Bored?

[Excel Monkey]

Hi folks,

As someone who has always fancied a career flying and doesn't know any pilots personally, I was wondering if you find your job tedious after a while or if you are quite content for the majority of your career?

If you have begun to find airline flying a bit monotonous, were you ever in the forces? Does having some exiting flying experience like that make airline flying a bit less enthralling? Some info about if you fly schedule/charter/short haul/long haul would be great too.

Look forward to hearing from you,

EM ;)

[GlueBall]

The downside is when flying after midnight. It isn't fun to be awake when every cell in your body calls for sleep. Flying through the night and arriving at destinations in different time zones translates into accumulated fatigue. I can never get used to being up all night, it's physiologically unnatural. Flying 8 hours through the night always seems longer than flying 10 hours during the day.

Flying during daylight hours is the best part and the most fun about the job.

I'm far from being or becoming bored during the 15 days (not all consecutive) off each month; lots of reading to catch up on when the wife doesn't want to go to the Mall, or when the kids don't need to be picked up at band practice.
:p

[sandy helmet]

You do anything long enough it becomes tedious; however this is one of the best tedious things you could ever want to do.
At the end of the day, when the excitement dies down and the professionalism takes over, what's important isn't really the job itself, but what kind of life the job allows you to have outside.
If you enjoy flying, and can enjoy a good lifestyle too, you've got it made in the shade.

[Earthmover]

Well I've never been bored, I love it and I don't want to give it up. 33 years, of which 25 is airline flying, mainly short-haul schedule with a bit of ad hoc charter and night freighting.

The really bright, sharpest-knife-in-the-cutlery-drawer types often get bored - they think they could run the airline (probably accurately) and, funnily enough, so do the dunces. I know I don't fit the first category, and I hope I don't qualify for the second.

The tedious bits are all on the ground - standby, positioning/deadheading etc. One thing is for sure - for every 1000 hours flying in your log book, you will have 5000 hours of 'waiting'!!

[Lou Scannon]

One night, I became so bored that I managed to visit the toilet, chat to the cabin staff and a couple of pax and yet when I got back to my seat the "little triangle" on the screen didn't seem to have moved even a fraction closer to the destination. It really looked as if we were suspended in mid-air.

I cheered myself up with the thought that it might be better to be "suspended" through boredom than travelling fast in total fear when something goes wrong.

Always remember the old saying that flying is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror! Its our job to stay in the 99% bracket for as long as possible, so don't knock it too much.

[Touch'n'oops]

Just a quick word to those who find flying boring!!

Please step aside and let through the thousands of guys and girls dying to get into your seats.

[Excel Monkey]

Cheers for all the replies thus far folks. It's good to know a bit about what you're getting into with airline flying before you spend loads of money chasing it. Personally I think it sounds great, and anyway, as the saying goes ,you work to live, not live to work. So, as 'Sandy Helmet' points out above, I see flying as a career where I can enjoy my job and lead a good life outwith it too.

Every day I will think about the cr@p I'm doing for work today, then I'll be grateful for the boring bits too! :p

EM