Ive had a number of things change in my life over the last few weeks and Im thinking about going back to school for something that I have always wanted to do since I was about 3 years old....flying planes. I just graduate from college in Dec with a degree in engineering but even with my degree in that and all my generals out of the way its still looking like it would cost me $45K to get my comerical ratings from a 4 year college. There is also a tech school in Hibbing MN that is for a commercial helicopter rating but thats about $50K. Is there one way to go thats better than another? How are jobs going in the industry right now? I have a great job in the engineering field so I'm having a hard time walking away from good money to put myslef in school debt and get into a carreer path that may not be too stable....any good info for me guys? Thanks
Aviation Industry??
- Thread starter zach477
- Start date
Love aviation or not get the F away from it. Honest as all get out with this, it's horrible to be in anything associated with aviation unless your with the FAA or something but then it's not even that good.
My expierence and there are a few others on this forum that are my friends and only 1 of the 5 have remained in the business since 2006.
I went to school for A&P mechanics. Finished, got a job that I loved and was very, very comfortable. I worked for the company almost 10 years, was a lead mechanic, inspector, RII, and run-up taxi qualified in multiple aircraft. I went all over the upper midwest, east coast and into the west many times. Even spent a whole summer in Cinncinati, one in Des Moines and then a couple winters off an on in Aspen. To say it was fun was a understatement. What wasn't fun was working odd hours, holidays, nights, weekends no way to move up because the industry became stagnet. The pay was ok for my age but not what you would think it would have been and you also had the risk or should I say the knowledge that knowing one mistake by you would come back to haunt you for years and years.
Then 9/11 happened, so what we all got over that from a job perspective and keep flying along. Then fuel prices went up, but ticket prices didn't and all our wages were tumbling or were going to tumble one way or another. NWA mechanics pressed the issue and found themselves on the outside looking in, the airline made it through that so the precident was set on the union front that all unions can be broken with proper planning and stragety. I got the opportunity to leave, do something that I liked, not as much as aviation but liked somewhat. The other 3 guys that I hang around with left within 6-8 months of me leaving and like I said only one has stayed on.
I get asked if I would go back? I would if I could have M-F day shift, with major holidays off, same pay or better then what I was making or am making today and have a bit of security. Well that's not going to happen in major airlines or even private/executive stuff so NO, I wouldn't go back the way it is. It sucks because I liked it but I honestly think my life is a bit better now and I'm not at work when all friends and family are off or celebrating birthdays, holidays or whatever. You don't realize it until you have been though it for years and years.
Stay in engineering, or find something else but if it has wings or a rotor, look the other way.
My expierence and there are a few others on this forum that are my friends and only 1 of the 5 have remained in the business since 2006.
I went to school for A&P mechanics. Finished, got a job that I loved and was very, very comfortable. I worked for the company almost 10 years, was a lead mechanic, inspector, RII, and run-up taxi qualified in multiple aircraft. I went all over the upper midwest, east coast and into the west many times. Even spent a whole summer in Cinncinati, one in Des Moines and then a couple winters off an on in Aspen. To say it was fun was a understatement. What wasn't fun was working odd hours, holidays, nights, weekends no way to move up because the industry became stagnet. The pay was ok for my age but not what you would think it would have been and you also had the risk or should I say the knowledge that knowing one mistake by you would come back to haunt you for years and years.
Then 9/11 happened, so what we all got over that from a job perspective and keep flying along. Then fuel prices went up, but ticket prices didn't and all our wages were tumbling or were going to tumble one way or another. NWA mechanics pressed the issue and found themselves on the outside looking in, the airline made it through that so the precident was set on the union front that all unions can be broken with proper planning and stragety. I got the opportunity to leave, do something that I liked, not as much as aviation but liked somewhat. The other 3 guys that I hang around with left within 6-8 months of me leaving and like I said only one has stayed on.
I get asked if I would go back? I would if I could have M-F day shift, with major holidays off, same pay or better then what I was making or am making today and have a bit of security. Well that's not going to happen in major airlines or even private/executive stuff so NO, I wouldn't go back the way it is. It sucks because I liked it but I honestly think my life is a bit better now and I'm not at work when all friends and family are off or celebrating birthdays, holidays or whatever. You don't realize it until you have been though it for years and years.
Stay in engineering, or find something else but if it has wings or a rotor, look the other way.
Why go to college again to get license?
