If you are career changing to be a com. pilot, what really is the insentive to be one, especially if you are older and have a family? Do the ATP schools of the world really get you to where you need to be to fly professionally or just more debt? And the rumor about pilots retiring soon, is that as good as the Vietnam pilots retiring from helicopter flying?
Incentive is a personal matter, as is spelling.
Ask yourself what your incentive is, if you intend to pursue aviation. Why do you want to change careers? What are your desires once you change careers? What do you want to do?
Do you have airline aspirations? Corporate aspirations? Do you want to fly ag, crop dusting? Do you want to fight fire? Do you want to fly airplanes, or helicopters? Are you interested in flying for the government? In what capacity?
What are your capabilities, and your needs? Do you have adequate savings to survive the first decade of your avaiation career on dirt-poor wages (generally below the poverty level)? Do you have needs, such as a large family, which will not permit you to make the sacrifices and pay the dues necessary to develop your career? Do you have contacts or those in the industry who can or will help you? Are you driven? Do you have the finances to enable you to learn to fly?
These are questions you'll need to ask when considering your incentives. What motivates you might or might not motivate the next guy. Are you prepared to instruct for the next two years, then spend several winters loading freight by hand into small piston or turboprop aircraft in the dead of winter, in the dead of night, and fly it by hand in ice to a socked-in destination, on schedule? Are you prepared to give up your lifestyle and be tied to a pager around the clock? Are you prepared to be unable to plan, to conduct your life according to the needs of an employer who sees you as disposable and an object to his or her income?
For every hour you fly on the job you'll spend three...preflighting, postflighting, etc. Are you prepared to be called to work one day, and come home two weeks later, or ten months later? That's a long office day. I've had many days like that. How about you?
If you have a career now, are you prepared to go from successful to new all over again? Are you prepared to accept being treated like a beginner, regardless of your education, age, or experience in other fields? Now is a good time to start.
Few "ATP Schools" exist out there. Plenty of schools are available, however, which will get you through your basic certification. Being certified as a pilot with a commercial, a medical, and your flight instructor ratings doesn't qualify you to do a lot. It doesn't make you an ATP. It's not a job guarantee. You will finish your commercial certification with not half of the experience necessary to fly basic VFR cargo...and not too many jobs out there will take you at such low experience. Finishing up at 250 hours with a wet commercial, you're still about twelve hundred hours shy of being worth much...and the flight schools usually won't do a lot about that. If you can train somewhere that will hire you as an instructor (assuming you have the aptitude) when you're done, that's something...but for the wages you'll be paid, you'd do well to be an expert at living lean...because you will.
If you can manage to get into a commuter or regional airline, you'll be making wages somewhat less than a typical grilling professional at finer Burger Kings everywhere; you'll qualify for food stamps, and you'll get your earned income credit on your taxes, too. Since the Colgan crash, however, many operators are pushing for at least 1,500 hours of experience and an ATP before they'll consider you for one of those poverty-level seats. Are you ready for that?
Helicopter hiring was at an all time high two and three years ago. Don't believe anything any flight school tells you about hiring, especially "hiring booms." No such thing. The industry tends to run in cycles; every five years high to low. We're beginning a recovery from a low. Where we go from here really depends on the economy. Aviation has always been a leading economic indicator; it falls quickly with the economy, but unlike other indicators, it's not quick to recover. The industry often operates at a loss, or with a razor-thin profit margin. Is this a comfortable idea for you?
Your questions are really something only you can answer, and your own decision comes down to your own motivation. How badly do you really want to fly for a living? Perhaps more accurately for you, how badly to you want to live, for flying?
