Originally Posted by
Jon25143724
Hi all,
This is my first time posting on a forum. Since I was a young teenager I wanted to be a pilot and in my early twenties I applied to become an RAF pilot.
Unfortunately I was unsuccessful and pursued a career in aerospace engineering where I still work as I was unable to fund my own pilot training due to the expense. For the past ten years I have always looked on in envy at others that have had this opportunity and wished that I could have made it.
However, I now have some savings and have recently passed selection with a training school and now find myself doubting whether it's the right career for me. I enjoy flying (have flown gliders) and am confident I will enjoy flight planning, pre-flight checks, take-off and landing, but have a doubt as to whether I will find the cruise phase boring? I'd like to know from any seasoned commercial pilots out there what exactly are the tasks to be performed during the cruise? Is it boring?
I have a wife and 5 month old daughter so it is a big decision for me to leave my current job (although I don't enjoy it, it does pay well but not as well as a pilot!) and train for 2 years not knowing for sure if I'll enjoy the job.
The only other option I see is to complete my training modularly, while I work. However, I have heard that airlines much prefer pilots to have trained on an integrated course, such as the one I will be doing. Plus, the fact that I'm 32 and the modular route will take me some time to complete, I feel that I may be too old after training for airlines to be interested in me.
What would you guys do in my position? Any advice or comments would be much appreciated.
I'm an aerospace engineer, and I trained as a commercial pilot about your age (modular, in my own time). Rather earlier, I did a couple of PPLs and associated ratings whilst raising a family. So it can be done.
Being harsh, it seems to me that you don't want it enough if you haven't in the decade or so since you made your RAF application, done a PPL, or some variation thereon beyond a bit of gliding. If you didn't want to fly enough to do that, you don't want it enough to drop everything and put your family massively in debt to do an integrated course now.
However, this doesn't stop you doing a PPL now - and why the heck shouldn't you. The flying should be fun, the price affordable (compared to the rest of it) and you'll be a better aerospace engineer for the understanding of aviation that this will give you. It did me anyhow.
Most people in the industry with nothing to sell will tell you that modular is the better route - it's the same licence, it's typically half the price, you get a few more hours. The biggest airlines prefer integrated graduates for first-job pilots; small taxi-type operators and flying schools prefer modular because they have more independence and breadth of flying experience. Once you've done 2 years as a professional pilot, neither give a stuff how you trained - they care only about your ratings, hours, and personal attributes.
So I'd say:-
(1) Find the money to do a PPL, get a class 1 medical en-route.
(2) Ask lots of questions whilst doing it.
(3) Once you have a class 1 and PPL, re-assess your aptitude for and interest in piloting.
And at 32 you're a youngster - take the good income from (I'm guessing) Airbus, use the PPL to make you a better engineer, consider however if you still have a passion for flying beyond private flying and a few self-flown business trips, then going modular. ATPL knowledge and a CPL will make you a better engineer again - and then aged ~37 - still young with a 25++ year flying career available to you, you have the option to apply for flying jobs from your comfortable engineering job.
There's absolutely no sense or reason in taking a massive leap into an overpriced integrated course, and still less in doing so without knowing your own medical standards and aptitude and passion for flying.
As for boredom - I would seriously consider a full time job as a test pilot, or even something like SAR. The idea of taking a substantial paycut from my mid-career professional engineering job to monitor an autopilot and be ruled by an airline roster does not massively appeal. For me a day job in aeronautical engineering, using an aeroplane to get around Europe to the odd meeting, and a bit of part time instructing and ferrying works very nicely thanks. There are many more ways to earn a good living in flying than sitting in an airline cockpit. Also consider that an Aero-Eng with a CPL has open to him a lot of very interesting technical jobs not open to an Aero-Eng with no flying experience. Also consider how many more fATPLs without professional flying experience there are, compared to the number of jobs for such pilots! Throw in the relationship between training debt and starter-pilot-salaries.
If you want to discuss offline, by all means drop me an email (not a PM, I won't get it).