Go to a private flying school while you're working. It's not that hard (actually, it's a lot of fun). I got my private fixed wing in less than 2 months, and guys were getting com. multi IFR in a year or so. (this was in the 80's)
Go to a private flying school while you're working. It's not that hard (actually, it's a lot of fun). I got my private fixed wing in less than 2 months, and guys were getting com. multi IFR in a year or so. (this was in the 80's)
S
Snow Flake
Guest
I'll go ahead and say it. The way to make a small fortune in the aviation industry is to start with a large one.
i thought you just finished school?
S
skidoorulz
Well-known member
I know a guy who is a pilot for a freight company. I once asked him how it was and how the pay was and his answer was "that there are way more pilots than there are planes what do you think that does to wages and working conditions?"
The aviation industry is never rock solid stable, people will move up and down throughout their careers. Major re-alignments have occurred before and after 9-11 and will continue to happen. Most go into the industry because of passion, a love for flying. I started down that path but changed to something else for stability there are days of regret and thankfulness, but the love of flying and aviation I have is always there. If you do not hold a pilots license then get it first and look to the next step after. Flying part-time as a instructor or something is another way to be a part of the industry. In the end go with what makes you happy and provides for you in life (including financially). hopefully more Snowesters will chime in as there are some here that stayed in industry, live it & love it.
Go For It!!
Its been the best job I could have ever imagined. I went with Corporate aviation not the major airlines. I used to want to fly for the majors but have way more fun flying the very wealthy around. By the time you get enough hours to be marketable the industry will prabably be way more stable.
Good Luck!!
Let me know if I can help
Tim
Its been the best job I could have ever imagined. I went with Corporate aviation not the major airlines. I used to want to fly for the majors but have way more fun flying the very wealthy around. By the time you get enough hours to be marketable the industry will prabably be way more stable.
Good Luck!!
Let me know if I can help
Tim
Yeah I did, hah worked my *** to the bone for 5 years to not have college debt. Got a job as an engineer, worked as an engineer for 3 months and now was promoted to production manager......but cant break that pasion to fly. I went into engineering after making the decision that aviation wasnt that stable after the 9/11 attacks, i was planning on going into it before then. I make pretty good money but not enough to afford to own a plane or fly regularly. I live up in Duluth and Cirrus is hiring engineers for their jet production but I have heard they have cut down from 18 planes a week to 10 planes and have been interviewing guys looking for work that have come from there due to lay offs. They will teach you to fly for free and you only have to pay a rental fee of $30 hr wet for a cirrus plane, you also can rent them for personal use at the same rate. I talked to some instructors at SDSU where i graduated with my eng degree from and they say the aviation industry is the next best thing since sliced bread, but of course they are going to say that. I just am trying to determine if i want to put myslef $40K in debt and not get a job when im done. Im not too picky, any job flying would sute me if i could afford to pay my bills and enjoy doing it.
Aviation stable. You got to be kidding me, right? Corporate side, maybe a bit more stable but even they are going to feel the fuel pinch and the economy slow down. Why put yourself through this even if you love it?
Not since deregulation has the industry been really rock solid. Honestly, it's been one thing after another and with ticket prices still cheaper then driving your own car somewhere it's not going to be getting any better. Wait till some towel head sneazes again, or the FAA puts ever increasing regulations on private and corporate flying and the whole cycle will continue.
It may look like your thing to do, but if you want a family, kids and a "normal" lifestyle aviation is not the answer.
Cirrus, I would work for them as an engineer or any of the jobs that would fit my background. They seem to be pretty good but in the big picture they are still pretty new in regards to being able to look at a track record and so on and how they handle fuel issues and economy issues.
Not since deregulation has the industry been really rock solid. Honestly, it's been one thing after another and with ticket prices still cheaper then driving your own car somewhere it's not going to be getting any better. Wait till some towel head sneazes again, or the FAA puts ever increasing regulations on private and corporate flying and the whole cycle will continue.
It may look like your thing to do, but if you want a family, kids and a "normal" lifestyle aviation is not the answer.
Cirrus, I would work for them as an engineer or any of the jobs that would fit my background. They seem to be pretty good but in the big picture they are still pretty new in regards to being able to look at a track record and so on and how they handle fuel issues and economy issues.
I have been flying for 21 years as a living and have luckily thusfar found relative stability - BUT, getting into the airlines now is another story. Here is an article that summs it up nicely for what you would expect airlines to be, admittedly there may be an exception, but this is generally how it goes.
(start copy and paste)
By JEFF BAILEY
IRVING, Tex. — Among the jobs little boys dream of — policeman, fireman, bulldozer driver — airline pilot long held the added virtue of satisfying grown-up dreams: pay that reached $300,000 a year, 20 days a month off work, the prestige of one day commanding a $200 million airplane, and a lush retirement at 60.
