getting out of aviation

[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.