Addiction
01-05-2007, 05:03 AM
#171
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Joined APC: May 2005
Position: Corporate Pilot
Posts: 7,119
Choices
Someone mentioned that it is about the "choices" one makes. It is true that choices can have a huge effect on ones career chances, however in most situations it would take a crystal ball to be able to make consistently correct ones. Had I been able to make my own choices I would have chosen to have my father be the chief pilot of Alaska Airlines and paid for all my college and ratings. Luck has a much larger impact.
In my analysis techniques I think the only fair way to fairly asses the situation is to level the playing field. When comparing a pilot career against an enlisted person in the military I measure the results of two 18 year old kids without the benefit of family contacts or a trust fund. Under those situations the kid in the Army will be hands down much better off financially in 15 years compared to the guy who had to lay out a kings ransom for the privilege of sitting up front at mailman wages. My friend who is still heavily in debt at 44 has tried to balance a life and carry a monster sized debt load all the while earning less than a union meat cutter. He could have continued his miserly ways but pilots I think tend to attempt to portray their lives as more prosperous than they really are.
It is false to assume that when in the trenches it is easy to tell which way to go. Without some kind of sponsorship from a dedicated individual from the inside it is very difficult to fight your way in to most companies even with a fat resume. Hiring will increase over the next few years but after five years of furloughs and layoffs it is no surprise that it is time to swell the ranks a little. I have never said that there would soon be a day without pilot jobs. My continuing point is that the future prospects of working conditions and wages is not bright. The reason is that modern airliners are highly automated and the job of airline pilot has been reduced to that of a proceduralised automaton. In the past the airlines paid for talent and lifelong career professionalism. Today resume requirements are an attempt to choke off the flow of desperate applicants. Anyone with a co-signer stupid enough can be on the line in six months.
The life of a pilot is a war of attrition. Over the years pilots leave behind their friends, family, home, hobbies, children and financial security. The lust for flight gains strength with the loss of each once cherished part of their lives. Over time everything of value is stripped away and there is nothing left but the quest. The true test of entry is to see who's sense of self respect and self interest will cause them to leave the table first. It is debatable that those left at the table are really the winners.
SkyHigh
In my analysis techniques I think the only fair way to fairly asses the situation is to level the playing field. When comparing a pilot career against an enlisted person in the military I measure the results of two 18 year old kids without the benefit of family contacts or a trust fund. Under those situations the kid in the Army will be hands down much better off financially in 15 years compared to the guy who had to lay out a kings ransom for the privilege of sitting up front at mailman wages. My friend who is still heavily in debt at 44 has tried to balance a life and carry a monster sized debt load all the while earning less than a union meat cutter. He could have continued his miserly ways but pilots I think tend to attempt to portray their lives as more prosperous than they really are.
It is false to assume that when in the trenches it is easy to tell which way to go. Without some kind of sponsorship from a dedicated individual from the inside it is very difficult to fight your way in to most companies even with a fat resume. Hiring will increase over the next few years but after five years of furloughs and layoffs it is no surprise that it is time to swell the ranks a little. I have never said that there would soon be a day without pilot jobs. My continuing point is that the future prospects of working conditions and wages is not bright. The reason is that modern airliners are highly automated and the job of airline pilot has been reduced to that of a proceduralised automaton. In the past the airlines paid for talent and lifelong career professionalism. Today resume requirements are an attempt to choke off the flow of desperate applicants. Anyone with a co-signer stupid enough can be on the line in six months.
The life of a pilot is a war of attrition. Over the years pilots leave behind their friends, family, home, hobbies, children and financial security. The lust for flight gains strength with the loss of each once cherished part of their lives. Over time everything of value is stripped away and there is nothing left but the quest. The true test of entry is to see who's sense of self respect and self interest will cause them to leave the table first. It is debatable that those left at the table are really the winners.
SkyHigh
01-05-2007, 05:17 AM
#172
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Joined APC: May 2005
Position: Corporate Pilot
Posts: 7,119
Speeder
Skyhigh, there you go again assuming all was well before I changed careers. My last job had me away from home almost every holiday except thanksgiving, Christmas, and new years. It took six days a week, 12-14 hours a day just to get those three days off. I would work from 12pm till 2am most of the time. I had no time to spend with my kids. I missed a lot parties and holiday celebrations. Also I had hit the top of the pay scale in the industry, no matter what company I was going to work for I would make about the same. It all worked out in the end for me because six months after I left they shut the place down moved it to another city. That enable them to lose the union we had; they cut pay and lowered the QOL that we sorta had. Guess the airlines are no different then the rest of the businesses in this country.
