Life after flying
Saddest Aviator really has hit the nail on the head.
The job really sucks and most pilots hate their work trapped by lack of transferable skill and the inevitable financial commitments which mean they are stuck bank rolling their families life style at the cost of their own misery sanity and bluntly reduced life quality and expectancy.
Yesterday positioning in plain clothes through East Midlands I was subjected to a security check which in any other scenario would have been sexual assault.
I passed through the scanner and because my flight bag contained the bits and bobs of being a pilot the idiot security guard considered it acceptable to put his hands inside my waist band of my trousers and feel my arse four times. Notwithstanding I am paying for the pleasure of positioning to a base I hate and spending 25 days a month away from home this represents just the tip of the ice berg of the daily crap we all put up with and bluntly most of us have had enough.
The challenge is how to get out and find a satisfying challenging and marketable line of work which pays the mortgage and produces a more balanced lifestyle.
This challenge is not easy. I have been struggling to find a route out for the last couples of years (Captain mid 40's and really have had more than enough now) I have previously run a successful business.
However its that previous experience which holds me back right now. Being very mindful of how tough market conditions are and how very difficult it would be to establish a business that would produce anything like the cash outcome that my job does.
Its a trade off cash for crap. You give up when the bucket of crap is too heavy to carry or you give up when the bucket of cash is too heavy to carry. When both the bucket of cash and the bucket of crap are really heavy you can carry on a bit more in the short term because the burdon of weight is evenly balanced but when you finally give up the exhaustion and damage is more extreme.
Looking at the general population the group that does the most career changes late 30s to mid 40s is people leaving the armed forces and they benefit from a very well developed career resettlement service.
Perhaps what the pilot community needs is a Airline Pilot Resettlement Service. How that would work Im not sure but there are lots of us who want out right now and it would be doing valuable beneficial work.
Perhaps we could get the airlines to sponsor the Ressettlement Service. They could see it as a way of getting rid of expensive experianced crews and filling the seats with cheap shinny smiley faced cadets who will be less bothered about having their arses touched up on a daily basis.