Glamorous career with unglamorous pay

[swc12nap1]

To those of you who make $15K-$40K or who who are just unsatisified with their salary, how do you make both ends meet? Since piloting is not technically a full-time job, do you do anything to supplement your income at all? If yes, how?

 

[Stifler's Mom]

Have a spouse who makes more than you. Sad, but true.

The dual income makes our ends meet.

 

[uscpilot]

Since piloting is not technically a full-time job...

What????? Well maybe partially true, it consumes the same amount of time as a full time and part time put together. 50+ hours duty with 23+ flight.
The only free time is weekends, and that leaves being a prostitute or a stripper. My only customer has been my wife. pjjim, my pimp is going to kick my a$$ when he finds out she hasent been paying me. He has really been on edge with people stealing from planejobs.com.
usc

 

[bart]

Fly as a contract pilot and work a job that pays what major airline captains make.

 

[PositiveRate]

Since piloting is not technically a full-time job

You sound like the typical media troll - ill researched and generally ignorant of the facts.

Anyone who thinks being gone from your home/family 15-18+ days a month is a part time job can respectfully kiss my hardworking commuter as$.

How about you endure the years of sacrifice (no other way to put it...financial, emotional, etc etc) that it takes just to get on with a regional. College educated, professionally trained, many years of "experience", and some dumb as$ TSA agent (who is paid better than you were in your 1st year) gets to ask you to show your ID twice and take your belt off...just to make sure your safe to fly your own plane. Yeah, there's another few billion down the drain so the dumb as$ media pricks can get on CNN and tell us we're all safer. Money well spent while our grandmothers can't get the healthcare they need and our kids our getting fatter and dumber by the day.

I'd love to have one of these media morons in the jumpseat on the korey2 into LGA during a winter storm with expected holding, 40+knot winds on landing, icy runways, and no gate space when/if we land (God forbid they get to see a divert or a go-around- they'd think we were heros). Those articles would stop.

So, for anyone who thinks this job has "become almost entirely automated" or is "technically a part-time job", merry Christmas and kiss all of our as$es because you have no clue. The only way respect will return to this profession is if we demand it.

How's that for a rant?!

 

[bobbysamd]

Huh?

Since piloting is not technically a full-time job . . . .

I beg your pardon?!?

Just so you know, as a flight instructor I put in any number of 12-14 hour days and any number of seven-days weeks to be able to get in six hours of contact time (paid hours) per day. I certainly regard a 14-hour day as a full-time job. Or else, I was a chump to put in such hours for such little pay (which, I'm sure, plenty people would say here! ).

Just a little friendly advice. Do a little research on what comprises a "duty day" for a pilot at any level. I will fast-forward to it for you. You will soon learn that pilots are typically "on duty" nine to fourteen hours a day but are paid only when they are flying, or, in the case of flight instructors, only for the time they spend with students.

 

[JohnDoe]

Hey swc12nap1:

When I was at a regional airline, I averaged anywhere between 280-340 hours of perdiem pay per month when I was a lineholder (1 hour of perdiem for each hour away from home "on the job").

Thats an average of 70-85 hours per week.

Still think it is a part-time job??

 

[HueyPilot]

Part time?

swc12nap1:

I slept in a tent at a middle-eastern airfield, flying into various garden-spot locales every other day for two months straight. On the days I wasn't flying, I was scheduling our flights and working other issues related to our flying operations.

Seemed to be pretty much a full-time job to me.

Even though pilots may not fly every day, the vast majority of us put in well over 40 hours a week on average. When we do have downtime, we spend it AT HOME, like you do when you're not out "researching" pilot payscales and "part-time" jobs.

 

[swc12nap1]

Sorry guys if I have described piloting as a 'part-time' job. Indeed I have yet to do my homework. Well, I'm really new to this field and gathering as much information as possible before changing my career to aviation. Again, no offense. Thanks.

 

[Foobar]

Its ok, its easy to assume that the job is a part time one when you look at the part time pay, but thats not the case, its full time work with part time pay.

Here is how people do it.

1) Convince yourself there is a brass ring to be had at the end. Mesa and a few other places are seeing to it that the brass ring is melted and sold to pay for beer for mgmt.

2) Get a rich dad that will put you up in a hotel and pay for your food for two months while you go to training.

3) If you don't have a rich dad try, and get a wife who will pay the bills for you.

