Major Airline Captains, would you recommend career to your son/daughter?

[Mr Wu]

Hell ya. I wish you where my pops


I wanted to be a pimp . My parents are stick in the mud. They said no way

Pilotyip, still think education means nothing?

 

[SWA Bubba]

Pilotyip, still think education means nothing?

Whatcho' talking about? I thought you got your pimpin' education on the street!

Bubba

 

[pilotyip]

Pilotyip, still think education means nothing?

I have never said that education means nothing, in fact having an education is the key to a successful career, but college is not the only source of education. In fact college many times provides no skill training that will lead to a decent paying job.

In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We've elevated the importance of "higher education" to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled "alternative." Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as "vocational consolation prizes," best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of "shovel ready" jobs for a society that doesn't encourage people to pick up a shovel.

In a hundred different ways, we have slowly marginalized an entire category of critical professions, reshaping our expectations of a "good job" into something that no longer looks like work. A few years from now, an hour with a good plumber if you can find one is going to cost more than an hour with a good psychiatrist. At which point we'll all be in need of both.

I came here today because guys like my grandfather are no less important to civilized life than they were 50 years ago. Maybe they're in short supply because we don't acknowledge them they way we used to. We leave our check on the kitchen counter, and hope the work gets done. That needs to change.

 

[Blue Dude]

I don't think a parent should decide what a child does

Not arguing with your sentiment, which was meant to be loving and supportive I'm sure, but one very large financial crisis is looming for younger adults because their parents didn't have the gumption to tell their not-yet-judgmentally-formed children NO. We have ONE TRILLION dollars in student loan debt because buying education on credit makes it easy to buy more than you can afford or really need, or in a field of study that will never pay for itself. A parent shouldn't decide what a child does, but he has every right to decide how their (the parent's) money will be spent and strongly advise against purchasing more education than can be paid for as you go.

Off my soapbox but this it something I feel pretty strongly about. Parents don't abdicate their responsibility as parents just because their kids turn 18.

With all that said, I think there will be a place in aviation even for our kids but it likely won't resemble the same careers we enjoy. A 20 year old now won't retire for probably 50 years, and the industry scarcely resembles itself over that time. I'm guessing a 20 year old could start his airline career as a RJ FO and end it as a backup drone pilot working from home or a local ops center.

 

[two(2)%]

Sounds like you made it to the big time slice. I dunno tho, seems like everyone is getting hired at "da majors". Where you at now?

I'm a recent F/O to the majors, but I'll offer only this. I've worked hard, but I've also been extremely lucky, and blessed with the gift of being in the right place at the right time.

We all know those great people who have all the right qualfications and are deserving of a shot but never quite launch for one reason or another - usually it's getting stuck at some intermediate point, like a regional or corporate gig that starts to fray and the upgrade never comes. Thus, they never get their big break.

Others will just stagnate out of comfort or laziness, and some will be struck down with an off the wall medical issue, an incident or a momentary insdiscretion.

I guess I'd only encourage a move into the profession with one's eyes wide open and a robust back-up plan (i.e. pursue a degree in something other than "airplanes") - there's just too many people who have done everything "right" and never get a chance to grab the brass ring.

 

[Flopgut]

Not unless he is only happy at the airport, rides their bike or bums a ride with friends to get there, washes airplanes in exchange for rides, mooches rides, gets their ground instructor rating and teaches ground school to make money for lessons, is ok with being tossed off the basketball team because they are sweeping hangars and washing out drip pans instead of making practice, remembers on their 4th touch and go in the pattern that prom was tonight, finds an old guy with an IFR 172 and pays for the annual in exchange for using it to get his instrument rating, sleeps on the couch of the FBO where he instructs in the world's oldest Piper Warrior, waits for the freezing rain to stop that has coated the clapped out Cherokee 6 full of automotive seat belt buckles he's gotten a job flying, calms his wife (and mother-in-law) down when she announces her water has broken and that he'll be back from his overnight in Savannah by 8am, packs up his flight bag for the last time after a shouting match over a logbook write-up with a bitter old chief pilot who "thought I hired a team player", remembers the first time he was a co-pilot and how young the captain he's flying with now looks, and ...

then when he calls to say he's got a class date with Delta, I might recommend he take it.

I dont agree with you much, but this is absolutely correct.

