So I am currently going to school and working to become a commercial pilot. I still have a year and a half left of school and I was wondering if it will still be an abundance of airlines hiring? I'm just worried that by then it will be hard to get in with an airlines. Any advice?

 

be currently working in another field/get a degree in another field. that way if things are down when you reach the mins to get hired, you can still make money doing something else.

this career jumps around so much in so little time that any kind of guesswork is useless. best to hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

 

Yea. I'm getting three degrees in Political Science, History, and Physics. I was going to attend law school before deciding I wanted to fly. I've been worrying about it a lot, so I thought it would be good to get some advice.

 

Couldn't agree more. I would say that the hiring boom will slow down but you should still have a good shot. But then again, this industry can turn on a dime at any given time. Always leave yourself with a backup plan, thats the most important thing.

 

Yeah things are going to slow down this year and '09, personally I think is going to be even slower. Things are going to stagnate at the majors and attrition at regionals is going to slowly come to a stop (or very little movement). Attrition is already slowing down, even at PNCL where the attrition was crazy last year. Also with fuel prices, regionals are going to make some fleet adjustments for the next few years, they're going to start replacing 50 seaters with 70-100 seaters (much sooner than they thought) to make a profit. That could mean more capacity per airplane but fewer airplanes= less pilot jobs. On top of this, this could be a longer than usual economic recesion. Historically recesions last for about 36 months, some experts say that this one could last 4-5 years. (knock on wood).
Anyways, that's what I see is happening, hopefully I'm wrong, but if you ask pilots that've been in this industry for years, they propably going to tell you something similar.

 

How do you think your job prospects (outside of aviation) will be with these 3 degrees?

If you have an aptitude for law (ie can make a good LSAT score), consider it. Browse this board for a few hours and see what "professionals" have been saying about their airline jobs lately. Then consider that it's probably not getting any better, especially over the next few years.

 

Dude...I turned down a top 10 law school and 2 med schools to finish my comm and fly. I can't say I don't have regrets about that on some days when I miss home and the prestige of the school I would've been out, and the general "acceptance" of that career by friends, family, and most importantly WOMEN, but the majority of the time if I think about all the extra debt and all the studying I'd have to do in law school, I think this is the right choice. I have a science undergrad degree and had a 4.0 GPA...don't let anyone tell you that your college education has no bearing on your aviation career, because it does. 121 training is just as intense as law school, if not harder (in law school you don't have to worry about 50-100 people's lives while you're in IOE). So the study habits and discipline that got you into law school, that you acquired through undergrad at a decent university, will prove to be very useful in this career.

Just keep your head up and don't have any regrets if/when things go South. Unless you're a real badazz lawyer with a great law school GPA, you woulda been making the same money as a captain, which you could easily be by the time you would've finished law school. Factor in being at a major (maybe) in 6-8 years or so, and the pay range from now until major job is relatively similar to law school, minus about 50K MORE debt as a law student.

As a JD you'd work 70 hrs+/week and probably hate your life. As an MD, you'd start out life with 200K in debt, make 30K as a resident for 4 years, THEN make 6 figs.

Bottom line is plenty of people will give you crap about not going to law school (or med and law school in my case) to be a pilot. But most of them don't fully understand that med and law people go through just as much BS (if not more), and work twice as much...and lawyers, just like pilots, might never get that six figure job unless they went to a great school and got good grades. It's even more competitive. People forget that. Keep that in mind and you'll stay in aviation, trust me.

 

back to your orig. question: I think things will pick up 5 years from now when all the baby boomers hitting 60--who f-ed up my career and everyone else's by getting age 65 passed--finally go the heck to their friggin retirement village in Pam Beach to die.

Meanwhile, FDX and UPS, and all the majors are going to be stagnant. And then comes the part about getting stuck at a regional for 5 years.

Things might get good in 5 years, though, as long as some crazy fundamentalist doesn't do anything stupid, and as long as wall street can't get their mergers through before we get a democrat president this fall.

 

Time will tell the story.... hiring stagnate.... probably not entirely.... but the next 18 months will see not nearly as many hired as in the past 18 months. beyond that it could be anybodys guess depending on the economy ( i see a slight downturn but probably not a full blow 18 -24 month recession -- historically they average that....some longer a few very short ones... but we shall see ).... and just how many of the "old guys" stay on and for how long....good luck.

 

exactly right my man. i tried to explain this in a previous post of mine and people didn't believe it. you will only make 30k a year for 4 years as a resident, and i have lawyer friends who are just trying to scrape by starting their own practices. they say it will be 5 years or so before they really start to see any profit. when i was working at the hospital and sleeping on those nasty beds waiting for my pager to go off i would hear the helicopter flying in, or a jet over head and knew i had to get out NOW!!! going in at 3:00 in the afternoon, supposed to get off around 1:00 am, only to get "EXTENDED" and not end up leaving the hospital till 5:00am. unfortunatly in the hospital there are no rest requirements so i had to be back the next day to face it all again with minimul sleep.

now for your question. the regionals will continue to hire and you will have no problem getting a job. some regionals will be slower than others at hiring, but i don't see any of them slowing down enough that you would have to worry about getting a job at all.

its definantly not as fast as last year but i don't think there is to much of a slow down. my seniority moved up over 25 people in the february bid pack. and i am in the 600's. so still a lot of senior people moving on to greener pastures, and we still have captain vacancies going unfilled.