I think he'd make a great recruiter for AllATP's...

I see both sides points of view , we all have good days and bad.....but when they are bad ..always remember someone else out there is always having a worse day than you...I am pretty happy with my job, there are certainly a LOT worse ways to make money in this life thats for sure.

Every job has its highs and lows.... & flying has a lot of lows. But it has some highs too. I worked as an engineer for a while and it was boring, plus my office was underground. I got paid a @#$%-load but I did not enjoy the work. So I decided I would try being broke. Flying took care of that perfectly! It was a struggle for a while and there were moments that I really wondered what I had done. I have seen friends far surpass me in wealth and material things, but they have not watched the sun sink below the horizon at FL450 or grope their way through the mountains at night single pilot in wx with no autopilot. There are some real rewards with those things to me beyond money. Luckily, I have started to see some more $$$ pile up this year as my company does well and rewards its pilots accordingly (corporate.) The industry still has some good jobs out there and YOU will have to work hard to get them. Many may never make it. We need to straight up as far as pilots and not bottom feed. As for me, the travel has been great and the pilots I work with are the best bunch of guys I 've ever met. We have a blast on the road and foreign girls still have the respect for the "pilot" man! Who knows this could end tomorrow for me, but I can't say it has not been fun.

Worse
 

I suppose prison would be worse. :p

SkyHigh

Peotry
 

What about my poetry career???:D

Skyhigh

Hey Sky,

The Sky is falling

Here are a few realities and facts about this profession:

Companies WILL come and go.
Furloughs WILL happen.
The industry, like ALL others, WILL grow and wane in cycles.
Some of these cycles will take longer than others.
NOTHING is for certain. The legacy carrier of today is just as easily the tombstone of tomorrow as any other carrier.
There will ALWAYS be scabs, bickering, and give/take relationships with labor vs management.

Another Reality
 

If an occupation does not pay enough to overcome the cost of training and education that it took to get there then it is called a hobby. Fun is fun but this is supposed to be a profession.

SkyHigh

I find it hard to believe that someone who didn't know what was right for him seems to know what is right for others. We aren't here to be store owners unless it's some sort of side business. I can pick up any paper and read how crappy travel is and how horrible the airlines are. When I was in high school even then I knew that it wasn't going to be easy. That there would be years of low income and high hours. I'd find it very hard to believe that someone else would make the jump into such expensive and exhaustive training while having absolutely no idea that things can be rough for a few years. No reason to bring it here.

Secondly I'd like to know what industry is stable? My bro-in-law and sister work at IBM with over 350,000 employees. They hire and fire faster than airlines. Same goes with banks. Take a look at citigroup the past couple years. Keep your eye on Wa-Mu. Merrill Lynch is about to can 10 to 15 percent of it's workforce. Exactly where is stability besides working for the gov't? The oil field fired more people in the 90s than the airlines have thought of ever hiring. What's good today could change tomorrow so telling someone to change their long term future plans because you didn't like yours, Sky, just shows short sightedness.

Then most people with white collar jobs are working "hobbies". A lot of those so called "professionals" have student loans well into their 30's and 40's. Even after you pay off your bachelor's, many folks still need to obtain graduate degrees to continue up the food chain.

At what point exactly do you "overcome the cost of training and education"? When you earn more per year than you paid? When you have made more cumulatively than you paid? When you pay off all of your debt? At the end of the day, it's all subjective.