 

[SpauldingSmails]

Sounds like you made it to the big time slice. I dunno tho, seems like everyone is getting hired at "da majors". Where you at now?

I landed at Delta.

I had to chuckle at Bird's post - having done a number of things which he mentioned. In my case it wasn't a Cherokee full of seat belts though, it was a shaggy Beech Queen Air full of golf cart brake pedals.

 

[tico]

I think it is going the way of the pony express rider and a bunch of other jobs.....Not a necessary skill amd certainly not worth pissing away four years in a degree factory......

 

[Flopgut]

I have never said that education means nothing, in fact having an education is the key to a successful career, but college is not the only source of education. In fact college many times provides no skill training that will lead to a decent paying job.

In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We've elevated the importance of "higher education" to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled "alternative." Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as "vocational consolation prizes," best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of "shovel ready" jobs for a society that doesn't encourage people to pick up a shovel.

In a hundred different ways, we have slowly marginalized an entire category of critical professions, reshaping our expectations of a "good job" into something that no longer looks like work. A few years from now, an hour with a good plumber if you can find one is going to cost more than an hour with a good psychiatrist. At which point we'll all be in need of both.

I came here today because guys like my grandfather are no less important to civilized life than they were 50 years ago. Maybe they're in short supply because we don't acknowledge them they way we used to. We leave our check on the kitchen counter, and hope the work gets done. That needs to change.

I'm sensing a bit of plagerism has taken place^^^^^^

 

[SpauldingSmails]

I'm sensing a bit of plagerism has taken place^^^^^^

It's Mike Rowe's testimony to a Senate committee...

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/dirty-jobs/lists/testimony-of-mike-rowe-contd-2/

 

[Roomwithaview]

Teach your kid to work with his/her hands. I have a construction background and have been working with tools since I was a small kid and I'm utterly amazed at how many of my compadre's are inept when it comes to working on their own stuff, house, or even policing the work being done by the usually inept crew that shows up to allegedly "fix" schit.

This will give them a fall back position when they get the great big wake up call that corporate america is full of back stabbing a*s*sholes and conniving p*u*s*sies that couldn't swing a hammer if their life depended on it.

When I got furloughed (Thrice) I always had money because I knew how to do schit outside of flying. It's real comforting to know "the man" won't always own you.

What I'm seeing now is a new breed of the entitlement generation that is being enabled by mommies and daddies that are doing everything humanely possible to make sure "junior" gets a job at their employer just like dear old dad.

I've flown with more than one and it was like a twilight zone episode involving a combo being the stepford wives and the one where Billy Mummy had some sort of eerie powers that allowed him to control adults lives. The one little tool had a daddy who was a check airman and even though on probation felt as if he was bullet proof and could be weak, and a real a$$hole to fly with.

Another was one of our rather famous junior tools whose daddy got him a job and anyone who is anyone here will know him by name. He's a real gem.

The third was just pitiful in that he obviously had done whatever it was Daddy had told him to do since he grew pubes. Pretty sad.

I had opportunities and a father in a business (not flying) and flipped him the bird when it came to working for the family biz until they needed me. I did things that would make him blush and pissed him off more times than not. He grew to respect me for it as you will with your kid. There's nothing more rewarding than having your kid show you how to do something you can't and realizing they're going to make it in this big bad world.

I don't believe in pushing anyone in to anything.

 

[pilotyip]

I'm sensing a bit of plagerism has taken place^^^^^^

Maybe, but this is FI, no footnotes, also that doesn't make the post incorrect

 

[Blue Dude]

Maybe, but this is FI, no footnotes, also that doesn't make the post incorrect

Maybe if you'd spent more time in school you'd know that taking someone's words for your own without attribution is at very least unethical.

 

[SpauldingSmails]

Maybe, but this is FI, no footnotes, also that doesn't make the post incorrect

Yeah, but you palmed it off as your own - what a joke. I'm sure "your grandfather" would be proud of you.

 

[The Prussian]

We have ONE TRILLION dollars in student loan debt because buying education on credit makes it easy to buy more than you can afford or really need, or in a field of study that will never pay for itself. A parent shouldn't decide what a child does, but he has every right to decide how their (the parent's) money will be spent and strongly advise against purchasing more education than can be paid for as you go.

YES!!!...and don't forget about THE GOVERNMENT that is supposedly encouraging our kids to do so...and guaranteeing their loans...which in turn has driven college costs into the stratosphere.