Airline Pilot Central Forums - Your thoughts for a potential career changer?

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If you get one thing from all the posts above it should that there is no standard path to a flying career. There are many things that will affect your path. Some you can control others you can not.
I speak for years of experience.

I have spent 20 years in this biz and currently at my 6th airline.
Here are a few things I have learned.

1- Things always change!!! example, in 2001 I got hired at my dream job at a major. 6 months later 911 happened and I was on the street with no job and no flying jobs available. You think change will not happen to you, well talk to any random pilot that has been in this industry for 20 years, you will hear about all the things that happen that the young guys have never experienced.
furloughs, bankruptcy, mergers, bases closures,pensions disappearing, fleet changes, pay cuts,work rule changes, etc.
The industry is in an up cycle right now, just like the late 90s. But the industry always follows the economy and they economy always goes up and down. This is one of the things you have no control over but you should keep it in mind.

2- Live in or near your domicile!!!
You QOL will definitely be 100% better if you do not commute. How much better will depend on if you are on reserve, schedules your airline has, etc. But even under the best conditions it takes time away from home. Plus it will add cost, (crash pad more money for food, etc). If you live in domicile, even reserve becomes much better. In fact at some places reserve goes so senior a junior pilot can not bid it because all the senior guys take it. Why, because a reserve pilot rarely flys on all their ON days. So you can sit at home instead of at a crash pad. You will get more days off at home. Of course this assumes you are not trying to build hours. There are exceptions to this. if your airline does not have a domicile you want to live in or maybe your wife has a good job in a different city, maybe it is cheap to live where you are. There are lots of factors, but just know if you commute, even with a great schedule you will be away from home more.

3- The airline that is the one everyone wants to work for will not be the one next year. Don't pick an airline by who is the "hot one" now. (see rule #1)
Look at all the factors that are important to you and pick the one that meets most of them. For me, I live on the west coast and rule #2 was high on my list. A few airlines floated to to top. Then I narrowed it down to Compass. There were several things they offered that made it a great fit for me. LAX is a junior base for them, so I got awarded it before I completed train. (rule #2 covered)
They currently have very short reserve time in LAX, (2-3 months) If you live in the east, there many be better option for you than commuting to LA. But then again, we have guys that commute from HI and they have schedules with 14 days off with only 1 yr seniority.
Also, Compass gives 4 commuter hotel room per month. So many guys that commute don't have to have a crash pad. That may make a difference for a person, but then again you are still commuting. But a very nice benefit to have.

3- have a long term goal, but have a backup plan.
For me, my goal like everyone else is to get back to a major. But if the economy tanks in the next year, hiring will probably come to a standstill. Could you be happy at the regional you pick for the next several years? That is a question you have to keep in mind. Compass currently has a 1 yr upgrade time. So for me that out weighed higher pay at some other airlines.

bottom line, everyone's situation is different and everyone has things that are more important to them than the next guy. Look at the things that are important to you and then see how they match up to some of the airlines you are interested in and what they can offer.

rule #4
The 3 rules above will never change in this industry!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by RyanP (Post 2059573)

1. This job is unfair to a family and kids. I would feel horrible if I had kids and don't know how people justify it. You will miss out on virtually everything for all the many years you are a Junior regional FO, a Junior regional CA, then all over again for years as a junior pilot at a larger carrier. Birthdays, Holidays, Family events, important kids activities, weekend activities with friends, you will be gone in a hotel. Get use to things like all your family visiting your house on Christmas or Thanksgiving and you are stuck in a crappy hotel in middle of nowherville Kansas. Or all your friends getting together for a fun event or BBQ on the weekend but you can't go.. Over time they just stop asking because you are never there. This job has destroyed countless relationships. Some people make it work, MANY don't last. I see it constantly over the years. It's sad.

2. 3 on 4 off schedule isn't realistic and isn't happening for a long time.. then it will go away again as you progress upwards and are junior again in a different seat.. this cycle will continue many times as you move up in this career. The further you get up the ladder, the longer those years you will wait are.. Regional FO seniority moves fairly quickly, as there is a lot of turnover and movement, regional CA is a lot slower, and so on.. The trend with staffing getting worse and worse is having us work MORE days, not less.. unfortunately. This is only going to get worse with looming retirements. Plan 4-6 days on, 2-3 off. Commuting and reserve will make it even less.

