I have finally had enough!!!
 

This is it. After years in this industry I can tolerate it no more. I now want out but am stuck in the age old dilemma of what to do? As an experienced airline employee of many airlines, the phrase 'one trick pony' is wholly appropriate. Many skills related to this industry but few that are recognised outside as useful. I now need to leave for my own sanity, to make way for another who still loves flying. Too much management abuse, too much bs, has taken its toll and now a career change is necessary before i become completely suicidal!!! Anyone out there got any decent ideas, or experience of a change that takes them away from this nightmare. Please I would consider anything right at this moment that would give me some sort of interest and meaning back.
If you have anything or know of anything let me know. If you still love the job good luck to you, one day you might wake up and realise that what i feel is the majority not the minority any more.:sad:

Start studying something else? See about starting your own business of sorts?

Are you employed by LCC?

What is your position?

Do you have a funded retirement plan along with other benefits?

Do you have a savings account set up should you decide to leave your current employer?

Do you have children? If so is their university funded?

Based on your age, are you marketable to another emloyer?

What burden will you be placing on your family should you change your profession now?

Have you discussed your situation with your spouse?

I am sure that more considerations need to be discussed with your family.

Do you have another trade or vocation where you can make a seamless change with similar pay and benefits?

Hi,I know the feeling(except for the suicidal thing).

If you like flying,go fly paragliders or gliders or something like that,this is how flying is supposed to be.No hassle,no BS,no yellow jackets,no security,no body searches,no management,you can even take your kids onto the flying site.
If you actually earn money with flying,just see it as an economical deal between you and the company,nothing else.They give you money,you turn up to fly,and start behaving like teflon,anything they(management,security or whoever) say,just let it slide off.
It has become apparent over the last 30 years that commercial aviation has,unfortunately, turned into a horrible,hassle filled career :yuk:.
Flying almost seems to be the underdog in aviation,where as all the sidekicks of aviation seem to be the core business these days,like security,airport patrols etc.


Good luck ;)

Pathetic.

Why are you posting on here? Leave your job, because your mindset isn't correct for is anymore.

If you think that 9-5 life at a big corporation has any less 'managerial harmony and BS-filled', you're completely deluded. You'll also be taking your work home with you, and probably be paid substantially less, without a specialist professional degree, and several years experience.

What you feel is, thankfully, experienced by an enormous industry minority. Do as your would-be colleagues in a 9-5 do. Go to work, take the money, go home.

It's a job.

Why not try some other form of flying. There are still plenty of fun jobs out there and adventures to be had. What about biz jets ? Air ambulance ? Survey flying ? British Antarctic Survey ?!!

All the problems of management bullying, office politics and general BS exist just as much in any other walk of life.

Good luck.

I often ask myself if people really check the terms and working conditions of most airline jobs before they start basic flight training.. They really haven't changed over the last 33 years as least as i see it. I want to fly as much as I can during the day and then go home. Management wants the same bleed them dry deal since the 70's>:ugh:

SA I hear you loud and clear bro. I went through the same damn
thing about five years ago.

Everyone's different - most will tell you it hits between 50 to 53
except I'd had a gutful at 45. Its NOT the actual flying, it never
is, its the BULL!!!!. And in my case being a Boeing boy all my
career then suddenly railroaded onto a Scarebus only exacerbated
the problem.

I found relief by buying myself a Super Cub and man did it
make all the difference! No arrogant 200hr wonderkids next
to me, no idiotic voyage reports, no whining despatchers or
pursers, no damn FMCG......just me, the Cub, a few stall turns
and wingovers, and the sky.

I'd say its time you got into a real aeroplane to remember why
you got into this racket to begin with. How you do it is up to
you, but once you do it gets you through that mind-numbing
soul-destroying crap called airline work. And after a while the
positives take over and airline work doesn't appear to stink as
much it did. It still stinks, but the frustration will subside. I
keep my sanity by hooning around in the Cub for a couple of
hours at least once a month.

Have you ever considered network marketing. Can be started on a shoestring budget and you are working for yourself when you want to work.

Go to one of the high street banks and ask in their business section about working from home. There is one outfit that has been around for 90 years.

Cuurency trading/ spread betting??? Lots of Pilots out there who do it

Yeh I do FX trading/commodities too to effectively double my
salary (who doesn't?), but what SA is on about is a different
thing altogether.

Serious response - If I lived North of Watford I too would be suicidal. Have you considered plying your trade in new pastures?

If job interest is the most important criteria, you may well find that in the developing world. Certainly you will find new challenges.

