I know why you want to be a pilot. You’re what I call a dreamer- head in the clouds, ambitious, thinking that you’ve got the whole world at your feet. It’s a convenient cloak of pride that you can wrap around yourself, confident that you can rise quickly through the system and claim a seat in the cockpit of a triple-seven working for a major airline flying three times a week and bringing home six figures. You’ll have a nice house, cars, a great wife who broods over your successes, maybe a few kids. It’s a simple zero-to-hero plan that you’ve worked out in your mind that makes perfect sense to you: climb the ladder, work the politics, fly the big stuff, and come home to your American dream.
Pros:
1. You get to fly!
2. You get to fly multi-million dollar jets surrounded by a high tech cockpit.
3. The right to wear aviator sunglasses.
4. The uniform.
5. Travel to exotic places and not have to pay for hotels.
6. Great pay... as a senior pilot.
7. No working at home on special projects- no deadlines while you're off the clock.
8. Buddy passes and travel perks for you and your family.
9. You're the easiest guy to shop for on holidays and birthdays. Just refer them to the pilot shop.
10. You get schmoozed by FBOs with free coffee, soft drinks, cookies, pilot lounges with satellite TV, huge couches, dozing rooms, Internet access, and even concierge services.
11. The conversation always turns to you when you mention that you're a professional pilot. People always want to hear about what goes on on the other side of the cockpit door.
12. Camaraderie. Nobody understands a pilot like another pilot.
13. Can anybody say mach meter?
14. It doesnt matter what you say after beginning a sentence with "So I was a flight level 350..." It instantly sounds cool.
15. Unlimited sick days.
16. You're the only guy at the airport who enjoys being there.
17. You get to be in command of over 30 million dollars' worth of airplane, people, and cargo at a time.
18. If you fly corporate, you get to mix and mingle with the corporate elite, even sharing in their adventures like golfing with them in the Bahamas, or going skiing in Aspen.
19. If you're charismatic enough to develop an extensive network, you could get that plush job that wasnt published on find-a-pilot.com. Its who you know, not what.
20. You have a little computer that does everything for you from just after takeoff and all the way to touchdown called the autopilot. You just sit back, sip your soda, and talk about the wife and kids with the cockpit crew.
Cons:
1. Poor job security
2. Work holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, soccer games, nights, days, weekends, etc.
3. If you commute, you'll spend your days off on a plane heading to and from work.
4. Forced loyalties to a union- if they go on strike, YOU go on strike.
5. Forced retirement if you lose your medical.
6. Horrible starting pay, sometimes as low as $16 per hour.
7. Duty time is different from billable time. When you're preflighting the airplane, greeting passengers, etc, you don't get paid! You only get paid your full wage when the cabin door shuts for the flight.
8. Each company has its own seniority list. If you switch to another airline, your seniority gets reset to zero. If your airline of even 20 years goes bankrupt, you start all over again from the bottom.
9. Some airlines do not pay for training (in fact, some require YOU to pay for it).
10. Your job depends on numerous stimuli- primarily oil prices, global and domestic economic swings, and terrorist actions. If any one of these things twitches, you could be on the street.
11. Blacklisting. If you turn your back on your union, you'll wind up on a blacklist that labels you a 'scab' for the rest of your career. Good luck trying to get a new job, new pilot friends, jumpseats, etc. after this happens. Its the airline pilot's equivalent of the guillotine.
12. Top-heavy management. You can rest assured that the wigs on top will happily cancel your pension, reduce your pay, or furlough you to resolve the very financial burdens of the company that their million-dollar salaries and golden parachutes (severance packages) have caused. See my posting on the recent Delta Airlines deal for a great example.
13. You will spend a fortune on flight training (sometimes $50k-$90k) only to squabble over the entry-level First Officer positions, rarely more than $25 an hour.
14. Imbalanced family life. You spend so much time away from home that it creates an enormous burden on your spouse, who is left at home to wonder who you love more- your family, or your jet. I guarantee you, when you're lying on your death bed surrounded by your children and grandchildren, you won't be thinking about how you should have gotten more overtime.
15. You don't get the respect you deserve as a highly skilled professional. Hundreds of lives are in your hands every time you light the engines, yet you are regarded as expendable by your company management who has, in some cases, thousands of resumes on their desks of pilots who are ready to take your job if you ever foul up.
16. Your alarm clocks (note the plural) had better work, because most companies will fire you for no more than two no-shows. That may sound normal to those non-pilots reading this, but consider that all airlines are required by law to perform background checks including criminal, residential, employment, and unemployment histories going back ten years. Interviewers with this information will not hire an applicant with an attendance-related termination on his record. There are no second chances. This pilot's career is over and he has to find a new field. Thats a huge investment of time and money up in smoke for an honest mistake.
17. If the pilot screws up, the pilot dies. If maintenance screws up, the pilot dies. If air traffic control screws up, the pilot dies. If the airplane manufacturer screws up, the pilot dies... Would you be willing to die for a lousy 20k/year?
18. There are always some rich-kids who are willing to pay airlines to hire and train them. You heard me, they pay to work. This may seem harmless to the rest of us with families to feed, but this practice only worsens the entry-level salaries and lifestyles of low-time pilots trying to establish a foothold in the industry. As pilots, we are sending the message to our employers that we will put up with anything that they wish to impose upon us just to get a shot at flying their jets. Ive heard many of my pilot colleagues say that they don't care what the salary is- they just want to fly. While I respect their love of flight, which I share with them, I cannot help but feel like they just torpedoed me and my family by being so unrealistically tolerant to the pay/lifestyle pilots are currently forced to endure. We are only as strong as our lowest bidding colleague.
19. The airline pilot has a bad stereotype of infidelity to his wife. While this stereotype stems from actual events, and is probably well deserved by the actions of our predecessors in the field, sexual encounters between crew members is not as prevalent now as it was in the past. Regardless, the stereotype lingers and demands enormous amounts of trust between pilots and their spouses. Those marriages unable to yield this trust will fail. One of my professors in college once said that you aren't a true pilot until you're married to your third wife.
20. Chapter 11. Any time an airline declares bankruptcy, its labor contracts with pilots are dissolved while it makes the pay/benefit/job cuts to get back into the black. This sends me the message that even the federal government is willing to protect the airline management while they stick it to their pilots.
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