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Originally Posted by shooter13 Not what you are hoping to hear I imagine but look around this board. There are professional pilots a plenty who are miserable.
You love to fly and so do I. Get the job that pays the bills. Get the job that pays the bills and then some and buy yourself an airplane. Its a beat up old 150 for me right now but that will eventually be a Pitts. Just a matter of time...
If you chose heart, you will be happy for awhile till your heart changes and you are tired of making crappy wages flying the same routes.
Just my take. |
You are exactly right. I flew for the Navy for ten yrs, joined a major in 1998 and just left that for a non-flying aviation related position with a large US company. With the pensions going away or gone, the crappy wages and the continuing brutal competition, the working conditions at the majors will continue to suck for a long time. I'm 39, so I decided to make the move while I still could. I'm earning 50K more a year than if I had stayed with the airlines and I can use that money to rent whatever I want. I was home for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas for the first time in 18 years. I have three children and a wife and I was not going to continue to be an ATM for the overtaxed, poorly managed industry with no pricing power. I loved flying airplanes for a living, but it isnt much of a living anymore. I'm earning my MBA and within 10 yrs I plan to buy my own bugsmasher. Just don't be so quick to fantasize about flying for the majors or anybody else. Life on the road gets old and in the end, it's just a job. Focus on spending the time you have with your family and close freinds. When all is said and done, that small group of people are the only ones that give a hoot about you anyway. So often, we live our lives telling ourselves that life will really start when we get that raise or get that new job or buy that new home. Our happiness depends on some future event that we have little control over. Realize that this is your life! Flying may be part of it, but it cant be all of it. And with the state of the industry, it will be difficult to have a long and rewarding career if the compensation is so poor that you can't afford to live comfortably. Just make sure you really understand what the career of a pilot entails before you run off and quit a good job. It is probably not all that you think it is. Good luck, fair winds and following seas.
Tom