@Buzzc152...fun flying and air ambulance shouldn't be included in the same sentence. If this guy has had enough now...flying an air ambulance will not help and I talk from experience. You get the same BS from management coupled with the 24/7 schedule of air ambulance work. It plays havoc with your life...going to bed and being called by your ops an hour later to fly all night and somehow the flights always seem to be at night and over the weekends. It is not fun having to be at the mercy of your phone every waking and sleeping minute. It can be satisfying work but it can also be pretty harrowing seeing some of the poor sods being medevacced out. The grass isn't any greener when management are controlling your life whatever you do. My advice...start your own business SA and be your own boss!!! A beach bar or something is the way forward!!

@ Slasher,

Great to hear!! Can you offer me advice then?? PM welome

( sorry for thread creep)

If you've been in the left seat for years, anything where you are employed will bring you even more grief. At least most of our problems disappear after 'gear up'.
I would seriously suggest 'self employment' as the happy way forward as you are still master of your own destiny and the tax man can be held at bay. There are downsides, but I really enjoyed my 5 years doing my own tax return. It paid well enough for me to train for an airline job...:ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh:

Well I took the PA18 because its a fun taildragger - I can't afford
my dream DH82 because they're so expensive but I manage an
hour now and then every 6 months or so.

The ultimate would be the Mk IX Spitfire but I'd need to win the
lottery to even part-own one of those. There's a chance of a full
endorsement later this year but that depends.

What you decide is up to you frozenpilot but anything simple
and plain fun to fly would be a starting point, maybe along the
lines of a Stearman or similar if you could get access to one.

Or marry a rich woman who can support you in manner you want to become accustomed to:ok:.

I lucked out there captjns - despite her vast wealth she was
just too fat and bloody ugly even for my rampant libido and
hated aeroplanes too. :(

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.

Dear Mr/Ms Sad,

You say that you would like some "interest and meaning" from your job, and a big reduction in bs.
I suggest that others here have already described your options.
1. there is no easy panacea. No-one has one. If they do, they do not talk about it as we'd all be there sharpish.
2. You could take what is called an "instrumental" approach to your job. As Mr Rotor says, turn up, do your job and get some interest and meaning from somewhere else. Slasher has some good ideas on what to do. Another friend of mine got a share one of those nasty little acrobatic jobs and clowns around in that. (You can tell I'm not impressed)
3. if you want some interest and meaning from your current employer, get in there and become a manager and aim to become Fleet Director. Talk to some other Fleet Directors. (Start asking around - who is out there that will talk straight? You would be surprised....).
The thing that Fleet Directors hate most??? Pilots who will not properly engage with the airline managers and management processes..................so go help them out.

Saddest Aviator, you are not alone. Many mature airline pilots express their feelings to me, which are not dis-similar. But suicidal feelings must be dispensed with, by medical help probably.

As for comments by the likes of ETOPS240, they are beneath contempt.

The saddest thing is that many arrogant young pups in the right seat have no concept of your issue, mainly due to immaturity. And although they can fly an aircraft, they have little in the way of airmanship skills. Treat them like the teenagers that they are mentally, and they will dob you in. Truly unfair.

Keep going buddy, but not necessarily in the air. My solution was that of many others. Just treat it as a factory job, and exercise your own skills purely for your own satisfaction. And try to train the immature cadets despite their arrogance. They mostly grow up.

Know the feeling too SA, had no problem with management though, they were great, just totally fed up with three nights a week Tenerife, Rhodes, Heraklion etc. and weekends Palma, Malaga, Alicante etc. in a B737-200 and no prospects for change. Stayed away just over two years and then came back to flying. I took my sabbatical at forty two and was back by forty five, the older you are the harder it is to return, usually.

Have you considered working for the CAA? Plenty of BS still but at least you would be a part of it!;)

Farnborough takes about eighteen months to organise, have you considered working in operations support with the air show organisers?

Paid manager of a flying club/school, opportunity to fly for fun, not much money.

Become an expat. enjoy life a little!

Hi SA
 

Been there, done that even got the T-shirt! Took a sabatical for a half year... deliverred mail for a living on foot... lost the weight and started to actually feel good... went every second day to an old age home and volunteered to talk and visit with people...The time out was great, even got in some serious fishing which was nice... and it put a whole new perspective on things... no matter how deep the BS really is... I no longer bring work home with me.... I realised how lucky we really are being above the rest... most problems go away after you suck up the gear... I actually found that the older I got, the more enjoyment I took in helping younger aviators reach their goals and objectives!
Hope things get better for you.
6to8

It is possible to see the glass half full rather than half empty!

As many have said,go to work take the money and go home,but I would add do it for your own professional pride,works for me even though I hope none of my children wantto do it for a living.
The profession is being diluted,ts and cs are changing,this is because button pushing is seen as the way forward,but it will change and when it does people like you may be appreciated again.