I don't know much about you. It is difficult to draw any conclusions from a few paragraphs that you offer on this forum. I am forced to make assumptions and most references made by me are not intended as a direct comparison of you and your life. If you wish for me to make a full and fair audit of your life's choices then you will have to open your books. Until then I will be forced to make a few assumptions. One of the assumptions that I make here is that everyone comes from an average place of intelligence and has an active self interest in avoiding hardship. Often I am left wondering if I should allow that generality.
(joke)You to attempt to attack silly little details and inaccuracies about my argument without addressing the main points at all.
SkyHigh
01-05-2007, 05:44 AM
#173
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Joined APC: May 2005
Position: Corporate Pilot
Posts: 7,119
Goals
For someone who worked in Alaska, you should know that companies up here close on holidays and many offer 9-5 type scheduling.
As far as the loading dock, I worked that job with the full intention of finding a flying job. I started that job being honest that I was looking for a flying job. I had a degree in Aerospace already when I started on that dock. And I wouldn't be happy being on the ground. Regardless of how well the job paid or what the schedule was.
My dad flew for National for a while by the way. I'm happy he never gave up, and obviously I think it turned out well enough that I'm trying to follow in his footsteps.
As I said before, there are more important things to measuring quality of life than money.
As far as the loading dock, I worked that job with the full intention of finding a flying job. I started that job being honest that I was looking for a flying job. I had a degree in Aerospace already when I started on that dock. And I wouldn't be happy being on the ground. Regardless of how well the job paid or what the schedule was.
My dad flew for National for a while by the way. I'm happy he never gave up, and obviously I think it turned out well enough that I'm trying to follow in his footsteps.
As I said before, there are more important things to measuring quality of life than money.
The best days of my working life was as an Alaskan bush pilot. Every day I rose with a sense of excitement. We all raced to work to be the first to get a flight assignment. It was a pilot paradise. I flew six different aircraft types in operations that ranged from hard IFR multi-engine trips to ANC to sliding to a stop on a short gravel bar in a 185. The problem was that living and working as a bush pilot excluded the prospects of everything else in life. Living in the bush makes it difficult to have a social life, it is hard to buy land as a non-native, the flight time really isn't that valuable outside of rural part 135. All the guys whom I knew that made the choice to be a life long bush pilot were a little twisted. Most were reclusive single freaks. I did not wish that as my fate and made the difficult choice to move on.
Though I realise that you are not a bush pilot the same can be said by most jobs in aviation. Flying compromises other things in persons life more than what most other career choices do. It is not possible to have your cake and eat it too. There is a high price paid to remain in the seat. I don't know if your dad flew for the LAS National Airlines or for the older original National Airlines. My time working at NAL of LAS painted an ugly picture of my future. The older guys who I flew with were full of hard luck stories. You don't often end up at a start up LCC older than 45 years of age after a string of good fortune and it is extremely unlikely that continuing that path will offer different results in the future. Most of the older guys that I flew with had lost everything they owned and cared about by the time they reached NAL. The strange thing was that they never were able to associate their hardships with the life they had chosen. It was always their wives or kids fault. Often their employer was the recipient of displaced anger when in realty they accepted the job that was offered.
We all have choices and for every choice there is a consequence.
Skyhigh
01-05-2007, 07:24 AM
#174
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Oct 2005
Position: XJT F/O
Posts: 144
Skyhigh, I agree with you, that I am attacking very small details, but you seem to think that you can broadly say that your beliefs are true across the board and they are not. You are trying to convince a few people on here that whole airline industry is just like what you went through. You cite things like 7 year upgrade times and high cost of living. You can only talk about what you unexperienced not the whole industry. You have offered your experiences and knowledge from your perspective but that is exactly what it is your thoughts, not fact of what is going to happen to everybody.
01-05-2007, 10:27 AM
#175
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Joined APC: May 2005
Position: Corporate Pilot
Posts: 7,119
Yes
Skyhigh, I agree with you, that I am attacking very small details, but you seem to think that you can broadly say that your beliefs are true across the board and they are not. You are trying to convince a few people on here that whole airline industry is just like what you went through. You cite things like 7 year upgrade times and high cost of living. You can only talk about what you unexperienced not the whole industry. You have offered your experiences and knowledge from your perspective but that is exactly what it is your thoughts, not fact of what is going to happen to everybody.
We all lie to ourselves to justify the career choice but the reality is that it costs money to live, commuting sucks ect...
SkyHigh
01-05-2007, 05:28 PM
#176
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Joined APC: Nov 2006
Posts: 47
You are right, I use my own experiences as an example and for others things could be much worse. Pilot hopefuls tend to view things in the most positive light and I attempt to balance that with real life examples. It is true that at Mesa upgrade is much quicker but at Horizon Air, Pinnacle and American Eagle it is painfully slow and most likely will continue to be so. (Mesa by the way, has a faster upgrade since life there is difficult.)