3. Honestly.. I think this job is boring and I would trade it for an office job to be home every day and not waste my life away in airports and hotels. Some people are die hard and just love it, you fly with those people every now and then, they are the one's who read aviation magazines, play flight sim in the hotel, build RC planes, take picture of planes at the airport still.. most of us aren't that way, at least not anymore. Most of us just show up, try to get the shortest trip possible and just think about getting home ASAP. Doing this everyday sucks all the fun out of it in a hurry, trust me. You don't even really fly anymore at this level to be honest. Autopilot is on 98% of the time, and you punch buttons on the FMS or flight guidance panel when ATC tells you to do something. That's it. Every now and then you see something cool, or get to do something interesting or fun like flying low around NYC or DC to do their visual approaches.. but for the most part it's very dull and incredibly boring IMO, and there is a lot of crap and BS to deal with on the ground. As a captain you are responsible for everything and you get blamed for everything too if anything ever goes wrong. Flying is the easy part, being on the ground and dealing with all that is the crappy stressful part. Coordinating everything, paperwork nightmares, getting everyone else to simply do their jobs is a never ending challenge.. which most of this you DON'T EVEN GET PAID FOR. Since 90% of this BS is always happening with the main door open, you aren't even on the clock getting paid. Delays too, hours and hours you sit there losing out on time off, for free. Then really hope you don't miss your last commute flight home that day because of it, (happens all the time).. that will cost you a precious day off, unpaid.

The hard part about leaving this career after so much time and money invested into it is replacing the legacy level income with another regular job.. I think that is one of the only reasons a lot of people don't leave from everyone I know. Which as a new person starting out, it will take you a long time living at terrible wages to get too anyway, if you ever get there. I'm over a decade invested in regionals and still stuck here, and not for lack of trying. Thousands and thousands are in the exact same position. Things change rapidly and are very cyclical in this industry and you never know what will happen. Age 65, oil prices and 9/11 wrecked this industry in a heartbeat for many of us at the regionals currently. All of us here at the time paid the price getting stuck at horrible low wages as a regional FO forever, furloughed, or had to start over at the bottom multiple times. Then there is the constant shifting around of regional flying and people undercutting one another and stepping on each other to try to get ahead at your expense. One day your regional will be "the" place to be, the next day the bottom feeders of the industry with the worst contract is taking all your flying, and you move backwards, then that cycle continues on and on.. Is it worth it just to do this? I would say definitely not. Things are trending in a positive direction right now but could go in the toilet in a second with one big terrorist attack, oil spike or any number of things. No way in hell I would start over in this industry again if I had a good job with plenty of family time. Fly for fun if you enjoy it. Not because you have too.

It's funny, for every person that wants to do this, there is a person sitting in a hotel that wishes they just had a normal well paying 9-5 again. BTW I am typing this from a Hotel, wishing I was home having fun with friends and family on a Saturday night.. Instead I will be getting up at 0345 AM for a 16 hour day tomorrow with a 2.5 hour commute. Think about that..

4. Live in base if at all possible. It is a drastic difference in quality of life and basically mandatory if you care about your family time, stress levels and sanity. Commuting is a nightmare, it's extremely stressful and wastes an enormous amount of your life. Last week every flight I showed up at to get home on had 4-5 other jumpseaters each flight and was overbooked. You are tired, you just want to get home after a 10-12 hour day, but you can't just go home like a normal person. It's wait 2 hours for the next flight, try again.. same thing, more jumpseaters, full flight, try again in another 3 hours, on and on.. finally I took a high risk of getting stranded 2 leg 5.5 hour commute through another hub city to get home at 2am after 21 hours that day. This is not uncommon. It happens all the time. Commuting SUCKS and takes years off your life. Saying that about living in base, I HAVE moved to base 3 times to end this nightmare, and had my base closed on me and moved each time. This regional industry is HIGHLY unstable if you haven't grasped that yet. The Majors aren't much better. Bases close or shift around even at the Legacy level. So.. hope you don't like making long term living arangement plans.. this job will likely ruin them. FYI.

It's easy to dismiss all this stuff as a newbie looking in and just see fun, excitement and Delta, UAL, AA pay rates. Everyone does. I did too. Then you live it for 5-10+ years and that all goes away when reality sets in somewhere between your $800 paychecks, lack of sleep, crap hotel in podunk Indiana, and waiting around all day staring out the windows of an airport on 4th of July weekend wishing you could just go home and have a good time with your friends and family like everyone else does.

