I did longhaul for a number of airlines for nearly 15 years. I'm glad I did it, had lots of fun and saw places that I would otherwise never have seen.
I am also glad that I now fly to AGP and ALC (and TFS) because for all the good times and they used to be very good indeed, once you hit the 50 mark it just becomes exhausting and rather than getting into your gladrags after landing and painting the town red in Las Vegas or sitting on a Caribbean beach until daft O'clock drinking redstripe all you feel like doing is collapsing into bed and staying there for as long as possible. When the timeshift gets you up at 5.30am and you stagger down for breakfast you come to the horrible realisation that checkout is only a few hours away followed by a night sector back to Blighty where the biggest challenge is trying to keep your eyes open until the sun rages through the windscreen at 20 West and you end up sitting there like one of the Blues brothers wearing shades at 4 in the morning, with yesterdays papers plastered across the inadequate Boeing sunscreens to stop your eyes from watering. Even more glamorous is crawling out of the crew rest after 3 hours of fitful sleep, broken by a desperate need to pee, into the same sunrise and trying to gather sufficient mental capacity to talk on the HF or even land the sodding thing.
Its all great fun in your 30's and even 40's but once into your 6th decade you hit a brick wall physically and possibly emotionally since your constant absences mean that your other half no longer knows you, has become totally independent over the years and your presence at home is nothing more than a nuisance. Ditto the kids. You start to wonder how on earth you are going to get along when your rapidly approaching retirement finally happens. Many relationships do not survive that, even if they get that far.
Long haul is great, a must have experience for anyone in this game and although not everybody wants to do it, most probably want to give it a try. I would say do it and make sure you do it when you are still young enough to enjoy all that it can offer. The days of long stopovers in the sun might be fading but its a big world out there and you might as well see it and get paid for doing so if the opportunity arises. There are some who slog on around the globe until 65 but they must have the constitution of a Jedi, I'm pretty good for my age but I'm damned if I want to do it again, I don't think I could.
So, fill your boots with the big jets. The clouds look the same out of the windscreen of a 747 as they do out of a Cessna, as previous posters have said, its all lifestyle. The best option is to be in an airline that offers both and to those that are, good for you, for those of us who have been less fortunate in life's lottery and are in the twilight of our careers, there are a lot worse places to be than J2. Twenty minutes from work, no horrible commute, own bed most of the time, getting to know the wife again and discovering that we did in fact get hitched because we liked one another and still have things in common, being paid a fair whack on time every month, not having to look over our shoulders as the next redundancy hovers and having a life/interests outside of flying.
Shorthaul - maybe boring in your 30's/40's but great in your 50/60's as many ex longhaulers will testify.
Just my 2 bobs worth.
Last edited by zeddb; 25th Jan 2018 at 08:15.