Professional Pilot Training (includes ground studies)A forum for those on the steep path to that coveted professional licence. Whether studying for the written exams, training for the flight tests or building experience here's where you can hang out.
I want to thank all you seasoned fellas for the words of wisdom. And though I am a realist, I can see how it can be easy for someone to lose a lot of years with their head in the clouds (no pun intended). And I can see how much I can come off like a dreamer with the things I love to do and the things I plan to do. Hell writing fiction is my first love, I want to be a novelist, and if you can imagine it, pilot is what I call my practical goal. Upon those two that are at the top of the things I enjoy, I'm damn decent at texas hold 'em, and am training myself in card counting with blackjack. The truth is I've done janitorial work for two years, aided in stone furnishing repair, painting, and smelled enough shit for a lifetime while working outside; I just want a little fun now. I have no ambition to be rich really, so it's fine if the managers make all the cash, just as long as I get all the fun. And maybe a big plane will be boring, but if the bizjet keeps everything spinning, I'll go with that.
Just noticed I replied to this back in 2002. Things have changed dramatically in last 5 years from when I wrote about towing gliders and lorry driving. Just left one flying job and about to start flying regional turboprops.
Must say priorities in life have changed a hell of a lot for me. Flying has less become a passion that I must do at all costs for a living, more now a profession. One thats already had a seismic heave on personal life and just cost me a relationship. This career can throw googlies at your personal life that sometimes gets glossed over when starting out. I certainly did but its hard to think of home life being nearly as important as flying when you're 21/22. I see through different, wider eyes now.
Just a thought really. Dont get me wrong, its all circumstances and I'm very happy to be where I am but its at the knowledge of what its cost me in my home life.
Wireless,
Having just started down the long road of getting back up to speed and currency and finishing what I started so long ago. I too am slightly older and slightly wiser then 21/22 with the rosy eyes. My problem I now face is have wife and daughter would love to finalise my dream of flying (NOT AIRLINES) but left to ponder what is actually available in the wide skies of Aus for the flying father to be able to live in a decent city but earn enough to feed the wifey and daughter. Hell I am struggling to pay rent on a full time sales role!!! Any tips on where to look for decent freight work or anything to get a reasonable wage these day's?
Hey. Just want to ask. I'm graduating this October, I hurried my schooling (4 yrs) and finished it in 3 years. I am planning to join training for commercial pilot for Philippine airlines. But it is 2M PHP. Actually we are not rich, and I am expecting that my family would get our investments back...
will it be worth it???
will employment be assured if you try hard??
or is PAL just trying to get additional funds???
please reply
I am someone who late in life (ish) 37 has finally got into a position
financially to do my ppl. Now im hooked and am seriusly thinking about
making flying a career. Money wise i am earning around 60k and
will at the start I beleive be having to go backwards.
Am seriously considering going for ATPL.
I am only doing this because I love flying and love climbing in the DA40
and climbing into the sky.
I have concerns about making such a big change, kids ,mortgage etc.
If you had your time again would you still be a pilot????
Thanks for the warning i am 37 and in a reasonably well paid job.
Am currently doing my PPL and love flying and thinking about making
what I love a career but have concerns about kids, wife, mortgage
etc.
DA40, your question has been answered on PPRuNe forums more frequently than a government inquiry
The quick answer is both YES and NO but which one is for you, well that's down to personal circumstances, please search through and I'm sure you'll find what you need (lots of it).
Best of luck matey
I'm just wondering what kind of qualifiications or subjects do you need to be really good at to become an airline pilot. I love to fly and had a flying lesson yesterday at Wolverhampton but i would hate for it to have to end because i wasn't strong in a paticular subject.
Hello...I Want to become an pilot. What do i have to do to get a chance to do it? And how much does it cost?
Which airline is the best to become a trainee? please help me.
Could anyone please help me by letting me know if they can recommend a good cheap training school located anywhere in Orlando were they have completed their PPL recently. thanks
I fly, but i wouldnt consider myself a pilot. Just a hobby with Grobs, Tucanos, Bulldogs and the occasional Viking glider. Only got a PPL...not many airlines have sponserships now to get CPLs and the 60k-100k costs arent much choice for me lol
This must be one of the oldest but still current threads. It would be interesting to hear from some of the original contributors back in 2002 to see how their views and careers changed since. By the look of it some of them must have drunk themselves to death by now
I didn't contribute to this thread back then, surprisingly but then again in 2002 I had effectively given up on flying as a career. Things have changed and I now scratch a living as an instructor.
