Keep on Dreaming and Striving
Congrats Pilot's Wife! You have a lot going for you in that you and your spouse are both educated, AND communicating, which is half the battle, but you must share and support each others dreams if not, inevitably it will eat at both of you. Everyone offers some good points so I offer my POV since I too have faced your situation.
In late 1991 when the airlines were not hiring I had wanted to quit my good admin job and fly my lips off bumming with my reserve unit and be a standby small charter pilot. I wanted to make a beeline to the big iron! Certainly my missus could see the wisdom of my efforts after all, I was the only Pilot in the house, woohoo!
Already with a small family, my wife kindly "invited" me to have the "Big Talk," she asked some good questions, like well what is your fallback plan? Not only along the lines of what if you don't make it, (how could she think in such defeatist terms!) but the risks of a flying career riding on me staying healthy and the lack of job security(health?! Im a friggin athlete! Security/shmecurity it rarely happens. Eastern and Pan Am have been around forever, they are going to be rehiring once their finances get restructured, you'll see!) Also she wanted to know how realistic my chances were in the future and what it would take to become competitive, (Baby, its a slam dunk deal I just gotta fog up a mirror, everybody loves me can't u see that?Competitive, sheyyt the Majors will be lining up to throw me a signing bonus so lets just focus on domiciles) and where did we want to see ourselves in five years even if flying didn't work out? (Whoa, stop right there did u just call me a failure?! More like 5 months, whats this "years" attitude? O.K. left seat of a 747400, happy now? Where's the faith, Muffin? Look MY plan is Golden just sign off on it and will all get along just fine, besides, Deary ya don't understand the AIRLINE industry like Homie do. Hmmph! The Feds say there is a shortage, this pilot prepping service says there is a shortage and they KNOW the industry).
So, she had me research the history of the industry, and I soon realized that seniority means nothing if your employer closes shop or forloughs because of labor strife, a bad economy or the whim of some CEO just trying to make out like a bandit on his stock options. We had just kicked butt in the Gulf War, so certainly the post war boom was just around the corner? During this time frame TWA, Continental and America West had all filed for bankruptcy protection, pilots were forloughed, and recalls were not on the horizon. But I reasoned that such is life, there are no warranties and people are going to always fly I told her.
Quitting my job and simply hanging out at my unit trying to pick up extra days was an impossibility. There were numerous forloughed pilots who needed those days more than me. I did not quit my desk (teeth gnashing) job, in essence I became a Reserve reserve geek, still the extra missions were few. I had to shelve my "Golden Plan." My wife then quit her job so she could finish her masters on a fulltime basis. When she graduated, the airlines were still not hiring, so she then got a job I quit mine and I started law school. I kept flying with the Reserves and instead of clerking I had a civilian summer job that offered a lot of flying. Granted I was gone pretty much each summer from my family, so I had to work hard to maintain quality time with them, some months were great but most were not.
Finally, I graduated and passed the bar and started working as a shyster then a flying job came up, it offered a ton of flying but it meant being away from them for over 6 months. We decided it was worth it because it would make me competitive offer upgrades and allow me to add a lot of quality time. At this juncture we had a newborn and so we had to hire a nanny to live with my wife to help her out, since my wife was still working. I clearly remember the day I left, my oldest kid coming up to me with a picture of himself that he drew saying that I should keep it so that I wouldn't forget him. That was hard. Eventually what was 6 months worked out to 11 months. But a couple of interviews and a little over five years after the "Big Talk," our collective effort paid off.
The most important part is that we did it together and she made me understand the risk/reward models of both the short term approach and the long term approach all against a backdrop of glaring probabilities. Certainly there were times when I questioned my sanity, or hers for staying married to me, and that still hasn't stopped, ha! The naysayers will be there, so just lick your wounds and support each others dreams. Certainly reality has a way of tempering such dreams, but it still doesn't mean that a rewarding flying career is an impossiblity. In essence, invest in yourselves as you best see fit, and proceed from positions of strength. The best of luck to you and I wish you much success with your efforts.
