2 years into my professional airline career, I left what would've been a guaranteed job for life. I left a £120k per year IT career to fly in the first place with the first job coming 3 years after I gained my type rating.
The point came where the joy and satisfaction gained from flying became totally outweighed by the atrocious pay, rising living costs, the deranged and overly duplicative SOP which I felt was melting away my brain and the fact that they managed to pair me up to fly with complete psychos who could not even trust the autopilot let alone the junior guy on the right. Said airline is full of pilots from a certain macho culture. Macho types if you know them become very jittery when they're not in control. Each psycho came complete with a set of opinions that slated that of the previous psycho resulting in each flying hour of mine being devoted to pandering to the opinions and needs of the dictator in the left seat. Talk about learning from your seniors, all I learnt was that each one of them wanted it done differently. This is not what I imagined this career to be!
I haven't had the best start to my aviation career, I've attended 3 airline interviews, passed two. Never failed an exam or flight test, always completed training with the minimum number of hours yet I've managed to land flying jobs with two of the worst airlines on the planet. The first airline I flew for also had it's share of psychos, mostly ex-mil ones. I know my mindset would be very different if I had gotten a job with a home (UK) based airline in the first place and maybe that's what some of you don't see here. There are cultures, countries and airline SOPs that make this job a really
experience for some of us.
I have an offer this year for a summer contract but I have to be honest in describing the reasons why despite having the potential to earn £120k a year I still want to fly. I have no interest in the uniform, the girls in the back, the travel. I enjoy the technical challenge associated with approach and landing and the view on a nice Summer's day but is this really enough? I think the truth is I cannot bear to watch a £100k investment plus £150k worth of lost earnings go down the drain. I know I continue to flog what is increasingly becoming a dead horse but I refuse to acknowledge it.
I am certain many of you are in the same boat.