Try losing your medical to gain a sense of perspective.


The job can be tough sometimes but it doesn't compare to not being able to do
it !

Saddest aviator
I went through the same thing in the late 80s.
I was one of the highest remunerated FOs in the industry but had to work for it.
It started with a weird lung infection probably from West Africa which depleted my immune system. Eight years later I had my first 3 month sick leave after catching malaria.
I applied for a flight ops position with the CAA but didn't even get an application form although I had many times more experience than others I knew were in the job. A former colleague said I was a fool as I should have known that it was for masons and guild members. I don't dispute his reasoning.
After a couple more years and a second bout of malaira I developed ME although it was a disease for weirdos and malingerers at the time.
I was already on a special roster avoiding Africa but fortunately flew with our chief training captain who recognised the symptoms and he got me a transfer to short range.
My health improved and I looked at getting out of the profession but faced with a very substantial loss of earnings and an expensive family I decided to take a couple of months unpaid leave each year.
After my command my health improved somewhat as the job was much easier than as a first officer.
18 months later I had a head injury which gave me memory/sight and hearing problems. A week later a friend topped himself whilst I was waiting for him and I started on the depression slippery slope.
I got screwed by my chief pilot (brit a@@@@@e) and found myself waiting for a bus course which I didn't have the confidence to start.
I was forced to take an extremely good loss of license package but missed flying.
Gliding/paragliding/instructing and a good wife and friends helped a great deal.
I completed a weeks course with Paul Mckenna on NLP - it changed my life.

I cannot quantify your problems but the cumulative affects of being locked up in an aluminum tube, breathing C@@p air, working odd hours plus the occasional stress factors ain't good for man nor beast.
I would suggest that rather than walking away from the career that you get help (BALPA?) to see what you can change to improve the quality of your life.

There are many routes and I have seen friends with worse problems than mine take different directions - one went into management and wrote his own rosters and another went to the funny farm.
good luck

Tibetan Monks have none of these problems..!

I don't know you SA but very generally speaking, you seem to be suffering from being British.

Tax up - red tape up - living costs up - knife and gun crime up - overcrowding - motoring charges up - insurance up - declining levels of customer service and all of this rammed down ones throats by outfits such as the Daily Mail and Sky News forever looping rubbish to fill up air time.

The UK is wholly depressed right now and you are not the only one feeling crap. Just seeing and reading about it all the time versus Rooneys £250k per week, how much Philip Green made last month, Simon Cowell's stupid X-Factor tax bill alone being £150m, how another hedge-funder made £400m yesterday and how a Big Brother slapper just signed a £800,000 kiss and tell story with Max Clifford and the News of the World, all helps to create a country low on morale and self-worth.

I stopped reading the press and rarley watch TV except for films and the like.

Getting out of the UK has been great too (although it's not an option or even a desire for everyone;))

I couldn't have put it better myself, Craggenmore. We moved back to London after spending the best part of four years living in California. We have been back in England for just five months & we are moving out already. What a ghetto the cities are, scumbags on every street corner, scandalously expensive for, well, everything, what a bloody miserable summer & nicked for 'speeding' by a hidden camera for just 36 mph on the A453, which Hertz charged me an admin. fee of £42 for just to inform me that I'd got the bloody ticket! The UK has totally lost the plot & for you, SA, I would think about a relocation if that's a possibility for you. I hear everything that you say about this job but I'll tell you something: it really helps when you come home from your travels to sunshine, a positive attitude & you can afford the finer things in life rather than pumping your hard earned into the pathetic British Government's coffers.

Are you in the position to migrate, maybe start a business abroad, a franchise even?

p.s. 44 year old English guy who would never have a word said against the place until Blair & Brown destroyed the country. :ugh:

"until Blair & Brown destroyed the country"

Glad to see your Daily Mail subscription was worth it :p

On a more serious note, I would agree with those who say it might be a lot to do with how you treat your job.

I had two careers prior to aviation and I can vouch you're unlikely to be happier with an office job. Try spending half your day looking at pointless PowerPoint presentations and the other half listening to your MBA boss regurgitating one cliche expression after another. Once home, your evenings and weekends will be punctuated by Blackberry emails sent by ladder climbers who want to be seen working during home time. And you better reply. You think you have to cope with bull!!!! now?

I'm not saying don't quit. Maybe it's the right thing for you. But if you do, I would advise starting your own business...

If you can, go part-time and do something like instructing, para-dropping, etc. In other words, remember why you started flying in the first place. It's not the job it used to be (based on the accounts of old timers). But trust me, it's far better than most jobs out there...