25+ years in the airplane business, most in the airline sector. Pretty much nailed it with this post. Looking back, I wish I had never left my previous career, money wise it would have been a wash, experience wise, there were too many days of my life dropped into the toilet because of airlines, broken airplanes, out of base reserve, missed commutes, and if I would have sold my house and moved every time my domicile closed, 3 moves would have been in my history. I am counting the days down until mandatory retirement with glee. You might ask why not just quit now, because after 17 years in, I get a fairly decent schedule. I don't expect that to last beyond any one bid period, because corporate decides to tweak the PBS periodically, I get on average 2 bid periods a year with 10 days off and uncommutable trips in the mix. You say boo hoo, well,who flys those 17 hour, 4 day uncommutable trips, 10 day off months the rest of the year?
Junior guys.......

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClickClickBoom (Post 2193107)

Wow am I understanding correctly?
17 years and you still get some months with only 10 days off with uncommutable trips in those same months?
If so I'm going to say with confidence that you're in the minority there.
Mind if I ask where you work?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClickClickBoom (Post 2193107)

I agree with most of that post, but must take vehement exception that this job is nothing more than button pushing. If his hatred of the job has reduced him to staring out the window, grunting acknowledgements to ATC and jabbing the correct buttons with his booger picker, he needs to effing quit. I think that I, and you, and our families, would appreciate alert, motivated and professional airmen up front.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RemoveB4Flight (Post 2193305)

Yup,
If you knew our PBS vendor you would understand. It awards from the top down, and assigns leftovers from the top down as near as I can tell, couldn't get a definitive answer from KH as to what is happening. My PBS bid is very simple, no voodo, or incantations, that's why it's puzzling, my bad bids come in the late spring/summer schedules, when the uber senior guys bid down to mins. And yes,I come to work prepared to work and put 100% on the pedestal.
Oh well, it is what it is.

Its all perspective, i ran into a old friend that quit flight school 15 years ago.. Fast forward to now.. Hes busting his but running his own drywall company, bad back, no benifits, and only 3/4 the money i make.. And his business is up and down... He just text me saying he just went and started flying again.. I have flown with a lot of FO's latley that gave up on flying 10-15 years and ran business only now to come back just for the fun. Not necessarily the money..

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClickClickBoom (Post 2193485)

Yeah I know what you mean about the leftover pairings..seems that can be a crapshoot sometimes. That being said I wouldn't fly a month with only 10 days off unless I elected to pick up extra flying (which I don't). We have a maximum of 19 scheduled days of work unless you decide to waive that right. So you should always have either 11 or 12 days off per month depending how many days are in that bid period.

Quote:

Originally Posted by amcnd (Post 2193497)

I think it's Newton's Third Law of career arguments: "For every anecdote, there is an equal and opposite counter-anecdote."

Let's face it, most of us didn't do enough research before embarking on an aviation career. We just wanted it, selected the evidence which would support our choice, prepared ourselves as best we could, and then luck put a thumb on the scales. There were plenty of sorrowful tales and dashed hopes back in the "golden age" too, but they had no forum then. If they did, our pilot egos would have ignored the warnings, figuring that we would succeed where they failed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomgoodman (Post 2193629)

Tru nuff!
When I started, the only info I could get was from the old guys at the GA airport, who came down to play with their Cubs and while whiling their days away telling stories. These guys were pre-deregulation retirees, with stories of gold, treasure, and adventures in far away foreign lands, as well as stewardess harems. Of course I was sold, cash(lots), hot chicks, and a retirement plane to play with, sign me up.
Fast forward, to the 90's and the joy that that was, for pilots. You couldn't even get an interview at my current company without 2000TT+, 500ME, and extensive 135 type experience, all to sit in class for the princely sum of $0.00 per hour. The reality of the story is, if I had the Internet, I would have had a chance at being semi-informed, instead of $300 bucks per hour, and hot and cold running women visions.
Oh, and BTW, my entire class made it through with no failures or drop outs. A 10% failure rate is 3X the old FAA rate. Beware, companies are "interviewing" in the schoolhouse, and the sim, as well as IOE.

Quote:

Originally Posted by amcnd (Post 2193497)

The only job worse than Sheetrock in the construction world is roofing, followed by insulation. I would rather be laying in waste line water, gluing waste lines than either of the above.