We all lie to ourselves to justify the career choice but the reality is that it costs money to live, commuting sucks ect...
SkyHigh
We all lie to ourselves to justify the career choice but the reality is that it costs money to live, commuting sucks ect...
SkyHigh
And the funny thing is Sky, you get almost mad when peolple use their own "real life examples" to counter your claims. For every down-in-the-dumps-out-of-aviation pilot you find, we can all find just as many that are happy where they are in life and aviation. At this point we are all just yealling into the wind. Kinda pointless.
However, correct me of I am wrong Sky, It bugs you a ton, that no matter how many bad experinces you quote, people will still continue in avaition. And you had to make choices based on your life situation and not so much by the crappy job you claim flying is. After all you stated that if you were still single, you would still be slugging it out. No one forced you to get married and have kids. Those are choices. It was only then you realized flying wasn't going to work out for you AND your family. Not so much that flying was a crappy carrier and you better get out so you can raise a family. So you can sit back and blame flying for this and for that, when it was your own choices that led you out of this career. As I have said before there is nothing wrong at all with choices. But in your mind flying wasn't giving back what you had put in. And I respect you for doing what you thought would make you happy.
Instead of trying to talk people out of this career by using all kinds of crazy monetary statistics. Why don't you talk more about the choices you made and the reasons you made them. I know you have done this, but to me that seems to be your only real argument. And being happy means more to some then just money.
P R
01-05-2007, 05:56 PM
#177
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Joined APC: May 2005
Position: Corporate Pilot
Posts: 7,119
Position
And the funny thing is Sky, you get almost mad when peolple use their own "real life examples" to counter your claims. For every down-in-the-dumps-out-of-aviation pilot you find, we can all find just as many that are happy where they are in life and aviation. At this point we are all just yealling into the wind. Kinda pointless.
However, correct me of I am wrong Sky, It bugs you a ton, that no matter how many bad experinces you quote, people will still continue in avaition. And you had to make choices based on your life situation and not so much by the crappy job you claim flying is. After all you stated that if you were still single, you would still be slugging it out. No one forced you to get married and have kids. Those are choices. It was only then you realized flying wasn't going to work out for you AND your family. Not so much that flying was a crappy carrier and you better get out so you can raise a family. So you can sit back and blame flying for this and for that, when it was your own choices that led you out of this career. As I have said before there is nothing wrong at all with choices. But in your mind flying wasn't giving back what you had put in. And I respect you for doing what you thought would make you happy.
Instead of trying to talk people out of this career by using all kinds of crazy monetary statistics. Why don't you talk more about the choices you made and the reasons you made them. I know you have done this, but to me that seems to be your only real argument. And being happy means more to some then just money.
P R
However, correct me of I am wrong Sky, It bugs you a ton, that no matter how many bad experinces you quote, people will still continue in avaition. And you had to make choices based on your life situation and not so much by the crappy job you claim flying is. After all you stated that if you were still single, you would still be slugging it out. No one forced you to get married and have kids. Those are choices. It was only then you realized flying wasn't going to work out for you AND your family. Not so much that flying was a crappy carrier and you better get out so you can raise a family. So you can sit back and blame flying for this and for that, when it was your own choices that led you out of this career. As I have said before there is nothing wrong at all with choices. But in your mind flying wasn't giving back what you had put in. And I respect you for doing what you thought would make you happy.
Instead of trying to talk people out of this career by using all kinds of crazy monetary statistics. Why don't you talk more about the choices you made and the reasons you made them. I know you have done this, but to me that seems to be your only real argument. And being happy means more to some then just money.
P R
Occasionally I attempt to use dry humor to add levity to the topic. I honestly was trying to be funny with that line. Commonly I will add a (joke) note to point out that I am only kidding. I guess I should do it more often.
I am not saying that you or anyone else will not be happy. I was happy and had a great time, but the same could be said of smoking, excessive drinking or intercourse with strangers. The point is that there is a price tag for everything in life. An opportunity cost that needs to be measured. Sure it might be fun to fly in your 20's and 30's but when you get older we all usually have other needs that begin to become more apparent. In my estimation unless you are well placed at a strong major airline by 40 it is too late. I suppose if you were a single guy you could go on but like I mentioned the one situation often creates the other.
Like yourself, if you ever intend to have a family one day flying makes it more difficult to meet a mate and to keep a healthy family situation. A flying career can exclude other things that you someday you might not be so happy about. Money isn't everything but it sure can help. In my own situation I can honestly say that I miss flying everyday but I am much happier with my life today. It is all a trade off. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You will sacrifice a lot for your flying job; money, friends, family, home and financial security.