But the airline industry’s financial collapse this decade did away with much of that, leaving thousands of young men — and increasingly women — chasing a dream toward a disappointing reality.
“My wife thinks I’m nuts,” said Jason Captain, 32, of Fort Worth who left the Navy last November, walking away from $75,000-a-year lieutenant’s pay for flying military brass in and out of Guantánamo Bay.
He started training last month to fly a 76-seat regional jet for a Northwest Airlines subsidiary and expects to make about $21,000 his first year. Like most airline pilots, Mr. Captain had his heart set on flying “ever since I was a little kid,” he said. “I can’t see myself in an office.”
In recent years, he and his wife, June, were in the odd position of saving part of his military pay so they and their two sons could afford to have him work in the private sector. It could take him a decade to work his way back up to his former income.
He hopes, of course, to jump ultimately to the big jets at Northwest Airlines, where the most senior pilots can still make more than $150,000 a year, but there is no guarantee he will get there.
And, with the airline industry ready to go into another swoon because of high fuel prices, Mr. Captain and other junior pilots could find themselves furloughed.
“You’re much better off going into plumbing, from a purely financial perspective,” said Ed Grogan, a financial planner in Gig Harbor, Wash., who has pilots among his clients.
The military is turning out fewer pilots, so aspiring aviators increasingly attend private flight schools, emerging with as much as $150,000 in student debt. Student loan payments can exceed $1,000 a month.
After Sept. 11, 2001, the biggest domestic airlines reduced their fleets by hundreds of planes, so they needed fewer pilots. And through actual and threatened bankruptcies, airlines managed to cut pilot pay by 30 percent or more. Many pilots lost big parts of their pensions. Work hours increased.
Certainly, top pay of $200,000 a year at the biggest airlines, down from $300,000, is still a nice living.
But cuts at big airlines were just the beginning of the decline in pilot careers. Regional airlines, which pay far less than hub-and-spoke carriers even after the pay cuts, expanded to handle much of the flying that bigger airlines had abandoned. Many new pilot jobs are like the one Mr. Captain is taking, with a rock-bottom starting wage that creeps slowly toward $100,000 a year.
Poor pay and fewer big-airline jobs to move up to have led to fewer applicants, creating a pilot shortage that is most acute overseas but is also felt here.
Regional airlines have had to reduce hiring standards drastically. Earlier this decade, they could insist on a candidate’s having at least 1,500 hours of total flight time before an interview. Today, that minimum is 500 hours at many regional carriers. The decline is contributing to safety concerns among some experts.
The seniority system — a new pilot starts at the bottom at most airlines, earning the lowest pay and getting the worst shifts — limits job-hopping. So choosing the right employer the first time around is crucial. Moving from first officer, the right seat, to captain, the left seat, brings the biggest leap in pay and status.
Thus, Mr. Captain, who looks forward to being called Captain Captain, turned down a job at American Eagle Airlines, the regional division of American Airlines. It initially paid better, but the wait to upgrade to captain is six and a half years. At the Northwest regional carrier, Compass, which is growing, he could make captain in as little as one year.
But things change. Network carriers like United Airlines and Delta Air Lines hire regional carriers, which are separate companies, to fly feeder routes from smaller cities into hub airports. But the big airlines renegotiate contracts every few years, often switching carriers to reduce costs. That means today’s fast-growing regional airline could be laying off pilots tomorrow.
“It’s a nightmare,” said Kit Darby, who retired a year ago as a United pilot and runs a pilot job fair business, Air Inc.
Some pilots leave the business. Paul Rice, a vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association, a pilots union, said that in previous decades nearly 100 percent of furloughed pilots came back when temporary layoffs ended. Since Sept. 11, 2001, though, 30 to 35 percent did not return when offered their old jobs.
At Mesa Air Group, a big regional carrier, 784 pilots left last year, some moving up to hub-and-spoke network carriers, some moving laterally to other regional airlines and about 10 percent leaving the business altogether, said Michael Jayson, until recently the pilots union chief at Mesa. Turnover is high at some other regional airlines, too.
Todd Lehmacher, 39, learned to fly as a teenager and worked a variety of airline jobs in crew scheduling and as a ticket pricing specialist and flight attendant while accumulating the flying hours to be a pilot. “It was something I just had to do,” he said.
He was hired by Mesa in August 2005, but long hours and unpleasant relations between pilots and management wore on him.
He sometimes slept on the plane during late shifts — “camping trips,” pilots call them — that required him to fly again early the next morning. He said he often worked a 13-hour day to get in five hours of flying time, the only hours pilots are paid for.
