Aviation Downturns

jhugz said:
*First off, I’m typing this on my iPhone so excuse any grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, and run on sentences.*

As many know, I do a good amount of work mentoring pilots both within my legacy airline’s ecosystem but also outside of it too. I’ve been noticing a trend throughout those in the industry that have less than 10+ years of experience that is a little troublesome that I wanted to talk about. That is dealing with the aviation industry down cycles. Over the past couple of years we’ve seen unprecedented growth. People going from CFI to legacy in 5 years or less. Street CA’s being hired at the regionals and jobs galore. Many in the industry only know the good times. Things have slowed down over the past year or so, but we are still seeing amazing growth. Most of the legacies are still hiring or plan to in the near future. Not all regionals are hiring but some still are. Things are getting more competitive but pilot hiring and progression are still very healthy.

Things may have slowed down some, but the amount of “depression” in mentees and others in the industry doesn’t seem proportional. Things can and will get worse at some point in your career. You need to accept that, and figure out how you will cope with that or you will be miserable in this profession for the rest of your life. Ask older pilots about Age 65, the recession, 9/11, etc. These were dark, dark, times in the industry. I hope we never see these events again in our life time, but statistically it’s probably unlikely. If you’re unable to cope with the industry now, how will you for one of these black swan events?

Take care of yourself, especially your mental health. That’s first and foremost. Stop comparing your career to someone else’s. It’s not a race. Have a life outside of aviation. If your whole identity is aviation and your career is suffering in a downturn, it’s incredibly difficult to maintain any resemblance of positivity in your life. Have a support network with friends and family. When things get tough, lean on them.

I’ve seen/heard/read too much talk about how awful this industry is. It’s a tough business but also incredibly rewarding. Not everyone is cut out for it and that’s ok.

Looking back on my career to this point and it’s been a wild, crazy, stressful, infuriating, rewarding ride. I loved every second of it and would do it again in a heartbeat.

/endrant
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I believe you nailed the root cause of the high number of unbalanced aviators out there. I have met way too many aviators who have literally no life (or at very least zero personality) outside of aviation.

Really - you gotta have some non-aviation interests and relationships. It’s important to anchor you and makes you a helluva better pilot.

Look - I know that it’s important to grind and get where you need to go during the “good times”, but really and truly there is more to life. Unless…. you want to become a burned-out, no-passion, one-shirt-side untucked “that Captain” who embarrasses us all when waddling through the airport.
 
ZapBrannigan said:
I don't intend to sound preachy, just to share that the world of the last three years has not been the historical norm for airline pilot careers.
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Man I can't tell you how many FOs I've flown with over the past three years who were at regional X for 6 months to a year. Moved on up to the bigger leagues (ULCC trash with me), spent 6 months to a year here and had CJOs with UAL/DAL/AA and "just had to decide where they wanted to go". With lightning speed they have 2ish years in the industry and have progressed to a legacy carrier.
Congrats, I'm happy for you...but also get bent.

To be clear I don't fault them for seizing opportunity but many just seemed to think they were some amazing pilot to move up the ranks so quickly. Uh, best of luck, hope it all works out. So many of them had no idea what an anomaly this was in the timeline of aviation and how amazingly lucky they were to have these opportunities. Not all, mind you. Some were incredibly humble and definitely understood luck/timing were a huge part of their success. But, to your earlier point, it's been all sunshine and rainbows in their "careers" thus far and they haven't seen the struggle so many have had to endure.
 
Cruise said:
Man I can't tell you how many FOs I've flown with over the past three years who were at regional X for 6 months to a year. Moved on up to the bigger leagues (ULCC trash with me), spent 6 months to a year here and had CJOs with UAL/DAL/AA and "just had to decide where they wanted to go". With lightning speed they have 2ish years in the industry and have progressed to a legacy carrier.
Congrats, I'm happy for you...but also get bent.

To be clear I don't fault them for seizing opportunity but many just seemed to think they were some amazing pilot to move up the ranks so quickly. Uh, best of luck, hope it all works out. So many of them had no idea what an anomaly this was in the timeline of aviation and how amazingly lucky they were to have these opportunities. Not all, mind you. Some were incredibly humble and definitely understood luck/timing were a huge part of their success. But, to your earlier point, it's been all sunshine and rainbows in their "careers" thus far and they haven't seen the struggle so many have had to endure.
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My email archive s full of "thanks for your application, teehee" and "thanks but no thanks" and the like. I've never had more than one CJO at a time (at least that makes decisions easy I guess), and the silence from many other airlines (including but not limited to FDX UAL FFT AAL ...) was pretty deafening.
 
