Originally Posted by
VariablePitchP
To a point… Certainly wouldn’t advocate going to uni to get a degree or putting in any sort of serious time into a career, just as a backup.
This issue gets kicked around pretty regularly here in the US and our situation may be a little different than other places but the question is still valid either way. I don't know enough to be making definitive pronouncements but I do have questions about the advice.
Setting aside the US situation where the best career-destination airlines require a degree ( or if not
formally requiring it, an applicant will be competing again legions who DO have one and who will get picked first), I wonder about the long term value of a degree for the person who went straight from college into flying for a living.
For sake of discussion, assume a person gets an engineering degree and goes straight into flying with no actual experience, contacts or current knowledge or industry qualifications in the engineering field. How valuable will this degree be 20 or 30 years down the road should the person lose a medical ? Will he find employment in engineering... earning enough to support a family ?
I used to fly with guys set up in this exact situation. I remember one guy saying something akin to "...if I lose my medical, I'll be OK because I have an engineering degree from Big Deal University...". Well, when he got that degree, they were solving problems on slide rules; he'd never actually engineered anything real. So I wonder how much value his degree would have on the open employment market. I just don't know but it's difficult to argue against
more education, I guess.
I've known several pilots who did it the other way: they got a degree and had employment in a particular field...and then left that field and became airline pilots. I worked with an F/O who'd been a dentist and another who'd been a design engineer for Boeing. There have been a few MDs who left medicine for flying and one at my last airline is both flying
AND practicing medicine...serious overachiever.
My lame attempt to protect myself against fate was to get additional licenses in aviation (ground instructor, aircraft dispatcher) with the potential to turn my flying years into an aviation ground job requiring no medical. Very fortunately for me, I never had to test my plan.
Interesting topic though.