PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Captain on a King Air 350 or First Officer on an A320
Old 8th Mar 2019, 10:47
  #20 (permalink)  
His dudeness
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: schermoney and left front seat
Age: 57
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Stan Woolley has a point. Whilst I've always been a business aviation pilot, a lot of former friends and colleagues have decided to go to the airlines - almost all of em have elected to go part time, since they thought they could not cope with "the grind". Most them missed the flying side of things as well - going from ILS to ILS, fully monitored and very often on the same routes time and again isnīt for everybody. Having the thrill of visuals, VFR flying, going into small airfields etcetc. is something I would not want to have missed. So if you maybe already have that experience it might be time for you to move on - a really though choice.

Some of my former colleagues love it (the airlining) though. I have my KingAir Rating now for 29 years and still enjoy flying this airplane as a freelancer from time to time. The first 14 years of my career I spent on the KA as my main type and I enjoyed it a lot. Got to say that one learns to enjoy an APU as well - which the KA does not feature...

One thing was (and I think still is) true for sure: going "down" from the airlines to GA is way easier than vice versa. Most airline recruiters will not recognize your hours at least toward a command, that was always the case and if you are "aging" than the window to go airline will get more narrow by the day, and a command with sometimes really long times in the right seat might be unattainable at some point.
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