getting out of aviation

[bell47]

I'm getting out of aviation, as an occupation. I'm going back to school for a job in the medical field, i.e. nursing school. I'm guess I'm just tired of employers in aviation thinking they own you. I've been a pilot and A&P for the last ten years and everywhere I've worked was exactly the same old story. Has anyone else on this board just gotten totally fed up with the aviation industry? Don't get me wrong I still like airplanes, but I'm going to make it a hobby again, not an occupation.
list of things I've learned in aviation:
1. Don't sign a training contract, it's a ticket to treat you like crap.
2. Don't take a mechanics word for it, learn how to do aviation maintenance and know the stuff yourself.
3. Icing sucks in a Caravan
4. losing a mag or a cylinder in a loaded ag plane sucks
5. every pilot should at some point own an airplane, it builds "character"
6. pilot's who think they know everything , don't.
7. don't fly with someone who says " I've got something really cool to show you!"
8. When interviewing other pilots for a job, their log books and references don't mean squat, put them in a real airplane and see if they can fly.
9. If you feel compelled to show off, then you're not as good as you think you are.
10. SAFETY is everything, if an employer doesn't share that attitude, run don't walk.
I'm not trying to discourage new pilots, I've just personally had enough and need to vent a little. I'll still lurk around the local airport and this message board in between studing A&P(anatomy and physiology). Good luck and tailwinds to the rest of you.

 

[BenderGonzales]

Just curious, how is nursing school? What is it like? Are their specialties?

 

[bell47]

Just curious, how is nursing school? What is it like? Are their specialties?

Just taking pre-nursing classes now. Lot's of specialties. Lot's of jobs. Lot's of locations. Lot's of job security!

 

[leardawg]

Godspeed and good luck. Remember to tell the world our story (as I'm led into the CPs office with a bucket on my head).

 

[av8rbama]

Just remember you'll put up with a ton of $h!t... literally

 

[pgcfii2002]

Sorry to hear that.....thanks for the pointers though!!

 

[11thHour]

I wish you the best, but I don't think nursing will be much better. My sister is an RN and she goes through far more hell than I ever do in aviation. Hopefully this won't be your experience, however.

 

[satpak77]

I don't think nursing will be much better. My sister is an RN and she goes through far more hell than I ever do in aviation. Hopefully this won't be your experience, however.

Yeah I am sure she is making $16,000 as a regional FO and living in a crash pad eating dog food to log that all important SIC turbine time

 

[SCT]

Hey Bell47,

Best of luck in your new career. You have to do what's right for yourself.

An old CP once told me, "If your going to be in this industry, you better have a wife with a good job!" Luckily, my g-friend just received her advanced rating in nursing (can't think of it right now). Unlike me, she can go anywhere and get a good job.

 

[hindsight2020]

Yeah I second the comments made above, nursing is one of the very few careers right now that has 100% job placement across the board. I hate it when nurses start b%tching about hours or pay. Depending on their location and particular duties, their job can be up there on the "busy work" scale, but by no means was the formal training to get there (I'm sorry, it was a cake, face it), or the economics afforded by the job a harsh reality to bear. (22 y/o recent grad making 40-45K to start for a career afforded by a defacto 2-year degree ain't too shaby, and getting the nurse practitioner designation easily puts ya on 6 figures within 10 years in major metro areas, again not too shabby). Making above 75K before you retire is a blessing in this economy, certainly not commonplace, and certainly not an entitlement for a nurse.

If you don't like the occassional strains on the job, go to any other industry where the schooling is ten times as hard and the income and employment outlook is less than 1/2 that of nursing: engineering, any phD holder in a technical field, hell even recent law grads, who now face an economic reality similar to that of CFIs. Comparing nursing to to part 121 work is further overkill in comparison.

If nursing interested me, even minutely, I would pursue it; I'd certainly kill for the kind of job security and outlook nursing students enjoy. It is almost to the point of creating an artificially sustained alter-reality, where these nurses get an entitlement complex, where they swallow up their posted earnings as a god-given right and therefore start complaining about raises, when we all know that they are afforded that salary by the increasing health care load imposed by the baby boomers, and the gouging of health care costs in this country as the industry realized how much inelastic the demand price is (i.e. we'll pay for granny's vitamins whatever the cost, just save her!). The only reason nursing graduates are not viewed as whores, like 121-hopefuls, is simple demand. If nurses were to be faced the supply-demand reality that pilots face, their mere prescence in the market as nursing certificate holders would also be construed as whoring out; in that sense I don't give them any credit.

In 20 years, when Gen X starts creating a tapering-off on the need for nurses (particularly in geriatrics, where most of the need lies), the nursing profession will become very top heavy (the senior nurses, like senior pilots, will whine about their EARNED 6 figure income and bunker up, and as a result the junior scales will plummet) and the market will flood with young graduates who are still sipping the Kool-Aid of their predecessors, and the salaries will go down and the career will cool off..kinda like aviation, but certainly not as bad on the salary scale for sure.

