Originally Posted by
Uplinker
Some previous posts make a good point too. Your son should get an alternative career, or at least an alternative skill and qualification before starting down the airline pilot route.
It always surprises me that many pilots have no other skill or ability, so they end up on a building site or driving a delivery van for pennies after being made redundant from the cockpit.
Just to reinforce what others are saying; don't believe the hype from flight schools. I don't know the exact figures, but out of every 100 students, maybe 30 will get onto the big shiny jets, and maybe 1 will get to be a rich Captain - certainly not all of them.
I would suggest that after passing his Class 1 EASA medical, your son does an aviation related degree, and/or applies to Airbus. He is very young so the actual airline flying can come later, and he will have his tech. career to pay his rent and support his loan for the frozen ATPL, and to fall back back on while waiting for that first pilot job opportunity.
Yup.
I have been very lucky in that I left school and quickly worked my way up in two of the world's biggest airlines. Then COVID happened and I actually realised I had nothing to fall back on, no qualifications or previous career, and no real transferrable skills. I could probably make a very good train driver but that's about it, and I think I would get bored very easily after landing jets worth hundreds of millions of dollars for the last 22 years.
Thankfully luck played a part and I have a job in one of the most secure leisure airlines around. The last two years were still extremely stressful though... Get a career first and slowly build into a pilot career, if you're still not put off by the negative aspects of the career.