emergency med doc trying to become a pilot... help!

Regardless of what challenges await you pursuing your "true passion" of flying, I admire and respect you for recognizing you aren't where you want to be and for being brave enough to step forward and solicit advice on how to change that. Turning that recognition into action will likely be your biggest hurdle. I'll bet you're a great doctor too. :-)
 
Us Gen-Yers are funny beasts. We value life balance and meaning in our work more than money often.

Not unrelated, I can't keep a government software engineer for more than five years....
 
jtrain609 said:
Then what are you doing here?

And do you think other industries are all roses? 29% of the class I was supposed to graduate with from law school in the spring of 2012 has found full time employment, and they all have $150,000 in debt.
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Plenty of people here that arent involved in aviation as a career. So what's the point?

Serious question on your law school point....I am making the assumption that many of the individuals in your class are smart people. Also assuming that the job outlook for lawyers hasnt been great for awhile, especially since your classmates enrolled. So with that and the current unemployment rate why take on law school given the cost and job outlook? Are people taking it on just for the sake of learning?
 
JEP said:
Plenty of people here that arent involved in aviation as a career. So what's the point?

Serious question on your law school point....I am making the assumption that many of the individuals in your class are smart people. Also assuming that the job outlook for lawyers hasnt been great for awhile, especially since your classmates enrolled. So with that and the current unemployment rate why take on law school given the cost and job outlook? Are people taking it on just for the sake of learning?
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The industry crashed with the rest of the economy. When we started in the fall of 2009, the employment numbers didn't look that bad.

By the time we graduated, there was an oversupply of lawyers. Additionally, michigan raised it's bar passage requirements and suddenly the pass rate went from 85% to 50%. So even if you passed the academic program, you only stood a 50% chance of being licensed.

Combine that with the continued downturn in the Michigan economy and you get the 29% number.
 
zmiller4 said:
How far back does your experience with the industry go?
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I am a fairly new commercial pilot WITHOUT an airline job. However, that is irrelevant. My experience has nothing to do with the HISTORY of the industry. Everything I said is factual. You don't need to have 20 years of airline experience to know that the ATP requirement is new, or that airlines didn't use to require degrees, or that costs are higher and pay is lower per inflation. These are things that I looked at when getting into the industry. It's HISTORY and FACTUAL.

I just think everyone that is new to aviation should be given the truth before giving up a good career. Like I said before, a lot of people think this industry is glamorous.
 
jgheggie said:
I am a fairly new commercial pilot WITHOUT an airline job. However, that is irrelevant. My experience has nothing to do with the HISTORY of the industry. Everything I said is factual. You don't need to have 20 years of airline experience to know that the ATP requirement is new, or that airlines didn't use to require degrees, or that costs are higher and pay is lower per inflation. These are things that I looked at when getting into the industry. It's HISTORY and FACTUAL.

I just think everyone that is new to aviation should be given the truth before giving up a good career. Like I said before, a lot of people think this industry is glamorous.
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Didn't require degrees?

Hey @Derg, how many guys in your new hire class didn't have a degree?
 
I don't know.

There were some low-time guys in the new hire pipeline at the time, but the "Holy cow, you don't have 1000 hours yet" was a former F-16 pilot.
 
jgheggie said:
I am a fairly new commercial pilot WITHOUT an airline job. However, that is irrelevant. My experience has nothing to do with the HISTORY of the industry. Everything I said is factual. You don't need to have 20 years of airline experience to know that the ATP requirement is new, or that airlines didn't use to require degrees, or that costs are higher and pay is lower per inflation. These are things that I looked at when getting into the industry. It's HISTORY and FACTUAL.

I just think everyone that is new to aviation should be given the truth before giving up a good career. Like I said before, a lot of people think this industry is glamorous.
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Giving up a good career? For what, a bad career? You aren't even at the airlines yet and you are already being a Negative Nancy. And I don't mean to target you specifically, it's a lot of people on here.

The airline business isn't exactly perfect, but neither are most of these other careers that people think are so much better. I wish people that are SO negative about this career would just take their own advice and GTFO. It would be doing yourself a favor, as well as the people that have to work around you.
 
jgheggie said:
I am a fairly new commercial pilot WITHOUT an airline job. However, that is irrelevant. My experience has nothing to do with the HISTORY of the industry. Everything I said is factual. You don't need to have 20 years of airline experience to know that the ATP requirement is new, or that airlines didn't use to require degrees,
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I'm intrigued that--although I agree that airline flying may not be as awesome as it was in the 1960's or whatnot--you focus on the two things that in my mind will make the industry *better* in the long run by rendering the "regional as a major airline replacement" obsolete, or at least less feasible.

I just think everyone that is new to aviation should be given the truth before giving up a good career. Like I said before, a lot of people think this industry is glamorous.
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Absolutely. But if you don't have a 4 year degree and aren't willing to work for crap wages for a couple of years to get to ATP minimums, I don't necessarily think that a "glamorous" career is in the cards. If you bought into the story that you can make 6 figures in a couple of years with no degree or experience...you're going to have a bad time.

Think about it this way: the median income in the US for someone with a bachelor's degree is just under $51000. If you got hired with a decent regional with a year training/work experience and no college--which was happening from ~2007-2012(?)--you could potentially make more than the median for people who had spent 4 years in school with *way* more time off.

Many captains at my former airline made 6 figures, some without 4 year degrees. An average captain--making in the $70k-80K range--makes more than the median for Americans with a master's degree--again, some of them did not have a bachelor's.

Having left aviation and seen firsthand what jobs/compensation people are working *really* hard in college/grad school to obtain....to act like the airlines are some kind of massive shaft job shows a lack of understanding of what most of the work force is experiencing.

Derg said:
I don't know.

There were some low-time guys in the new hire pipeline at the time, but the "Holy cow, you don't have 1000 hours yet" was a former F-16 pilot.
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Understood. It's a little depressing to me that a similarly qualified pilot may have to spend time at a regional now, but I think/hope that's a pretty rare occurrence.
 
grkero said:
Giving up a good career? For what, a bad career? You aren't even at the airlines yet and you are already being a Negative Nancy. And I don't mean to target you specifically, it's a lot of people on here.

The airline business isn't exactly perfect, but neither are most of these other careers that people think are so much better. I wish people that are SO negative about this career would just take their own advice and GTFO. It would be doing yourself a favor, as well as the people that have to work around you.
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I'm not being negative at all. I'm just being honest with the original poster. As I said before, I love flying. I knew the pay and a lot about the industry prior to me going to flight school. My only point in all of this is that the original poster should know what he is getting into. I would much rather point out the negative things about this industry, then to just focus on the good things. The original poster already said he likes flying. So I'm assuming he knows the good things about this career. He knows its fun, bla bla bla...but does he really know the behind the scenes stuff?

You guys all keep saying "oh it's not bad, pay your dues at $25k per year and then it gets better". That's fine for me. But the original poster needs to know these things. He's a doctor!! So he has already paid his dues and is to the point I. His career where he can make some decent coin. He needs to understand what he is getting into

Edit to add:

This industry doesn't give credit for past accomplishments. The OP may think he can make decent money because he has a doctorates degree or what not. I just want him to know that it's all about hours and he will be at the bottom for quite some time.
 
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