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acaTerry

acaTerry

SAPM
Joined
Dec 4, 2001
Posts
2,393
Guys and gals

I'm doing a little bit of a study here. Yes, a real one. How many of you are doing this because you love aviation / wanted it since you were a kid? If not, please give reasons why. I love a good smarta$$ reply as much as the next guy (why else come here?) but afterwards please put the real answer. All respondants get free breathing priveleges for a week.
 
acaTerry said:
How many of you are doing this because you love aviation / wanted it since you were a kid?
Click to expand...

Count me in, it's all I wanted since about age three.
 
Same here. Ever since I can remember I was fascinated with airplanes. Used to go to the observation deck (when they had one) in FNT when I was a kid and watch Piedmont 737's and Simmons (American Eagle) Shorts 360's take off and land. I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
 
Cool uniform and days off?

Honestly, I think most here would say that the passion existed since the time they first saw an airplane... at least for me.
 
i dyd it fer the hat and lerning how to spell....and because i'm super, awesome and perfekt and foreign
 
I first flew an airplane in 1987, I was 27. Since my first exposure I have wanted it above all things!
 
Started when i was 14, thought it would be amazing to actually get paid to fly!
 
I seem to have backed into it. As a kid, I won an airplane ride (V tailed Bonanza) and a helicopter ride (Bell 47). I even had my picture in the local paper captioned "Future Pilot?". How ridiculous, I thought. I'm going to be an architect.

When I decided to join the Army after a year as an architecture major (so military service wouldn't interrupt my studies at a later date), I couldn't get the jobs I wanted (draftsman, photographer, survey) but I could get Warrant Officer Flight Training for helicopters. I thought why not (I had grown up with my father saying "If only I had learned to fly" and I didn't want that as my lament the rest of my life.)

When I had the chance to get out a couple of years later, I decided to stay in (having too much fun) and stayed in for 25 years. When I took a commission, I tried to do the adult thing and develop my ground career along with my aviation career, but the Army kept throwing me back in the cockpit.

When I retired, I considered what to do and didn't want to have my livlihood depending on how well I could see or hear. I went to grad school to become an industrial engineer. But I couldn't get a job in the filed so I decided to join SkyWest as a classroom instructor. While there, I had the chance to get line qualified and did.

So while I have enjoyed my flying and have done some things I never imagined I would have done, it was not my first choice. I'm glad things have turned out the way they did.
 
Our high school guidance counselor said there were other ways to get high, so I just took it literally...

Kidding aside, when dad and uncles are mechanics for the majors its hard not to fall in love with the planes. I remember going to the hangars when I was kid, everything was much larger than life. Tires taller than I was, Wingspans longer than I could walk, it was all destined to be. My uncle took me for a ride in the L-1011 galley elevator. It was game over from that point. I wanted to be the one who operated all those parts and pieces as one enormous trans-sonic hulking mass. I love my job. I'm proud of what I do. Some people just have a passion for what they do and always have. I mean a 500mph elevator...How cool is that? ;)
 
I'm in it for love. There is nothing i've wanted to do more in life and it became obvious to me the first time my dad took me for an airplane ride that this was to not only be my advocation but also my vocation.

I think someone else said it best here. "If you are getting into the business for money, you might be greatly disappointed."
 
I was actually phobic of flying 'til '97, but still liked airshows and airplanes. I was in business management 'til 2000 when I was on a regional jet and looked at my wife after having taken a few months of flight instruction with her father. I said, "I could do this". Over a decade spent in a cubicle or looking out windows had gotten old and I'd lost life's passion. I quit my pretty decent paying management job and put myself full tilt into a school in Tucson, AZ. Got my tickets in 3 months and began instructing 8/01. I've loved it since and my wife knows I'd be a miserable fack if I was back in the office being kindergarten cop to a bunch of 40 year old children.
 
One of the teachers at my high school ran an extracurricular aviation club after school one day a week. I joined it kind of on a whim (yes, I am that big a dork) and got hooked.
 
A real study or a real question? Content analysis from open-ended questions without follow-ons is going to be difficult at best; nor would I expect a very good sample. Anywho, wanted to fly since a wee tot, sidetracked in AF during drawdown, pipeline opened up when I was 26 (too late, not sticking around), civilian route, here because I love flying but the company and security is only OK. Like Andy, broadening career appeal by expanding through school, who knows five years from now. May be just a $100 hamburger guy by then...
 
flyer172r said:
One of the teachers at my high school ran an extracurricular aviation club after school one day a week. I joined it kind of on a whim (yes, I am that big a dork) and got hooked.
Click to expand...

I must be the king of dorks then... I founded one at my highschool.
 
Ahhh...the glory of surfing FI.com and various porn sites...
 
I was at the ripe old age of six before I decided to make a career out of this. One parent insisted that it was a bad idea, and that I had dang well better get another career in order. The other parent, of course, was a pilot, and seconded that opinion. I had a front-row seat for the collapse of People Express, and then had the distinct pleasure of being part of a family of six whose only source of income was Frank Lorenzo's Continental. When dad finally got on with UAL, we figured the bad times were over (note: WRONG). I entered the work force at 14, so unlike most pilots my age I know exactly how much fun there is to be had working a 9-5 job (or a 4-12, or an 8-6...) All that aside, I majored in aviation, but took the LSAT and did a bunch of computer and business courses on top of it. The other stuff's all strictly backup - I know what I'm here to do. I took a big ol' paycut to move on to my current airline job, and I've loved almost every minute.

I love aviation, but never had any illusions of a big paycheck and carefree living. So what kind of study are you doing here, anyway?
 
Probably since the age of 10 when my dad took me flying for the first time in a Piper Tomahawk.

I've been hooked ever since.
 
I remember being 6 years old on a american airline somewhere over the pacific going from the phillipines to california (military parents) standing between the FE and the two pilots asking whats this? Whats that? All the knobs and switches just really interested me. I always wondered how somebody could know where to put all the knobs and switches. LOL Plus my dad was a pilot since I was born, I took my first small airplane ride as a infant and touched my first flight controls when I was 5. My dad was fairly low time because he was a government employee overseas and we could only fly where they had a aeroclub or regulations permitted. We flew in Italy, Phillipines, and Panama. It was infrequent that we flew but it always had a impression and he did'nt have many hours in fact my first year or two flying I passed his hours, before I knew it he was asking me questions. Of course he was a heck of a pilot for his hours, thats what I tell everybody since he can't show them himself. (died about 7 months ago)
 
double post
 
Last edited:
I do it to give the people the illusion that I am intellegent. Its a way to try and cover up insecurities.

The real reason is I cant think of anything else I'd rather be doing.
 

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