Originally Posted by
+TSRA
Well, that is certainly one way to be held in disdain by your peers. Those who work for free lower the industry through their selfish actions. If you work for free while building hours for your Class 4, then why not agree to work for three quarters of what another Class 3 would be paid, half for a Class 2, and a quarter for a Class 1?
Almost every pilot has said the same thing at one point or another in their career, but the vast majority don't act on it. Most companies I know or have worked for immediately turn away pilots who agree to work for free. Its a level of desperation they don't want in their organization. As the holder of a Commercial Pilots License, you are a professional pilot. That means you get paid for your experience, knowledge, and skill. If you want to work for free, what was the point of earning a license that permits you to work for hire or reward? You should have stayed a Private Pilot and gotten friends to help share the cost of flying.
You say that you're concerned age is a problem, that you're 35 and you think the issues affect you more than a 20 year old. Not at all. Age is no factor here, only that which you place upon yourself. I've trained many pilots across many parts of the industry who started flying at 35 or 40, were well into their 40s when they started to instruct, and some were into their 50s when starting at a regional airline. Each had personal issues that made their career difficult. Some had families, some had businesses, but all made the necessary sacrifices to make it work. If you use it wisely, your age can be used for enormous benefit when applying. You have more life experience, maturity, and common sense than a person in their early 20s, and you should lean on those transferable skills when applying. But again, you chose to complete an instructor rating at a school that was not hiring, placing you at a point where you are applying at the low end of the annual cycle, so of course you can't find any work right now. But agreeing to work for free is not the way to do it. Sure, you might get some flying that way, but no respectable person will hire you down the road.
The industry is cruel, it eats its young without compassion, and as blorgwinder says, only those with resilience and tenacity survive. If I can be frank for a moment, you should have thought about what the impact to your family and business would look like before you went down the road of completing the instructor rating without the school agreeing to take you on. A pilot in their 20s doesn't have the life experience to avoid being caught up in the hype and emotion. A pilot in their 30s should have the life experience to avoid those mistakes. Sometimes waiting a year is the way to do it. Actually taking someone up on flying for free is not.
Our industry already wants and promote slavery. The whole "ramp to flight" scheme is exactly that. Having people work, for minimum wage, almost two years, in a very physical demanding job, just so they "might" be able to fly later, is exactly that and no different than the "Pay to Fly" Scheme in Europe. Imagine you are told you can pay, not much, for hourly flying a 737. Now imagine you are a young pilot with a 600 hours, but 300 of them are on a 737 or A320. You are in a huge advantage over almost anyone at your TT.
Here is and extremely specific sad example - one company is currently looking for ramper in Yellowknife, they are paying $30,000 a year, for 13-15 hours a day ramp work, where room renting cost $1,500 for a single bedroom in shared accommodations, meaning you have to share a room with someone. Zero promises to advance to flight line, and the last guy they had left after working for nearly a year with no advancement on the horizon.
Can you imagine a doctor being told to work as a janitors before they can work as doctors? We are blaming the people's desperation, but truth to be told - it's driven by the corporations and companies. One is pumping out way more pilots than they should, the other is taking advantage of them and offering wages no sane person would work for when they can make the same money in Tim Hortons or McD. It is that bad that those companies are not eligible for an LMIA because those conditions are not market average so they can't get a TFW to fill it up. That alone speaks loud when a Tim Hortons employees got LMIA.
You are saying "make necessary sacrifice", basically saying they got divorced. There is no way around it - when you are married, and you know it, with kids, specially when some are in school age, and baby age, you can't just make "necessary sacrifice", as you are basically sacrificing your family, unless you get divorced, and that is exactly where the age and family status become a huge factor. Without actual concrete cases, and not the exception (like the 30 hours wonder), but the many who made it work while keeping their family intact, we all know it's a lot to ask.
I'm not posting it to whine or anything, but if it's sacrifice we are talking about, than getting 100 instruction hours without monetary compensation is a big one, and between that and a ramp job - I'd take the class 3 instruction.