If you're young enough, join the military. Good health bennies, you get to fly alot, and you'll see the rest of the world.
Until pilots at the regional/LCC carriers stand up and demand that the lowest paid pilot in the industry will be paid at least what the lowest paid TSA worker is getting we will continue on the downward spiral in the industry.
This kind of thread shouldn't really be that surprising to anyone who has watched the industry over that past 10 years. When a majority of the pilots being hired at the majors were from the military, companies couldn't get away with paying guys/gals 20k a year. Why???? Because a large majority of those guys were married, had kids, and had been making way more money that 20-25k and wouldn't even think twice about taking a job for that kind of money. The civilian guys at the time, cut thier teeth in the corporate and small cargo world for the most part in the hopes of getting on with major eventually. But the numbers were skewed and the majority of the pilots wouldn't entertain working for so little money.
In the early 1990's two things happened, 1) the military cut back on the amount of pilots it was training and raised the time commitment required after flight training, but even more importantly, there was a large increase in the number of college programs that began churning out a large number of young, single, stary eyed pilots, who were willing to work at well below industry norm wages in order to build their time and eventually land the dream job. The problem is that the dream job...really no longer exists.
It's all supply and demand, with a steady state of workers willing to work for less, the regional airlines began booming. Throw in modern ERJ type aircraft and guys were even more willing to work for less, just to be able to fly awesome equipment.....Sept 11th added a whole new group of people into the mix that were willing to fly for less just to survive.
The bottom line is that I suspect that Punch began as a young single guy, got married and is now having a kid...all of a sudden is realizing that with the regionals undercutting all of the majors and the majors competing by lowering the bar, that there is little, if no upward mobility left in the industry, and can't support his family on what he is getting paid. I could be wrong about punch in particular, but the industry trends in general are pretty easy to spot.
As long as we keep pumping out 22 year old kids who are willing to fly for much less than a TSA screener makes, there will be little or no upward mobility for pilots in terms of progression (especially if age 65 kicks in) or pay and it shouldn't be a surprise to see lots of pilots in their late 20's/early 30's getting fed up and leaving the industry. It's all very simple economics, and until something changes the paradigm, it's going to be very bleak.
Good luck though, it's never easy making a huge career change especially when throwing a new kid into the mix. You might want to think about flying cargo....you won't be sleeping at night anyways.
EP