4) If you have no rich daddy or a wife to subsidize you, then you can live in a box while in training. Shower at a the YMCA and use food stamps to buy food.

As for me, well I've got a wife paying the bills. I don't want it bad enough so it looks like this time next year I'll be working at a desk, but there is always a glimmer of hope.

Thanks again all you morons that paid for a first officer job, paid 40K to get a job with ASA or took a regional job that paid 18K for year one, 20K for year two and 23K for year three. Yeah, you got ahead!

I'd also like to thank the instructors that fly twins for free and FBO co-pilots that fly for free. Good job guys!

I think I'm having anger issues, its time to get off the board.

 

[Pendulous Vein]

worried...

I've been "lucky" (?) enough to get into a pool.....I'm growing more and more worried about how to make ends meet....making $8000 a year as a CFI is not cutting it anymore. I guess it never did really cut it, but oh well. So, my regional job....if I'm called from the pool, will be, what....$15,000/yr? How do I pay my $580/month school loans on that and still buy groceries? I like food, it's something that I am into. I like eating, and hope to be able to when I'm (maybe) in the right seat.

 

[Pipeliner606]

If you think "piloting" is a part time job, you need to stay in your little bio tech lab, or cubicle, or what ever you do now. I fly pipeline patrol, and fall into the income category you mentioned, and I will tell you that what I do is ALL work. If you think piloting is a part tim job, come on down and ride right seat with me on one of the big petroleum gathering systems I fly in South Texas. I fly straight and level about 3 percent of the time, never above 450 or 500 feet (usually lower, unless I am dead heading to another section) and put in around 10 hours a day in the cockpit of a 182! You would lose your cookies and piss your pants in 5 minutes, I promise you. I spend EVERY minute in the air with my attention divided between observing the ground, trying to look for traffic (usually two of three other patrol planes in the same area at the same altitude), and flying the aircraft. Also throw in communications with pipeline ground personel, and keeping track of GPS and paper pipeline charts while doing all the rest of this. The only time I shut down is when I drop in for fuel. I may not fly a corporate or commuter aircraft, but I work my ass off doing the flying I do! Piloting is not technically a full time job...WHAT A FRICKING JOKE!!

 

[uscpilot]

Sorry guys if I have described piloting as a 'part-time' job. Indeed I have yet to do my homework. Well, I'm really new to this field and gathering as much information as possible before changing my career to aviation. Again, no offense. Thanks.

None taken. I assumed as much when I read your first post. If you dont know anyone in the industry about all that you have if you are totally "green" is the media. The blind leading the blind (thats putting it nicely). You took your lumps well, and are now slightly more informed. You also have found out that aviation, like any other industry, has people who may be angry and are waiting to be offended just so they can fly off the handle and take out some agression.
Keep the questions coming. Just be tactful, remember we are a sensitive bunch.
usc

 

[Stifler's Mom]

Keep the questions coming. Just be tactful, remember we are a sensitive bunch.

No shiot.

Panties Wadded...Checklist Complete.

 

[bobbysamd]

Sorry guys if I have described piloting as a 'part-time' job.

In all fairness, it's a common misconception among the lay public that piloting is a part-time job. People hear that pilots fly 80 hours a month. When they hear "fly" they hear "work." They don't realize that pilots are only paid for the 80 hours a month, notwithstanding per diem, time away from domicile, duty rigs, etc.

My G-d, given the hours I put in now, if I could "work" only eighty hours a month I'd go back! Once more, rest assured that is not the case at all. Pilots have plenty of down time. Ask any flight instructor who has students in ground school or on school break and has no one else with whom to fly.

 

[hydroflyer]

Most full or part time jobs also end when you clock out and go home, not the case with flying. If we weren't flying, would we really be paying as much attention to the weather and what is to be expected throughout the day? How about caring about where the president might be to avoid the flight restrictions and delays? Also, most pilots have to do checkrides every 6 months which will require some study and review on their own time, after work. Should you fail one checkride, your job could be on the line depending on the policy of your employer.
Many flight instructors may have an even harder time as they may have to keep up with paperwork, make sure their students endorsements are current, review and prepare lessons for each student, research students questions and study for advance ratings and certificates that they themselves may be earning.
This post isn't meant to flame, simply to point out how much more work needs to be done after hours when you fly for a living. Still couldn't see myself doing anything else though.