That apparently makes me a wannabee.
I would like to be an airline pilot or more to the point. I need to be an airline pilot in order to earn a decent salary with some kind of job security. And that's the problem. We can all think of a flying job that they'd like to do but in fact most simply don't pay enough. As an instructor friend says 'I enjoy this job but it doesn't pay the mortgage'. So we aim for the airline job.
Eventually we get it but of course it's never quite what we hoped, judging by the comments here. It becomes just another job with a few extra headaches the average accountant never meets. Speaking of accountants, my brother in law is one. He rose up the slippery slope to senior level in a multinational. But in the end it was killing him, he hated it. So he got out, stayed an accountant though. Just took a little less money and a lot more time with his family.
Maybe that's the way. Aim for the flying job that pays enough and lets us have a life and a wife and kids. No need to be a long haul Captain, why not a turboprop Captain if you enjoy the job and the money isn't too low?
I no longer have any illusions about what being an airline pilot is like. In any case I have plenty of friends who are airline pilots. They tell it like it is. The problem I found is that most jobs have gone that way. My last non flying job, I just quit. I just got sick of the BS. It was the same with the previous job. management talking out of the rear end, mouthing crap they read in management books or heard from other amateur managers. Why should the airlines be any different? Time was, even in bigger companies, you actually felt part of something. Now you are merely a cost centre. It's the way it is.
Interesting reading.. I'm a wannabe (undecided!!): Glider pilot, and PPL in training. Many moons ago as a naiieve kid, I decided not to pursue the airling flying thing, 10 years later I picked up flying as a hobby. It's the only thing in life I've ever looked back on and questioned.
Here's the view from the other side of the fence:
I'm an IT Consultant. I've been doing this for about 11 years, so reasonably senior. In that time I've worked for several companies, large and small, and been made redundant twice.
Earn just under ukp 60k/year. Salaried employee, contract says 37.5hrs/week, 47 weeks / year (5 weeks hol). Minimum working week 40hrs, normally 45+. When there's a push on (frequently), it all goes out the window - 70, more hours in a week - not uncommon to work 9-midnight, loose weekends and such over a period of a month or more. Naturally, there's no such thing as overtime: "The need to work extra hours now and then is factored into your renumeration"
Then there's travel and home life: Occasionally, projects are based close enough to home you can travel daily. It's rare. More normally it's drive/fly on a weekly basis (short haul), and stay in a hotel. Out sunday afternoon/evening, back friday night (after work!). Atlernatively it's a long haul destination - Currently I'm in Australia, I've been here on assignment 18 months. Theoretically I get a flyback every 2 months, actually I've been back twice in that time. Plus I'm working with the UK, so they own my evenings for ad-hoc phone calls and meetings.
So the grass isn't necessarily greener outside the airlines.
(Oh, and don't talk to me about being a cog, corporate bull**it, or any of that.. trust me, this industry has it in spades.. and of course advancement is based upon the opinions of those bull**tters, so you either play the game, or..)
All that said, I feel I should consider myself reasonably fortunate, money's good etc. But I'm never going to get rich (I don't think anyone does as a wage slave), there's a limit to the toys, I have to watch how much I fly and suchlike. On the positive side, I can pretty much choose where in the world I want to settle - with this skillset and a UK passport, most countries would welcome me.
I wonder about the reasons for the number of 'malcontents' on here; Is it just a matter of expectations? Too many people who got into it as a dream, then found it was a job? I don't doubt it's gone downhill in the modern age, but is it really that bad as a job (if you forget the dream, which is probably unrealistic in today's world!)
From outside, it still seems pretty good, decent money, and while it's not a 9-5 gig, it seems less intrusive / disruptive of family life than my sort of travel. I'm curious as to just *how* it is such death to relationships - while you are away for extended periods, you're also off a lot more.
So I go around in circles - I see the airlines as a volatile, dangerous move; between the environmental lobby and the terrorists, it's not hard to envisage 'external' factors creating a major downturn in the industry, whereas I think i'm pretty secure in IT. But I dread getting up every morning, I spend my life wishing time away until I'm next off. I can't really believe that a flying job would be that bad. Most of all, I'd rather look back on a mistake, than look back and wonder if I was missed out.
