Hi Mentors, I’ve been lurking here for a month or so. Of all of the various forums, I find this one very informative, to-the-point and not filled with curmudgeons tongue-lashing fellow pilots, students or those of us considering aviation in general. Thanks and keep it up!
I am a mid-30 something mechanical engineer, 12 years into a good and well-paying career. My Dad is a retired 757/767 driver about 5 years out of the industry. I grew up through the good and bad times with a professional pilot dad. Furloughs, pinching pennies when he had to work sh*t jobs hauling cargo to South America, and him being gone 20+ days a month…but also good times when he flew his butt off and took 6-8 weeks off each summer where we would get out of town, or I would shadow him on some better trips to see places I’d never been like San Francisco and Seattle, listen to him on the PA making announcements (thinking “yes everyone one this plane, that is my dad!”) and going into the cockpit after everyone got off the plane. I made a decision in college to not pursue aviation because of the bad times and how I thought I didn’t want to put a future family through the same bad things. As I get older and now have two young kids of my own, I realize an 8-5 job with 2 weeks vacation is also filled with good and bad. Good in that I’m home just about every night except for occasional business out of town. I won’t miss any holidays or baseball games. I don’t really have to worry about losing my job when the economy sneezes. But also bad in that 5 of 7 days each week I come home stressed from work and catch myself retreating from family time to “decompress”…not quality family bonding time to say the least. On weekends I’m doing chores or working on some hobby, side gig or other distraction. Or Typical 8-5 job constraints where I don’t have the chance to take my kids on a 6 week road trip around the Western US because I’d be lucky to burn all of my vacation time on 2 consecutive weeks if my company graces me with their approval.
I talked to a buddy of mine from a company I used to work for, who was also a pilot and went back to work for XJT as a FO as our engineering contract was getting cut back by the government. In the time since I left 7 years ago, he made CA 2 or 3 years ago and is now a FO at a major. He shed some light on the industry changes over the past several years, mostly positive things (pay, QOL, advancement, etc). He neither encouraged me nor dissuaded me from the career and I can appreciate that.
So I decided on a new personal goal to finish my PPL and “see what happens after that.” I’m a whopping 4 hours in (I completed 30 hours and my first solo 15 years ago in college). Ok, so I have not decided to drop everything and pursue aviation as a career…yet. That’s probably an odd statement to make on a forum titled “AirlinePilot.Life” sponsored by ATP who can get you to the right seat of a regional in less than 2 years…and I totally agree. I’m just not in a realistic position to do the accelerated path, but I could take the long winding road and enjoy the ride along the way. Earning my CFI and truly enjoying teaching others who are pursuing the dream wouldn’t be so bad.
Again, thank you to the mentors on this page helping guide the young aspiring pilots as well as us older 1/3rd life and 1/2 life crisis types seeking real no BS information.
Welcome to the forums and thank you for there detailed introduction. If you have been on here for awhile, you know that if your goal is to fly for the airlines, your intended path is not the fastest and that it could have real implications to your seniority and career progression.
That being said, it sounds like you have valid reasons for going the slow route. That route will probably work for you, but it will take significantly longer and could end up costing you quite a bit more. As long as you know that going in, which it sounds like you do, then you should not be disappointed.
Thanks Chris, I appreciate the feedback. I should have my PPL in June. I’ll be following along with the forum soaking up all the insight from the mentors.
I feel your pain… I’ll be 36 next month, I have a Civil Engineering degree but I’m a farmer. I feel the same stresses and don’t have very good quality time at home even though i’m home 95% of the nights. I feel like flying is the only job I can have and truly love what I do. I’m old enough where I feel like if this is something I really want to do I need to do it now and the timing as far as pilot demand is probably the best its been in decades. I feel like people will see it as an early mid life crisis, but I’m ok with that Thanks for sharing
I was 32 when I started at ATP and I’m 35 now. I too am married with two small kids and couldn’t afford to quit work and jump in feet first full time training. I went Part-time with ATP (no longer offered) and worked full time while getting my ratings. It took me 18 months to get all my ratings except CFI; I never got those. Granted most of my friends are at the regionals already while I only have 850 hours but I’m okay with it. I’ve already been furloughed once (thanks Great Lakes) and now I fly three different Citation jets for a 135 charter company 20 minutes from my house. I’m making more money than most regional Captains and I see my wife and kids almost every night. Get creative, find your path in or out of avaiation and go for it.
Arthur thanks for sharing your story. I’ve been listening to the PilotToPilot podcast and it really opened my eyes to the various paths to a career in aviation including several career changers. I took my PPL written yesterday and completed my first milestone. Planning my check ride in June. After that I want to hit instrument hard. It’s taken way too long for my PPL with weather delays, maintenance and waiting for my scheduled flights after work. Since I last posted, the desire to fly professionally has grown to the point where I am seriously considering leaving my full time job to train full time to get to my CFI.
Jason, I catch the “mid-life crisis” flak as well. It’s like we are expected to choose a career path at 18 and grind it out for 40+ years because that’s what is expected. Well, we live in a great country where opportunity is plenty and it just takes grit, planning and action. My wife and I have done a good job keeping our lifestyle well below our means so losing my income for 6 months won’t put us in the red. We have a good nest egg so all of our immediate financial needs are covered. If it’s going to happen, I can’t imagine a less bad time to do it. There is never a good time and there are always reasons and excuses not to take action.
