to make your arguments sound stronger than they are.

To a clear thinking, sane person there is NO WAY that my above statement can be interpreted any other way.

Plain and simple when we take the PC icing off the Skyhigh cake. You are a despondent loser, and a liar who is obsessed with trying to rationalize his failures in life.

I hope that was clear enough for you.

PS

I do like how you've now slipped the age 65 thing into your tales of woe...AGE 65 had NOTHING to do with you. You had washed out, curled up into the fetal position, and started sucking your thumb in defeat, LONG before age 65 came about. Lets try keep it real. A tall order for you I know but try.