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Chances of getting on with a Major....

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I too was the kid with my nose up against the window wishing to fly an airliner...still am to some extent. I read the AA pilot's column in Flying every month...the surgeon from Tampa who owns the Cheyenne also writes an interesting column every month. There are two perspectives of guys who love to fly and have chosen alternate routes to get there. I recall that recently the surgeon got to fly the delivery flight of a Southwest 737 and was giddy. I think I would be too...flying the heavy metal seems like such fun to a guy looking from the outside in.

I chose to get a PhD in accounting so I can pay the bills, feed my kids, and fly. I'll finish my PhD this year. I still have dreams (illusions) that I could get on with an airline and fly a jet...maybe when my kids are grown. I would say that it's a rare day that I go to the airport to fly and don't get jealous of the guys flying RJ's or Boeing products. I have friends doing both but I've never understood the economics behind aviation careers. I think the risk of layoffs, bankruptcy, etc is just too great for me...at least right now.

I still instruct as much as I can in order to get in the air and stay current. I've flown around 100 hours in the last year. I expect that going forward if I stay in an academic career the number of flight hours I can get in will increase rather dramatically. I really only HAVE to be somewhere about 8 hours a week so I've been successful fitting in all of my school duties around flying. Recently I've been thinking of getting a part-time cargo job where I could fill in around other pilots' vacation / sick / scheduling issues. I've had some offers but I haven't taken the plunge yet.

At the end of the day I hope to get a part-time spot with a busy 135 / corporate / airmed operator flying a King Air or a Citation. I'm hoping that with my relatively open availabilty I will be able to convince a chief pilot that I'll be a good risk. Ask me in a few years if it all works out...as for now it seems to be the right thing for me.

Bob
 
BBB, I certainly see where you're coming from. I have a friend that works at Delta that started flying in the Navy (E-3s). Flying has always been about making a living to him. He doesn't "love" it. It's just a way for him to make a good living, feed his family, and send them to college. There's certainly nothing wrong with that.

On the other hand, some of us still do love to fly. You seem to believe that the only way someone can enjoy flying is if they are getting shot at or doing Mach 2. Personally, I never had any interest whatsoever in flying a fighter. It just never appealed to me. I enjoy flying 121, but I don't "love" it. I certainly can't imagine being happy in any other career field though. I would go crazy sitting in an office 8 hours a day, no matter how big the paycheck would be. I do "love" GA flying though. It's great to fly into some tiny little airport in a little plane with no fancy avionics to buy a burger at the local airport restaurant. To each his own I guess.
 
I'm still here.......just reading. Thanks BBB and others for your valued input and wisdom.

And for the rest.....if I didn't love flying, I wouldn't have 400+ hours, be doing it right now, and contemplating on it being just a hobby.

P.S. My spelling may be off, verb tenses not correct, but I bet you I could sit in an interview and get a job and write a publishable document.
 
It seems to me with your intellect that a flying career at a regional would bore you after a couple of years and be nothing more than a job. Do yourself a favor and stick to what you know and what pays. If you fly exactly the way your company trains, teaches and dictates (Standard Operating Procedures) it IS a boring job.

Unless of course you get to fly internationally all over the world:)
 
K2774: I give you credit for thinking outside the box of what your normal career path is leading you to. If you want to fly for a living, you've got a ways to go and others have pointed out to you some viable roads. If you take those roads, you will be rubbing shoulders with guys that are willing to pay any price to get to the next level and "got nowhere else to go" as Richard Gere said in that tearjerker navy movie. You on the other hand will have options to go back to braniac land where the livin is easy and the money is good if you understand all those funky physics laws.

I know, I did it. I am an engineer and it comes easy to me. I got bored being an engineer and started flying as a single guy. Got all my ratings up through CFI, ATP, etc. One day, my buddy offered me a job flying Lears. I quit my cushy boring engineering job to fly 135 Lears. By that time I had a 6 month old and 3 year old and was on a 30 minute callout leash. My wife was going back to work, so it all hairballed up in my face and I had to go back to my day job just to keep things together. Keep in mind my day job pays well, but I am bored again. My two sons on the other hand love having me around all the time.

