Yep righto. I'll stop wasting readers time with my experiences. I made mistakes, was just trying to share them to maybe help someone in their journey.
Hatty hatty hatty.... You gotta chill out in your old age mate. When you need the pills, you already know who to call
It's pretty funny seeing lots of guys who are still doing their BAV degrees with sub 150hrs total time and 0.0 hrs working in the industry write on this thread like their opinion the gospel truth.
My $0.02. I'm in the industry, yeah. I've got a degree, yeah. Been in and out of aviation for a little over a decade so I can never be accused of rushing anything career wise. All I know is this:
I'm off away from friends and family looking for flying work. I'd hazard a guess that it's going to take me about 2-6 months before any flying comes along. Because of my degree in a field outside of aviation I get paid $60.82 an hour casual rate, I can get a job in ANY town I happen to be in by simply picking up the phone, and most importantly of all is that while I look for flying work I can literally pick my hours so that my work fits around trips out to the airport. This 2-6 months is going to be a doddle.
If you've got a B Aviation, what can you do in my place?
I've got two big regrets.
First, is that my timing is ****ehouse. Back in 2004 when things were tough I went back to uni, had the time of my life, and totally missed the short lived GA land of milk and honey in the 2006-7 period and only caught the tail end of it before the GFC came along. Timing is everything I suppose
Second, is that I didn't stick with it when times were tough the first time around. Things were much different then, I had been at it for three years with promise after promise being broken in GA, I had no degree, and no skills outside of flying aircraft (even those were questionable
). All my mates from that era that are still with us who were in the same boat as I was are flying jets on decent coin (because they don't work for that operator), or turboprops doing some of the most enjoyable flying in the world all the while loving what they do. I still wonder if I'd stuck with it for another three months if it would be me that cracked that first real charter job which would have lead me to the same position in life as those other blokes.
That said, do I regret having done a degree in a field completely removed from aviation? NO.
The way I see it is this -> Get your flying training done quickly so that you can pack up, head out bush and be first in line when that job comes. Stick with it otherwise you'll wind up at the back of the que. If you want more qualifications (which is in no way a bad thing) then get something you can use on those dark dark days when you realise that no matter how much flash looking paint it might have on the outside, beauty in the aviation industry is often only skin deep.
By doing a straight aviation degree, you might (and there is no evidence to prove so in Australia) be giving yourself a +1 on the resume, but you are limiting yourself to one industry which is notoriously cyclical, extraordinarily small, and in the process of cutting the terms and conditions of those that work in it all the way to the bone.