Has it been worth it?
TLDR: For those who have currently been pilots for 5+ years, are you glad you became a pilot?
I am 25 years old, and building my non-aviation career. It's a secure office job, pays the bills, I'm good at it, my colleagues are friendly, and I don't hate it. But I'm not passionate about it. It doesn't excite me. If I won the lotto, I'd quit tomorrow.
I have wanted to be a pilot since I was 5 or 6, and I went down the "Go to uni and have a plan B in case aviation doesn't work out" path. I still find myself watching every plane that flies overhead, listening to ATC on my scanner, watching cockpit videos on YouTube regularly. Aviation is the only thing I have ever been passionate about to the point of obsession. I am sure this feeling is familiar to many of you.
I am now considering building some flight hours and getting some aviation-relevant experience so that I can start properly training and getting my licenses once the industry picks up again (I'm envisioning that this will be 2024-2026, correct me if I'm wrong).
I do have a few concerns, however, and I am hoping that some of you who have been pilots for a while might be able to help.
1) Does the job get boring after a few years? From what I understand, after you've become familiar with the aircraft, routes, procedures, etc, there is little intellectual challenge or room for creativity. Have you found this to be the case, and if so, how significantly does it impact on your enjoyment of the job?
2) How realistic a possibility do you think it is that the job will be lost to automation in the coming decades? Of course, only somebody who is both a pilot and an AI expert could answer this with a high degree of certainty, but I would still like to get a sense of what the general sentiments are on this!
3) What surprised you about the job, good or bad? What might I not be factoring into my considerations here?
Broadly-speaking, I am wondering whether you are glad you became a pilot. Do you wish you took a path that was more secure, or more intellectually stimulating, or which offered more autonomy, or which allowed you to spend more time with your family or spouse? Or were you right to pursue the dream?