2Co2-

Maybe you could give your age, times and background for a little perspective.

 

31, 5500 TT, EMB A320 type

 

Heyas,

This post brings up some GREAT points.

Some guys are used to being a perpetual "college student", such as living in a rat trap, driving a broken down, rusted out sh!tbox, sleeping on an air mattress and being able to pack all of your belongings in a single cardboard box. You'll need this because you'll either move every 8-14 months, or commute.

When guys talk about "giving it all you got" and "if you want it bad enough" THIS is the lifestyle they're talking about.

If you have any kind of significant other in your life, you can bet they'll hit the highway long before the dollars start rolling back in. If you're close in age, the early thirty's becomes the age where a home, kids and an upgraded standard of living starts coming in to play for your "other".

Going in the other direction will most surely lead to EXTREME relationship stress. I don't care if they say they "understand", they don't. If married, plan on divorce...it's that simple. It doesn't matter how much you promise "honey, it will get better", all they know is that you're not there NOW...that is, gone for up to 20 days a month. I'd say the casualty rate for relationships with this kind of move is close to %85.

Hate to be a buzzkill, but there are always consequences. Best to plan for them.

Nu

 

My bad, for some reason I misunderstood and thought you were replying to the original post:

" ...I just started pursuing my pilots license. I am 32 now. I plan to get this done and be ready to apply within 5 years (for at least the regionals). I have been told that airlines are hesitant to hire anyone past the age of 32. Does anyone know if there is any thruth to this? I appreciate all your feedback... "

My point is simply to disregard any and all possible discriminators in our lives in order to succeed. Your age, gender, color of skin, etc, etc. should never be something you should worry about; besides there’s nothing you can do about those factors anyways so let it go.

We as pilots keep trying to reach our ultimate goals by applying, interviewing and re-interviewing with many different airlines throughout our careers. In a way we let others to make the hiring decisions for us - we just hope to skew their decisions in our favor.

The original poster said “I have been told that airlines are hesitant to hire anyone past the age of 32” and my reply to that is screw everything you ever “heard” from others and simply apply, apply and re-apply - be the best you can be and don't worry about things you can't change. Let others make those decision for you and hopefully you can 'guide them' in the right direction through your dedication and perseverance.

Hopefully I’m making some sense here…

 

Nu,
I second that emotion...
So there I was, a few years back.
Wrenching on a 520 in Juneau.
Pulling the fuel injector nozzles for cleaning.
All proud of myself because I'd earned my A+P the old school way of being an apprentice, after wiping many a Beaver and Otter's belly free of oil. For not much money or real security.
I had the Commercial license in my pocket, but at that time it took way more than I had recorded in my logbook to actually get paid for flying there.
I felt proud to be earning a paycheck, in aviation, in my late 20's, after doing a whole bunch of other stuff like being in the Navy, getting a college degree, commercial fishing, and running construction equipment. My wife had a good job and we were getting by without too much shoving.
Well, I digress. I apologize.
As I said, I was doing my thing on the front end of the 207 there, and into the hangar walks this goofy lookin' skinny old timer wearing a cowboy hat and boots.
Proceeds to walk up to me and ask if I'd happen know anything about flying floatplanes.
Well, I did. A little. I'd rebuilt an old 1949 PA-11 that I just happened to have sitting down there at the float pond bobbing gently on Edo 1320's.
Ended up taking this old timer Texas Lear pilot out to Admiralty island for a bit of sight-seeing on a rare sunny Southeast AK day. We saw some brown bears, eagles up close, and generally had a pretty cool flight puttin' above that wilderness in the Cub with the door open.
Well as you probably guessed, a few of us mechanics, some pilots, and he and his right-seater, we ended up sharing some beers and wisdom when we got back.
That old timer told us a couple of things that I remember.
First, that if I ever ended up in Texas, to look him up for a job.
And second, that doing what we all did was pretty hard on marriages.
He was on his fourth, I believe.
But he was having a good time.
He told us he'd gotten afflicted with AIDS.
Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome.
And I reckon I got afflicted with it too. I got divorced a few years ago. It sucked. And I reckon there's a whole bunch of other pilots and aviation types out there that are displaying the symptoms in their marriages.
But here's the way I see it- Would we be better at a relationship if we had a different career? Would we still be who we want to be, see what we want to see, if we were managing a coffee shop, selling insurance, performing brain surgery, staying home every night? All kinds of people get split up, and some of them it won't matter how much time they spend together. Maybe there's some hot loving loyal female out there that gets this dilemma, she works the night shift at the Tulsa Denny's maybe? Or maybe she's a pilot too?
It ain't that bad, doing what we do. I hope.
And if it is, it's only going to get better.
Chin Up.

 

Kilgore -

Nope....tried to date her in the late 80's and she could have cared less about someone being a pilot

So...are you heading to TX soon? What did that old skinny cowboy do for a living?

USMCFLYR

 

AV8OR -

I was saying hat I certainly would hope hat airlines would hire someone *breaking ito the industry past the age of 32* or else I have a lot of peers who are going to be greatly disappointed - though less now than in the past I'll admit.

USMCFLYR

 

I was 35. The biggest thing that will put you over the top is doing something other than flight instructing. By that I mean flight instruct but get some commercial flying in as well. It sounds like you are not going to the big schools with a marketing department buying interviews at airlines so you'll need to be very competitive with your times. Try to get some multi turbine. Age never once came up at an interview though. Colgan won't like you because you are a little older and may be able to make a decision on your own, they'd rather be able to tell you what to decide. Other than that an airline job is in your future.

 

Where can you get log-able multi-turbine time when everyone wants at least 135 mins? (>1200 tt) I should have 135 mins in about a month or so, but what about the new career changers? I am in Florida, the land of a million hungry CFIs so opportunities are not as readily available through networking as they might be almost anywhere else. I considered getting a part-time ramper job just for the opportunity to meet people and network some more outside of my career-oriented flight school.
I do have the opportunity to right seat in a Twin Otter for sky-diving ops, but none of it is log-able because it is a single pilot operation and the guy is not a CFI, MEI, or even ATP.

 

I hope the industry is better shape for you in five years.