Cruise said:
Man I can't tell you how many FOs I've flown with over the past three years who were at regional X for 6 months to a year. Moved on up to the bigger leagues (ULCC trash with me), spent 6 months to a year here and had CJOs with UAL/DAL/AA and "just had to decide where they wanted to go". With lightning speed they have 2ish years in the industry and have progressed to a legacy carrier.
Congrats, I'm happy for you...but also get bent.

To be clear I don't fault them for seizing opportunity but many just seemed to think they were some amazing pilot to move up the ranks so quickly. Uh, best of luck, hope it all works out. So many of them had no idea what an anomaly this was in the timeline of aviation and how amazingly lucky they were to have these opportunities. Not all, mind you. Some were incredibly humble and definitely understood luck/timing were a huge part of their success. But, to your earlier point, it's been all sunshine and rainbows in their "careers" thus far and they haven't seen the struggle so many have had to endure.
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I fairly regularly run into people from previous points in my careers and I'm sure to emphasize how incredibly lucky I got whenever a "congrats" comes my way. Just a couple months different or a couple different flaps of the butterfly wings and who knows where I'd be.
 
Cruise said:
With lightning speed they have 2ish years in the industry and have progressed to a legacy carrier.
Congrats, I'm happy for you...but also get bent.
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I'm one of the youngest captains at our company and I recently flew with an FO who had started flight training>regionals>legacy in the timeframe of me being at the company. THAT was an odd feeling. Unfortunately the uniqueness of his career trajectory was lost on him.

Cruise said:
So many of them had no idea what an anomaly this was in the timeline of aviation and how amazingly lucky they were to have these opportunities.
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I dont think we will see that kind of hiring again in our careers, it certainly was an anomaly.
 
Yeah, I'm on a facebook page that's targeted towards parents of kids interested in flying careers. 90% of the traffic is "what R-ATP college is best so my kid can be an airline pilot at 1000 hours". Makes my head want to explode. I guess that was a thing a couple years ago. Seeing posts where these kids now have to, gasp, instruct past 1500 hours to be competitive and CFI jobs for timebuilding are harder to find.
 
DE727UPS said:
Yeah, I'm on a facebook page that's targeted towards parents of kids interested in flying careers. 90% of the traffic is "what R-ATP college is best so my kid can be an airline pilot at 1000 hours". Makes my head want to explode. I guess that was a thing a couple years ago. Seeing posts where these kids now have to, gasp, instruct past 1500 hours to be competitive and CFI jobs for timebuilding are harder to find.
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I'm a member there too and I have stopped really replying much. Many there don't want to hear the truth about how this industry works from actual pilots in the industry. Also, what's with a couple of them that have to put their daughter's ages in parenthesis in every post about their 23 year old being at the legacy of choice? I find that weird.
 
DE727UPS said:
Yeah, I'm on a facebook page that's targeted towards parents of kids interested in flying careers. 90% of the traffic is "what R-ATP college is best so my kid can be an airline pilot at 1000 hours". Makes my head want to explode. I guess that was a thing a couple years ago. Seeing posts where these kids now have to, gasp, instruct past 1500 hours to be competitive and CFI jobs for timebuilding are harder to find.
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Yea, you are encountering a weird phenomenon called “cool kids grown with kids”.
 
DE727UPS said:
Yeah, I'm on a facebook page that's targeted towards parents of kids interested in flying careers. 90% of the traffic is "what R-ATP college is best so my kid can be an airline pilot at 1000 hours". Makes my head want to explode. I guess that was a thing a couple years ago. Seeing posts where these kids now have to, gasp, instruct past 1500 hours to be competitive and CFI jobs for timebuilding are harder to find.
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I was post-pandemic trying to convince mothers that there's absolutely no manhattan-NYC airport to flight train at, and no, you can't do the pattern at LGA, at an aviation social club/manhattan school event.
 
rjmore said:
Also, what's with a couple of them that have to put their daughter's ages in parenthesis in every post about their 23 year old being at the legacy of choice? I find that weird.
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I never noticed that. Will have to pay more attention. I do think the newbies who come on there and do some research, some due dilligence, are open to hearing both sides of the story. It's good that there are some old salts on there. I'll say no aviation soccer mom on there has ever told me I'm full of crap. Sort of amazed at that.
 
rjmore said:
I'm a member there too and I have stopped really replying much. Many there don't want to hear the truth about how this industry works from actual pilots in the industry. Also, what's with a couple of them that have to put their daughter's ages in parenthesis in every post about their 23 year old being at the legacy of choice? I find that weird.
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“If anything happens, anything at all, wake me up.”
 
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