Flying jets is much more fun than being an engineer or scientist. Flying the jets is a good time and going all over is better than sitting in some lab with the same old braniacs gets old. But being in the same old hotel room gets old. Especially when you go to dinner and you see some kid at the next table who is your kids age and that's when you really miss your kid.

If you want to give it a shot, do it. I'll bet you can always go back to be a defense physics dude. They let me back in at a higher salary. Also, you will be the hit of any dorky engineer/scientist party. I have engineers come up to me all the time and say, "wow, you flew jets, Cool". I laugh my head off.

Big Beer Belly had some great comments. I don't think he is arrogant either. He is just saying that once you have flown a T38, the rest is like go carts. Once I flew a Lear, the slower stuff seems a little ridiculous, but I still go out and rent my C172 every few weekends. I admire his family responsibility view. I think the military guys do get spoiled, because they get the best aircraft and the 121 stuff is pretty restrictive. My only question for BBB, is how do you get around the vision thing? When I was 21 I had a doc look at my eyes who said they were 20/30. He told me sorry dude, unless your Dad is an admiral you ain't going. Oh well.

So K2774 go fly. You'll make 20-40 for about 4-6 years, then SWA, UPS or FDX if you do it right and there are not terrorism hits. PhD in physics, 100-200 a year with a stable career, albeit boring.
 
ebaybob said:
I too was the kid with my nose up against the window wishing to fly an airliner...still am to some extent. I read the AA pilot's column in Flying every month...the surgeon from Tampa who owns the Cheyenne also writes an interesting column every month. There are two perspectives of guys who love to fly and have chosen alternate routes to get there. I recall that recently the surgeon got to fly the delivery flight of a Southwest 737 and was giddy. I think I would be too...flying the heavy metal seems like such fun to a guy looking from the outside in.

Bob
It's simple...get an interview at Mesaba and get in one of their 146 classes. You'll get a chance to feel what it's like to fly a 737 sized plane and if you're smart enough, you'll be able to run like hell and not pay a pro-rated training fee. :)
 
check six said:
So K2774 go fly. You'll make 20-40 for about 4-6 years, then SWA, UPS or FDX if you do it right and there are not terrorism hits. PhD in physics, 100-200 a year with a stable career, albeit boring.

Great, advice from someone who didn't quite make it. I'm not trying to insult you, but before you tell this guy to "go for it", why don't you share some example of folks going from zero to the majors in 4-6 years?
 
check six said:
My only question for BBB, is how do you get around the vision thing? When I was 21 I had a doc look at my eyes who said they were 20/30. He told me sorry dude, unless your Dad is an admiral you ain't going. Oh well.

Nice, well thought out post "check six". You understood my point perfectly. Some will consider it arrogance ... oh well, I'll muddle on. As far as the vision thing ... ROTC had pull in receiving waivers for candidates they really wanted. For the rest of us poor schmucks ... I'd say on the order of a third of all candidates were using "Ortho-K" at the time. These "hard" contact lenses would temporarily re-shape the cornea (didn't use it so don't know the precise mechanism involved) ... user wore these hard lenses several hours over a multi-day period and the result was "temporary" (1-2 hours) vision "correction" to 20/20 ... long enough to pass the entrance physical. Most of my friends were using them at the time.

About a quarter of my Air Force pilot training class were fitted with glasses (and given a waiver) during inprocessing physical. 20/20 vision was only a requirement to pass the INITIAL qualifying physical ... later you could go darn near blind as long as it was correctable to 20/20. In the old days when Delta required 20/20, buddies relayed similar stories of a third or more of the new hires squinting in class on the first day of indoctrination. The instructor told them, "Relax, you're on the property now ... everyone pull out your glasses and let's get down to work!" Sure enough ... out came the glasses and a huge sigh of relief. These hard lenses were all the rage years ago and used fairly extensively to modify vision temporarily.

BBB
 

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