I've been blessed with the opportunity of entering Reserve military aviation, so if I can obtain civilian employment that would enable me to own a little Pitts S-2A and play around on the weekends, and to stay in the CFI business for the love of education, I can say I've satisfied my passion in life. That said, I wish professional pilots were afforded with a compensation more suited to their responsibility, particularly at the regional level.

My $0.02

 

[satpak77]

oh by the way as a RN or LVN you have a 100% chance of getting a job in any major city....and believe it or not you can make MORE money in a rural area if you are picked up by a staffing company who is contracted to fill the "underserved" rural areas

in addition, you get to hang out with hot chicks at the hospital all day long, and maybe save a life or two.

On your days off, if you work for the local EMT squad, or Care-Flight company, etc, you can pick up additional bucks.

I know for a confirmed fact of LVN's and RN's making high 80's to in some cases right at 100K

yeah, guaranteed employment, hot chicks, "make a difference",....pretty tough decision....

 

[av8rbama]

I've got a good friend who has made some mega bucks doing contract nursing. He's got a RN and will do 4-6 week rotations at various places, often with reduced-cost housing offered to him and he's paid off a lot of debt this way. Go even further and become a CRNA and you're gold.

 

[platinumclub]

Good for you bell, you get into nurse anesthesiology and you can hook yourself up nicely, plus it's a cake job and great hours. I'm leaning toward a push to get into PT school. As a matter of fact, maybe I should get off this board now and go shadow one.

 

[Way2Broke]

If I knew how to do anything else I would probably be up for a career change.

 

[taloft]

Dude, you're going to be a male nurse!

Good luck with that. j/k :nuts:

 

[Metro752]

airplanes rule, wiping old butts drools

 

[dispatchguy]

I was referred to this thread by a friend, since I no longer monitor the board anymore.

I also got out of aviation altogether - was a dispatcher/ops controller, dispatch trainer, and ops control system admin for a regional - 3 jobs but getting paid for one, and paid crappy at that - a whopping 14.42 an hour. Commuted to it too, so if you eliminate the commute costs, I took home a whopping $7.50 an hour for the privilege of working 400 miles away from home, living out of a suitcase, living in a crashpad, and having a 100% a$$hole for a boss.

The company was very profitable, but the financial management types would squeeze nickels together to see what would come out; they were that cheap. People I worked with were good people, crews, schedulers, mx controllers, flight department management.

Throw multiple sclerosis into the mix, and the accompanying fatigue, due to the obscene schedules (0345 start time), and the fatigue just killed any desire I had to care. Schedule modification wasnt an option, for management wouldnt staff us to where that was a possibility.

Two weeks ago I left aviation altogether - no longer a hobby, no longer a career. I make slightly less on a per hour basis then I did at the airline, however, when you add up all the QOL improvements (much better schedules, shorter 20 minute commute, sleeping in my own bed every night, and eliminating the commute), I come out much better; both short term and long term. I lost the desire to travel about a year ago, once MS was confirmed; so the loss of the ability to jumpseat and pass-ride is a who-cares at best.

To insure that I dont get stupid at some point in the future and think of rejoining the biz, I voluntarily returned my ADX certificate to FAA OKC. I cut the umbilical completely.

Thankfully, I do have the wife with the killer job.

I dont even look up to the sky anymore and wonder where that contrail is heading to, and if the dispatcher did everything the right way, or is his office like my office was, and band-aided.

Congrats on leaving professional aviation; like war, its becoming a young kids game.

 

[satpak77]

Dude, you're going to be a male nurse!

Good luck with that. j/k :nuts:

yeah good luck multi-tasking the many female hottie nurses at work and prioritizing which job offer is the one to take

good luck!

 

[MalteseX]

Not a Bad Move -- Seriously

Aviation today is not what it was merely a few years ago.

Nursing, on the other hand is also NOT what it was a few years ago.

Where aviation has declined, nursing has flourished.

My dad was an airline pilot and my mom was a nurse. He had a great schedule, very high pay and prestige, etc == you know the old captain wide body legacy carrier. My mom had long hours, low pay etc. Nursing of old.

Today, I am a pilot and my wife is a nurse. I have low pay, etc. , in other words all the crap you experienced in the original post.

My wife, only 3 years out of RN school, became a Nurse Anesthetist -- She made over 6 figures her first year and now makes in the high 100's in West Virginia. In other words, we could buy an average house there on her salary in a little over a year (OK, only if there were no taxes)..... In a major metropolitan area, it will be higher. Bottom Line, you are making a very WISE choice.

Plus, you are going to school in a field that has many females ..... not bad for meeting them if you are single.

 

[GoingHot]

I wish you the best, but I don't think nursing will be much better. My sister is an RN and she goes through far more hell than I ever do in aviation. Hopefully this won't be your experience, however.

I hear the same kind of b!tching from my three sisters, who are all nurses. They talk about how many nurses are leaving the profession. I'm not sure what is so bad. The pay is decent and getting better, due to the big shortage of nurses. The one on the low end of the pay scale makes $83k for three 12-hour days each week. It's 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning, but she gets four days (in a row) off. They also pay the full cost of her Masters program (on-line). One recruiter offered a rent-free condo, but she turned it down, because it had a two-year contract, and she didn't want to move to Tampa.