Mr. Lehmacher quit last September and runs a travel agency in Phoenix that sells cruise trips to airline workers.
Mesa officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Samantha Negley did not get the flying bug until a boyfriend took her up in a four-seat Cessna in 1999. It was a bright day in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and they flew over farms, across the beach and over the ocean. “He let me take the controls. It was amazing,” said Ms. Negley, who is now 30.
She graduated from college that year with a journalism degree and spent four years working odd jobs — tending bar, substitute teaching, tutoring — to save money for flight lessons. Landings were her favorite part.
In an essay for a $1,500 scholarship she won to supplement her flight school costs, Ms. Negley said she planned a life around flying. “In five years, I plan to be a captain at Mesa Airlines,” she wrote. “In 10 years, I plan to be a first officer with a major airline, awaiting my chance to upgrade.”
She was accepted at a New Mexico flight school that feeds pilot candidates to Mesa and was hired in 2004. “The day I found out was like the best day ever,” she said. Making about $15,000 initially, and saddled with $50,000 of school debt, she moved in with her sister in Washington, flying out of Dulles Airport.
A typical day had her up at 5 a.m., at the airport by 8 a.m., and making three flights spread out so that the last one landed about 10 p.m. Then it was wait for a hotel shuttle; sleep; get up again at 6 a.m.
She also worked overnight shifts, sleeping across a row of seats and being awakened by a gate agent in time to brush her teeth in the plane lavatory and tuck her shirt in before passengers came aboard. “It was crazy,” she said.
“I was enjoying the landings. I was living my whole life for those three minutes a day.” Otherwise, she thought, “this is the worst life ever.”
She quit last July and went to work at Mattel, where she writes copy for packaging of Hot Wheels and other toys. She makes more money and has whittled her student debt down to $30,000.
She knows she will be home every night in Long Beach to walk the dogs. She plays beach volleyball. And became engaged in February. “Normal job. Normal life,” she said. “I know I made the right decision.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
(start copy and paste)
By JEFF BAILEY
IRVING, Tex. — Among the jobs little boys dream of — policeman, fireman, bulldozer driver — airline pilot long held the added virtue of satisfying grown-up dreams: pay that reached $300,000 a year, 20 days a month off work, the prestige of one day commanding a $200 million airplane, and a lush retirement at 60.
But the airline industry’s financial collapse this decade did away with much of that, leaving thousands of young men — and increasingly women — chasing a dream toward a disappointing reality.
“My wife thinks I’m nuts,” said Jason Captain, 32, of Fort Worth who left the Navy last November, walking away from $75,000-a-year lieutenant’s pay for flying military brass in and out of Guantánamo Bay.
He started training last month to fly a 76-seat regional jet for a Northwest Airlines subsidiary and expects to make about $21,000 his first year. Like most airline pilots, Mr. Captain had his heart set on flying “ever since I was a little kid,” he said. “I can’t see myself in an office.”
In recent years, he and his wife, June, were in the odd position of saving part of his military pay so they and their two sons could afford to have him work in the private sector. It could take him a decade to work his way back up to his former income.
He hopes, of course, to jump ultimately to the big jets at Northwest Airlines, where the most senior pilots can still make more than $150,000 a year, but there is no guarantee he will get there.
And, with the airline industry ready to go into another swoon because of high fuel prices, Mr. Captain and other junior pilots could find themselves furloughed.
“You’re much better off going into plumbing, from a purely financial perspective,” said Ed Grogan, a financial planner in Gig Harbor, Wash., who has pilots among his clients.
The military is turning out fewer pilots, so aspiring aviators increasingly attend private flight schools, emerging with as much as $150,000 in student debt. Student loan payments can exceed $1,000 a month.
After Sept. 11, 2001, the biggest domestic airlines reduced their fleets by hundreds of planes, so they needed fewer pilots. And through actual and threatened bankruptcies, airlines managed to cut pilot pay by 30 percent or more. Many pilots lost big parts of their pensions. Work hours increased.
Certainly, top pay of $200,000 a year at the biggest airlines, down from $300,000, is still a nice living.
But cuts at big airlines were just the beginning of the decline in pilot careers. Regional airlines, which pay far less than hub-and-spoke carriers even after the pay cuts, expanded to handle much of the flying that bigger airlines had abandoned. Many new pilot jobs are like the one Mr. Captain is taking, with a rock-bottom starting wage that creeps slowly toward $100,000 a year.
Poor pay and fewer big-airline jobs to move up to have led to fewer applicants, creating a pilot shortage that is most acute overseas but is also felt here.