Okay...this might seem like a hypocritical reply but here goes! Currently on a stopover in Ibiza so yes I am working and this aspect of the job is why I carry on doing it after all the bull that carries on and continuous deteriorating ts and cs. This is coming from a corporate perspective so airline guys prob don't get a chance to enjoy a decent stop like i am right now. Stop overs like this couldn't get any better and it is probably the core reason I got into the business...in order to see and visit great places! However, I have also had my doubts about the industry due to the deterioration....what I can say after being here soaking up the atmosphere and chilling out (not a clubber) is if you can do it...move to a place like this and open your own bar or something similar. The expats that I have met who are living here doing just that are so chilled out and content that it seems like the perfect life. Of course it has it's issues like anything but come on...sun, sea, great people, great food and drink and amazing scenery. My advice...if you can find a gig that gives you the time to also do something else to focus on...start your own business in a place like this and have something to be proud of and call our own. Start enjoying life...but keep flying somehow or you will always wonder!!

Absolutely Permafrost & when I'm not in the country I always remember to download my Daily Mail on the iPad, can't live without them giving me my opinions :O

Seriously, I find it very sad when any pilot says that he's so pissed with the industry that he wants out. From whichever background, we all go through strenuous training to get where we want to be in this industry & without a doubt the Ts & Cs along with all the peripheral BS is continuing to decline. Bean-counters, HR people, so called security fascists have all knocked our professional lives. I do believe, however, that if you can take what you can from the job & have a balanced life outside of work then it's still a reasonable career. On a personal level I've found England to be the most expensive, & yet conversely, most miserable place in which to live. There is no end to the doom & gloom, the endless rain (when they unbelievably claim that we are in a drought situation :ugh:) & the general national attitude.

So I say to SA try to find another place in the world through your profession or open that business in the sunshine if you are able to. If it doesn't work for you then you'll know that for you you actually had it good living in the SE of England & flying for a living. If your life change works out then great, what have you got to lose. Either way you won't be left years down the line wondering, "what if...!"

Ayn Rand was right
 

Ayn Rand was right

This article touches on some of the sentiments expressed by posters in this thread.

UK is a country of crooks. the whole gov is a joke!
when you put one foot in london, bingo you start to pay for everything!
you will all struggle under debt, the end of UK is soon over.

one day, I asked a brit what was the difference between a legal & non legal immigrant, he asked me:" when you came by train, were you in the train or on top of the train?"

Saddest Aviator: Have you thought about becoming a piano player in a whore house ?

Compared to 'professional aviation' these days, it'd be a step UP the career ladder, certainly so in terms of gaining self-respect, plus I've heard that the tips aren't bad, and there's always the fringe benefits that come with it too!

Slasher, does any of your vast & worldly-wise experience perhaps encompass this area of employment and, if anybody knows of such an opening, would they please let me know asap, so that I can apply for it myself ?! ;)

Quote of the day, made me laugh out loud literally :)

There's a very nice upmarket whorehouse in Sydney which
needed some sort of musical talent a while ago OKC, but I
don't think it was piano playing. Maybe in Texas you'll find
an odd job bashing the ivories but I don't know for sure.

Plenty of opportunity around Thailand for that sort of thing
but they employ locals only.

Spot on! Some of the reasons mentioned is why I left Ostraya
for good many moons ago under a similar socialist regime and
never looked back. I hear its much much worse down there
than when I left.

Hey Permafrost - easyJets paper of choice ;) :ok:

Hope all is well...

You will not find what you are looking for in another career. Not without a change in mindset first!

Accept that the world is full of BS, it might smell a little different elsewhere, might be a slightly different colour in some parts of the world, hell- some companies might even tie it up in a pretty bow for you... but its still BS.

Your career does not define who you are. Find an outlet outside of your job and get some perspective back....rediscover what motivates you.....once youve found that out you will have an easier time working out what you want to do career wise.

The grass always seems greener. It isn't. Someone mentioned self employment...try 7 days a week, 12 hours a day for a few years ( dealing with guess what? Thats right BS from customers :ouch:) then come and talk to me about how green the grass is as a company director.

Good luck.

Clunk is right as is Etops, although I wouldn't necessarily couch it in those terms. If you resign on Friday, you've solved the problem that you expressed in post #1.

However, that doesn't mean a thing come Monday morning. There really are no dream jobs for the overwhelming majority of people, most of us have to put up with some form of tosser or other interfering in our daily lives. I quit the corporate world to get away form useless managers & faceless beauracracy & also to make a few quid.

Whilst it worked for me, I inevitably have to take it up the japside from customers once in a while; my new masters, so unless Holly Vallance is looking for a new Brazillian wax technician, I would think long & hard about the motivations before telling the boss to poke it up his hole.

I reckon you gotta be thankful for what you've got... and be the best damn whatever it is you are...