Hi There, I was hoping to get some advice from people in the industry about a dilema I have.
My son is 20 years old. He has zero interest in going to college and al he wants to do is learn to fly. He has taken a few hours here and there in our local training centre.
He (We) cannot afford to take out a loan to take a full time course so his intentions are to clock up the hours month by month until he gets his PPL and onwards from their. This is the only real option for him right now and the reality is that it could be 5-6 years before he is in a position to even apply for a job.
I have had many conversations about this with him and told him that if he wants to fly he should go for it but I also expressed my concerns;-
1) Is going to take him a long time before he can apply for a job
2) He is missing out on doing a college course in the short term
3) He is putting all of his eggs in one basket and if this carrer does not work out he does not have anything else to fall back on
4) He may find it hard to find a job when he does get qualified and he will not be earning a huge ammount of cash for a long time until be climbs the ladder
5) For the next few year he is going to be relying on a mimimum wage job to fund his training. This is based on saving every penny. Does he not want to do anything else in that time
The advice that I have been trying to give him is that he should go to college right now and do any course at all. After 2 years of that get a job that pays well and use that money to fuel his training. He has now sped up the trianing time as he can pay more and also has a fall back plan if anything should go wrong.
- He has no interest in this.
So my questions to anyone who has taken time to read this far are;-
1) Is flying a valid carrer choice right now?
2) Is he approaching it the wrong way?
3) How much money do you think he could earn in the short, medium and long term
4) Will he find a job.
If you could go back to day one of your carrer would you change your plans?
I really want to support him but I am trying to be real at the same time. I would really sppreciate any advice that you could offer me.
Thanks for your time,
David