Regional airlines have had to reduce hiring standards drastically. Earlier this decade, they could insist on a candidate’s having at least 1,500 hours of total flight time before an interview. Today, that minimum is 500 hours at many regional carriers. The decline is contributing to safety concerns among some experts.
The seniority system — a new pilot starts at the bottom at most airlines, earning the lowest pay and getting the worst shifts — limits job-hopping. So choosing the right employer the first time around is crucial. Moving from first officer, the right seat, to captain, the left seat, brings the biggest leap in pay and status.
Thus, Mr. Captain, who looks forward to being called Captain Captain, turned down a job at American Eagle Airlines, the regional division of American Airlines. It initially paid better, but the wait to upgrade to captain is six and a half years. At the Northwest regional carrier, Compass, which is growing, he could make captain in as little as one year.
But things change. Network carriers like United Airlines and Delta Air Lines hire regional carriers, which are separate companies, to fly feeder routes from smaller cities into hub airports. But the big airlines renegotiate contracts every few years, often switching carriers to reduce costs. That means today’s fast-growing regional airline could be laying off pilots tomorrow.
“It’s a nightmare,” said Kit Darby, who retired a year ago as a United pilot and runs a pilot job fair business, Air Inc.
Some pilots leave the business. Paul Rice, a vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association, a pilots union, said that in previous decades nearly 100 percent of furloughed pilots came back when temporary layoffs ended. Since Sept. 11, 2001, though, 30 to 35 percent did not return when offered their old jobs.
At Mesa Air Group, a big regional carrier, 784 pilots left last year, some moving up to hub-and-spoke network carriers, some moving laterally to other regional airlines and about 10 percent leaving the business altogether, said Michael Jayson, until recently the pilots union chief at Mesa. Turnover is high at some other regional airlines, too.
Todd Lehmacher, 39, learned to fly as a teenager and worked a variety of airline jobs in crew scheduling and as a ticket pricing specialist and flight attendant while accumulating the flying hours to be a pilot. “It was something I just had to do,” he said.
He was hired by Mesa in August 2005, but long hours and unpleasant relations between pilots and management wore on him.
He sometimes slept on the plane during late shifts — “camping trips,” pilots call them — that required him to fly again early the next morning. He said he often worked a 13-hour day to get in five hours of flying time, the only hours pilots are paid for.
Mr. Lehmacher quit last September and runs a travel agency in Phoenix that sells cruise trips to airline workers.
Mesa officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Samantha Negley did not get the flying bug until a boyfriend took her up in a four-seat Cessna in 1999. It was a bright day in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and they flew over farms, across the beach and over the ocean. “He let me take the controls. It was amazing,” said Ms. Negley, who is now 30.
She graduated from college that year with a journalism degree and spent four years working odd jobs — tending bar, substitute teaching, tutoring — to save money for flight lessons. Landings were her favorite part.
In an essay for a $1,500 scholarship she won to supplement her flight school costs, Ms. Negley said she planned a life around flying. “In five years, I plan to be a captain at Mesa Airlines,” she wrote. “In 10 years, I plan to be a first officer with a major airline, awaiting my chance to upgrade.”
She was accepted at a New Mexico flight school that feeds pilot candidates to Mesa and was hired in 2004. “The day I found out was like the best day ever,” she said. Making about $15,000 initially, and saddled with $50,000 of school debt, she moved in with her sister in Washington, flying out of Dulles Airport.
A typical day had her up at 5 a.m., at the airport by 8 a.m., and making three flights spread out so that the last one landed about 10 p.m. Then it was wait for a hotel shuttle; sleep; get up again at 6 a.m.
She also worked overnight shifts, sleeping across a row of seats and being awakened by a gate agent in time to brush her teeth in the plane lavatory and tuck her shirt in before passengers came aboard. “It was crazy,” she said.
“I was enjoying the landings. I was living my whole life for those three minutes a day.” Otherwise, she thought, “this is the worst life ever.”
She quit last July and went to work at Mattel, where she writes copy for packaging of Hot Wheels and other toys. She makes more money and has whittled her student debt down to $30,000.
She knows she will be home every night in Long Beach to walk the dogs. She plays beach volleyball. And became engaged in February. “Normal job. Normal life,” she said. “I know I made the right decision.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
theres a lot of different ways to make a living at flying. Dont just focus on the airlines. if you love flying keep doing it and find the type that you like the most, and dont worry about the money only. Aviation is like any other industry theres good times and bad, sorry some of you have had a ruff time with it but I wouldnt want to do anything else because everything else would be a let down!
Similar threads