In the meantime, I'll continue to marshal my thoughts, get my ppl, and see if I can't build some hours glider towing and such. It's a hobby for now, with (a little bit of) intent on the side.... Problem is I'm concious of time - I reckon it's viable at 32, but don't want to be leaving it too long!
Last edited by Mark1234 : 25th September 2007 at 10:24.
Very interesting reading. Thanks to all the commercial pilots who've posted.
I've much admiration for those who went thru all the cpl, instructing/air taxi/banner towing/multi prop etc and made it to airline pilot. But unlike most wannabes Im very lucky, as permanent Hong Kong ID holder I qualify for Cathay Pacific and Dragonair's sponsored programmes.
I love flying, aircraft and aviation BUT my worry is that IF I eventually manage to get onto one of these programmes, its straight onto widebody jets and thats it for 30-odd years. None of the REAL flying and experience most of you guys have. ALMOST every poster seems in agreement that flying big jets is boring (after the honeymoon period obviously!). How much flying the controls do you actually get to do??
As an aside - would be v. interested to hear what you all think the future holds for automation i.e. in 10-20 yrs pilots what will pilots still be doing?
Anyone out there who WAS an airline pilot then changed to biz jets or GA or even out of flying as a career? I would love to hear experiences. I am determined to become a pilot but am well aware its far from the ideal job and realistic in that I'll have to keep my CV attractive for other types of jobs incase 10-20 yrs down the line i lose my medical/get fired/get as sick of airlines as a lot of the pilots on here seem to be!
I love flying, aircraft and aviation BUT my worry is that IF I eventually manage to get onto one of these programmes, its straight onto widebody jets and thats it for 30-odd years. None of the REAL flying and experience most of you guys have. ALMOST every poster seems in agreement that flying big jets is boring (after the honeymoon period obviously!)
PJ,
I find that quite the 'worry' I had, and still have in a sense....but the way I see it, GET-IN first. IMHO, you've got to make use of the resources available to you at any given time.If you have the opportunity to go for cadetship, go for it ! Start filling that bag of experience...later on if things materialise and you want a taste of something different, try your hand at that...would you put a full stop on your aviation career just based on this 'worry'..? If you would, you probably need to ask yourself, if you really are keen to be a pilot after all....
And besides, i doubt you'd get a smooth sail in that run-up to that cadetship....try... whatever....
All good points and taken on board, thanks. I'm determined to jump thru all the hoops and get onto one of these cadet programmes and become and pilot, but I want to go in with my eyes open. I present this analogy of my concern:
You've always dreamed of being a professional footballer, all you want to do is play! You somehow get a call up to your dream club/country, youve made it!! But before you can play you have to sit on the bench for 4 years, not even kicking a ball, just sitting on the bench watching match after match, year after year...
With CX's cadet programme, from what Ive researched, after getting your fATPL you spend 3-4 years as a 2nd officer on long hauls not even allowed to touch the controls! As someone who yearns to fly this seems like it could be a bit soul destroying...
Also, not getting the experience of 100's or 1,000's of hrs instructing / dropping parachuters/flying in the bush etc, landing rickety old single pistons, no avionics, all sorts of bad weather, is missing out all the real hands on flying. Every pilot Ive asked said those days are the most interesting and fun!
Ive read so many PPruners saying "Why does everyone want to fly for a major? Its boring, why would you want to go straight onto a big jet for the rest of your career?" and "Airline flying has had all the fun taken out of it"
this saddens me but Im sure its true. I love GA flying but Im well aware Airline flyings a different kettle of fish. If it all gets too much is it possible to get out and just change career totally?
Question to airline pilots:
If other commercial flying was paid closer to airline flying would you do that as a career instead?
Future pilot???
Starting my course at the end of October 
in a sense....but the way I see it, GET-IN first. IMHO, you've got to make use of the resources available to you at any given time.If you have the opportunity to go for cadetship, go for it ! Start filling that bag of experience
...later on if things materialise and you want a taste of something different, try your hand at that...would you put a full stop on your aviation career just based on this 'worry'..? If you would, you probably need to ask yourself, if you really are keen to be a pilot after all....
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