my father was scared to death of flying!!
no one in any part of my family had anything thing to do with an airplane. they all avoided them.
they were cars and trucks people.
i used to sit at the window of my father's 1955 Chevorlet Belair two door (not a hardtop though!) and hold my hand out into the wind and would make it go up and down with just moving my little finger. (what i learned later to be an aileron or flap simulation)
next thing with airplanes was in alaska at age 23. i worked across the street from merril field, one of the busiest general aviation airports in the world, i was told. one of the guys i worked with selling car parts was an instructor there. he took a group of us on a 30 minute flight in a C206 and i asked to sit in the front. i later thought, if he can do this, so can i. but nothing came of it then.
i banged around doing various jobs and not being very good at anything. in Memphis, TN while doing carpenter work and thinking that it was a bit too hot for that job, i went to the airport and looked around at the general aviation area.
the aircraft seemed so "spiritual" and the smells of avgas and jet-a and the sounds of the B727's as well as the smaller proppers was fascinating.
so i kept asking the supervisor for a job there and went there so many times that he knew me by sight and name and once he hired me, most likely to get some peace and quiet.
while working there, i started taking flight lessons and ended up with a military type instructor who would hit me with a map and scream his head off at me and curse with words i had never heard before or since, but i stayed with him because he was good. (maybe it was a matter of afraid to leave him) i also started mechanic school and things got so tight with full time work, full time school and flight lessons that i made a choice and dropped out of the mechanic school and even sold my car (1958 chevy) and walked to work to finish the flight lessons with that same instructor, whom i love dearly now.
then went back to alaska and there they had student loans at low interest and i applied for that and finished my commercial, instrument and instructor ratings as well as MEL, and ATP. i then became an instructor but since the weather was so bad so often i wanted to fly real airplanes.
i went to a 135 operator with twin otters and asked for a job, but they didn't need pilots, but i asked to work there anyway and worked on the ramp for i think 7 months. and each time i saw the chief pilot i pegged him for a flight job and finally he wanted some peace also.
but actually it was also a case of not being good at anything else either. i have tried to tell my two children to try many things and they will discover by default what they are good at. and it is the truth that there will be colleagues that will think that you are really no good at all at flying.
to this day, i think i should have finished the mechanic school and then went flying. would have been good to fall back on sometimes.
and i was told NOT to fly for a living. my uncorrected vision is very poor, but with contacts they do the 20/20. but it has kept me out of the majors where a person can make some real money and seniority. might should've listened to that too.
and honestly, if i could find something else that would pay as well, i think i would take it now.
the truth also could be summed up as,
"if you can't be anything else, then be a pilot." meaning among other things, if nothing else satisfies you, give it a try.
i never even wanted to be an airline pilot. i wanted to stay in the smaller aircraft. my most rewarding flying was a an instructor, taking someone from 0 hours and getting them to commercial standards in 20 hours for their private license. but the money and weather would not cooperate.
tried to be an air traffic controller and that was one of the first things i really tried that i could not do!!! i have all the respect in the world for ATC'ers.
if it were not for the fact that i am 46 years old, i would start over with the mechanic school.
or marry a rich woman.
all the glory of aviation has just about gone, the way these low cost companies are squeezing the pilots. regardless of how much you love flying, after so many years of not knowing your schedule for more than a week or two in advance, and having to change jobs every three years, and living in different countries and seldom seeing your children, you too would tell yourself, "that's another fine mess you've gotten yourself into, Ollie"
pilot in command really means nothing more in these low cost airlines, than the one to blame when things go wrong. you can't say where you will go, when you will go or how you will get there. the gate agent tells you when you can close the door. ATC tells you when to go and not go. but Lord help you if you are at the helm when something goes bad wrong. they will even say that you are responsible for what other people did.
and fight as you will, when you arrive, you often still have a plane load of complaining passengers. and when the day is over, you get to the low cost hotel room after riding on the bus that you waited on for 30 minutes, and lie down and look up at the ceiling and realize you forgot your tooth brush.
while some desk driver who makes the big bucks, can plan his weekends off months in advance, use the company computer during working hours to get his tickets and hotel reservations online, and sleep in the same bed each night if he wants to.
when its good its good but when its bad its very bad.
be very very careful about getting into aviation these days. it has undergone some serious changes.
start early and go for the majors. there are some flying jobs that you may get on your CV that will actually be a mark against you.
that's enough now.