Fast forward two years from now and imagine yourself as a regional airline pilot, living in a one bedroom apartment in a strange and expensive city walking through shopping malls and going to movies by yourself on your days off while supplementing your income with your dwindling savings. No Fun.
Taking the 172 about the patch is fun. Sitting in front of the flicker of CRT's, arms folded in your lap while the computer is flying the same fully automated ILS approach that you have already done for the third time that day isn't.
Skyhigh
01-05-2007, 06:44 PM
#178
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jan 2006
Posts: 762
I had always thought you were allowed to handfly the aircraft, unless ofcourse the minimums where beyond the point which teh regulations state the autopilot must be flying it.
01-05-2007, 08:25 PM
#179
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Joined APC: Nov 2006
Posts: 47
I think that comparing Smoking having sex with strangers is a little far fetched as mentioned before. Try to compare flying with other types of vocations and not other things. Every one has to work or they choose to be poor. I choose not to smoke but by doing so I am not giving up some thing else (exept for I light buz I guess). I know your going to quote the parralels, but lets be realsitic. I if I choose to fly I might give up some things in order to gain others.
Instead why don't you talk about the other careers/attitudes that harm families besides flying. You could spend as little time or as much time with your family that you want. However if you choose to go out and drink or pour all of you time and energy into your profession you are doing more harm then the pilot who is gone all the time and sacrifices moments with his family. If I choose to re-marry then that is my choice, if I fall so in love with my mate that it makes me quit flying, so be it thats my choice. If I choose to bring a child into this world, and I am not getting enough time with him/her, and quit flying. That is my CHOICE.
You say you are here to warn younger kids about flying, and provide some balance, then I am as otheres are here, to warn them about making the wrong choice by not going for what they truly want out of life. I am sure you can't argue the logic, since you went for what you wanted. Time with your kids and family. And unfortunately flying and family couldn't co-exist any longer in your eyes.
"Taking the 172 about the patch is fun. Sitting in front of the flicker of CRT's, arms folded in your lap while the computer is flying the same fully automated ILS approach that you have already done for the third time that day isn't. "
Skyhigh
This is very true. And I only have about 200 hours doing it. But this is the reason I think I am going to stay in the corporate world, 91/91k. Theres something fun about hand flying a Lear 45 at 17.5/16.5 for 200 miles, decending and entering a vfr pattern the same way you would at your home airport.
P R
__________________
Instead why don't you talk about the other careers/attitudes that harm families besides flying. You could spend as little time or as much time with your family that you want. However if you choose to go out and drink or pour all of you time and energy into your profession you are doing more harm then the pilot who is gone all the time and sacrifices moments with his family. If I choose to re-marry then that is my choice, if I fall so in love with my mate that it makes me quit flying, so be it thats my choice. If I choose to bring a child into this world, and I am not getting enough time with him/her, and quit flying. That is my CHOICE.
You say you are here to warn younger kids about flying, and provide some balance, then I am as otheres are here, to warn them about making the wrong choice by not going for what they truly want out of life. I am sure you can't argue the logic, since you went for what you wanted. Time with your kids and family. And unfortunately flying and family couldn't co-exist any longer in your eyes.
"Taking the 172 about the patch is fun. Sitting in front of the flicker of CRT's, arms folded in your lap while the computer is flying the same fully automated ILS approach that you have already done for the third time that day isn't. "
Skyhigh
This is very true. And I only have about 200 hours doing it. But this is the reason I think I am going to stay in the corporate world, 91/91k. Theres something fun about hand flying a Lear 45 at 17.5/16.5 for 200 miles, decending and entering a vfr pattern the same way you would at your home airport.
P R
__________________
01-05-2007, 09:11 PM
#180
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Joined APC: May 2005
Position: Corporate Pilot
Posts: 7,119
Automation
What companies have in their ops specs and what is in practice is often very different. What in my mind is an equalising factor is that the autopilot does a very nice job when properly set up. Over time it becomes real nice to simply push the appropriate buttons and then to sit back and monitor the progress. No matter what the manual says sooner or later most seem to prefer to sit back and let the box do the work. Many companies with progressive attitudes towards automation have strict rules of when the magic can be turned off. Outside of that automation is advancing every year as the main method of aircraft control and hands on saved for VFR days only. The Airbus doesn't even have what can be considered as a real stick. It is closer to a mouse since all the pilot really does is to send an instruction to the computer and it determines how best to carry the instruction out.
Like it or not automation is here to stay and is destined to take over as the primary method of aircraft control.
SkyHigh
