Good post Joe and I am pleased that you have found something you enjoy. I did it the other way around, moving from partner in a big consulting firm back into flying. Both are great jobs. Consulting was much better paid than being a jet captain and that financial cushion made the vagaries and uncertainties of airline flying a lot easier to bear. One caveat I would make however, is that consulting can be an up or out type of job. By that I mean over time you either work your way up the ranks or get let go. There is a degree of slaloming between firms till you find your place. But the number of consultants that remain in a consultancy till retirement is quite small. It is essentially a young man's game. Although having said that my wife (somewhat younger) has gone back to consulting full-time, which solves the problem of me suddenly being home a lot more.
I always loved flying and having flown for a while between university and consulting I was happy to get back in the air. Timing is everything and things worked out. I flew Boeings and various models of Airbus till I was sixty and rather assumed most people made it that far. A rather sobering article I just read, quoted some studies that said that even prior to Corona a lot of airline pilots did not continue flying that long. The gist of it was that after age 43 about five percent of Airline pilots per year stopped flying. So of the entire cohort only 11 percent made it to sixty. I find it a bit hard to believe. But I suppose if you add up the people that fail medicals and checks, lose their jobs for other reasons, not least their airline going bust and those who find something they prefer (like Joe) then maybe it is not so outrageous.
Last edited by lederhosen; 5th Oct 2020 at 14:41.