Hi all, I figure I would give an update. Ok, so I am not at ATP, nor am I on an accelerated track. I work full time and train part-time at a local Part 61 school. I’ll give some insight into that in a bit. The big news is that I passed my PPL check ride back on October 8. It took me about 6 months part time. That included weather days, equipment issues, and a change of jobs where I didn’t fly for a month as I got situated and settled down. I’m just shy of 100 hours and will begin my IR training soon.
I think I had about 2 months of downtime, so in the ideal scenario, I think it would have taken me 3-4 months to finish my PPL. I generally tried to schedule 3 flights per week. That isn’t full time, but is a fairly aggressive part time schedule. Upside - I paid as I went. I owe $0 in flight training so far. I make a good living as an engineer and I was still able to put money into my retirement account and my kids’ college fund simultaneously. Downside - some of my peers who started at the same time as me have already earned their IR and are working towards their commercial. They’ll easily be 2-3 years or more ahead of me by going full time.
Advice - You just have to make the decision that is best for you (duh…). I turned 37 this year, have a degree and a solid job where I’m paying for training out of pocket and still able to save money towards retirement and have the benefits of full-time employment (healthcare, etc.). Saving for retirement and other life goals is a long game. $100 invested today is the same as $200 in 7 years and $400 in 14 years. The opportunity-cost to quit my job now and lose my income is extremely high in the long run. If I were in a different situation, say I was 10 years or more younger with no kids, or had a job where I didn’t earn a lot of money or was completely unhappy with, I would jump head first into accelerated training and never look back.
I’m not advocating one training path versus another, just providing my experience and decision-making process. Good luck to everyone in their chosen paths!
I’m glad you seem to have a system that is working for you and obviously with a family, there are big factors that come into play with quitting a good job and going into accelerated training. The only thing I’d like to point out though is that really in the big picture, you’re losing out on a LOT of money for short term gains. I don’t know what you make and I’m not asking, but for arguments sake let’s say it’s 100k. That means each year behind those other students you are is a loss of 300k (low-balling the end of your career at 400k). Over 2-3 years is 600-900k. Not looking at retirement growth and a ton of other factors. Like I said, I’m happy for you, if you’re happy for you! And BIG congrats on the PPL btw!! But I just want to clear that up for anyone who may come through and read this. Good luck in your training!
Yes sir, I will never make $400k in today’s dollars as an engineer. Possibly I could if I continued up the food chain into corporate management (yuck!). The time-value of money works best for those who have long investment windows was really all that I was attempting to say. I saw your schedule in another thread and I will say I could never ever touch that schedule as a salaried engineer. Period. However, the hard part for me is the several years of grinding before reaching that level where I have to be away from home 15 or more nights each month. I grew up in that world so I’m very cautious and nervous about this.
Understandable! We all have to suffer those grinding years, but putting it off won’t really make it any easier. I get you may want your kids to be older though. Good luck to you!!
Hahah no worries I’m VERY used to it. I still can’t get crew scheduling to stop calling and asking for my husband, Jordan - the pilot whenever I answer the phone (definitely not married). Or how many captains show up for the trip and lead with “I was expecting you to be a guy…”
I just re-read this whole thread. It’s a good journal of my decisions, mindset and progress. After stewing on it, Jordan and Chris, you are 100% right. I had originally planned for my PPL checkride in June and I ended up getting my ticket in October. I I write this, I’m sitting here in my back yard under the HOU flight path watching SWA 737’s depart while not really looking forward to sitting at my desk tomorrow doing my day job. Talk about a kick in the butt!
Just to clarify this as clear as the Miami beach waters, this is going back to seniority means everything / the faster someone gets hired by the airline the better ? Therefore, I could save money and paid for my flight education later and not get into huge debt, but also at the same time putting at risk not having high seniority status or making around 300k in my career ?
I have to admit your questions are a little difficult to understand. But what I think you’re asking is: If you could save money and pay off the flight education NOW/as-you-go and not get into debt, would you be putting your career at risk as far as seniority/not reaching that 300k number?
The answer is yes - any money you save by taking your time so that you don’t have any debt, will cost you time off the end of your career. You may still hit 300k, heck you may hit 500k (it happens often at the high end of the seniority list). The question is how many years will you get to sit in that pay range? If you take an extra 2 years to finish your training, you missed out on 2 years at the end of your career sitting around 400k.
Let’s put an outrageous number on it in case you need extra living expenses and accounting for the interest rate. If you spend 200k on your training but it gets you there 2 years sooner, in the grand scheme you’ve made 600k - not even factoring in inflation and retirement gains and all kinds of other factors.
I’m not trying to argue against Jordan’s points, she is in the business kicking butt and clearly in a better position to talk about the industry than I. I hope that this doesn’t come off as argumentative, that’s really not my intent. My only point in all of this is that the $1 in your hand today is real money. The $5 in your December 31st, 2040 paycheck doesn’t yet exist. I alluded to the struggles of my Father in his aviation career in my original post. Unfortunately, based purely on the circumstance of a fickle industry, he never got to see that coveted topped-out wide-body captain position earning $300k-$400k. He took a massive pay cut at the peak earning potential of his career when the economy tanked. His situation may have been the exception and not the rule, but I think most people would agree that it is a higher probability in the airlines than with most professional career fields.
All that said, I see investment in education and training as an absolute necessity so I would never discourage someone from borrowing to get their flight training, college or anything that puts them in a position of higher earning potential as early as possible in life. If I were 22 with my sights on the airlines, no kids and just graduated college today, I’d be enrolled full time at ATP or similar program. End of story. No brainer. But my situation and experience puts me in a different position with different priorities and financial risks.
Thanks for sharing
