Adam I had a question about being a pilot. What is it like being married and being a pilot? Are you married and a pilot. Does being a pilot makes marriage life hard being that you are away and in the air! I’m dying to know the answers to these questions.
Dan,
This question comes up often. “Being a pilot” can mean very many different things. If you’re a pilot for Hawaiian Airlines flying Interisland, fly for JetBlue or a senior Regional pilot you can be home every night and your homelife would be no different than anyone else’s. If you fly for Atlas or some other cargo operators you could be gone 15 days a month and that could make things a little more challenging. Then of course there are all the jobs in between which will typically have you away from 2-5 days. I believe being a pilot need not be any more detrimental to marriage than any other profession. If you have a good and secure marriage you’ll be fine. If you don’t you won’t. Go out partying with the crew every night while your significant other is home dealing with life and there’s bound to be some friction. Conduct yourself appropriately and they’ll be less.
Adam
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Nice points Adam, I believe that’s about the truth of the family bond as well, actually the only difference in this career is that there are more chances for unsuitable behavior; however, foremost it’s about the personality and mindset. I mean a bad person is bad in any uniform and a good person knows how to manage things no matter what he/she does for life. Situation just makes things easier or harder. But there is another point should be considered. In average, how many percent of pilots can find the chance to go back home when they are off duty. Well of course at the beginning of the career it may be multiple days duty to different places and maybe it is not easy to expect to be home every single night, but are we gonna be back to base and visit our family during the off days after multiple days of duty? Honestly things may get complicated if we can not be back home even in off days, even if the hotel and everything is paid when you can not see home for most of the time it’s gonna raise difficulties.
Ilya,
I believe you’re talking about commuting and that’s a personal decision. Some pilots CHOSE to commute, others don’t, but if you want to make sure you’re home whenever you’re not flying the answer is move to your base with your family. Period. You’re done with your trip you go home. Even if you do commute that shouldn’t be too much of an issue but you may lose a day or 2.
FYI, I’m not sure what you’re thinking but when you’re off the airline is not going to pay for your hotel.
Adam
Thx Adam for ur answer, I got ur point, but to clarify what I meant by my question, let’s say my base is lax and I am not as senior as I can bid my schedule as I like, so it’s very likely that I have some multiple days duty, for example, I fly from Los Angeles to Miami and From Miami to New York then I will stay over there in a hotel with my crew for a night and then we will have another flight to Chicago and maybe another night stand and then back to lax. Let’s say it takes 3 days to complete and then we have 3 days off. In this example we were back to base for the off days and we can be with family. So far so good, the question is that Is it possible that we won’t be back to base for the off days, like we are given 4 days off in Chicago instead of the base which is lax in my example. Because if it’s possible to have such a situation it’s gonna be extremely hard to deal with even without family. We might have two houses in different locations or pay for tickets to go back to home which may take half of the off time so basically we lose the off time as well.
Your off days are in your base. Time spent on the road are work days.
My appreciation sir, see u in airline