Is it worth it?

go to Cal Maritime and drive boats. My roomate from college did that. I started flying and he started boatin. 3 yrs. later he makes 12k a mo. and I am broke.
 
I agree with the other posts about getting your degree. This moment in time is the worst situation for pilots of just about any specialty.
The current economic climate is so uncertain and a bunch of my friends are a: furloughed and looking for work, b: about to be furloughed and looking for work, c: missed the hiring window when the airlines were hiring and are looking for work. The list goes on!!!

Go to school - get the education - make a mint - fly for fun.....

BP244
Out of work corporate pilot
Instructing to stay current and feed myself!
CFI/CFII/MEI
 
Depends,

Was it worth it for me? Yes.

Is it worth it for somebody else? Maybe Yes, Maybe no.

Check out all your options and find something that works for YOU.

Either way, do yourself a favor and get a degree in something that you can fall back on. Like Engineering, Computer Science, etc. Not Sociology, Art, etc.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket
 
Get your degree first. A lot of airlines require that now and if aviation doesn't work out you'll need that to fall back on. I would not go to a large school for all of my ratings because a lot of my colleagues who did that had nothing but horror stories from there, especially if you took a little longer to get done or if you busted a checkride. I went to ATP for just my CFI ratings and to my surprise the guys who went the Part 61 FBO route had a much easier time throughout the training. Having aviation crammed at you for hours a day will get it done quickly but I don't think it helps in the long run since you can lose it more quickly.

For the military questions, it really doesn't matter what degree you get to get into flight training, but from speaking to a large number of military aviators those that had technical degrees had an easier time than the non-technical folks had when it came to academics. My degree is in mechanical engineering and from the civilian aviation aspect, it made all the academics a piece of cake.
 
PA44-LUV said:
Having aviation crammed at you for hours a day will get it done quickly but I don't think it helps in the long run since you can lose it more quickly.
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Yea if you sit around and don't fly or use any of it. Or don't continue to study and keep up with it if you can't find a job.

the fast track hasn't completely lost its BOOM factor... with the FAA pushing for 1500 TT/ ATP certificate to even be employed by a 121 carrier... it's gonna take a couple years to build that time + your 5 months of training. Or you can take years to finish your certificates and ratings, then several more years to get to ATP certificate mins.

I know i enjoyed leaving for a summer, and coming back and instructing some of my previous classmates who told me "it was impossible"
 
flyboy110b said:
I think I'm still going to take the AFROTC class for now since there's no comittment yet and see how things go with that.. Has anyone here completed that program and gotten a pilot slot? I guess that's a question for the military section.
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AFROTC paid for the first few years of my engineering school. I ended up with an Honorable Discharge (medically related - heartburn if you can believe that. My AME said to stay away from the pepperoni pizza...), but everyone that I went to school with that wanted to fly ended up flying. I had no flying plans then.

The Air Force is the way to go for flying jobs, as the pay and benefits are already much better than the airlines. They prefer engineering/math/science degrees. A technical degree pretty much guarantees you a job when you get out too.

Get a 4 year degree and do the flying on the side. 200 hours cost me about $12K all together (over the last 8 years) Don't go into debt for flying - it isn't worth it. Get a glider ticket, fly LSAs, C-152's - look for cheap ways to get the first 250 hours. When you have a commercial multi, no one is going to care what you got your first 150 hours in.

BTW, you can easily get 150 hours in gliders, with your commercial and CFI for less than $5K. Adding instrument airplane/CFI will then run you exactly 103 hours, and probably cost you about 12k.
 
if no one is hiring then there's no rush to get into debt. this will likely be the case until at least 2011-2012 and by then itll be a trickle of hiring combined with people slowly getting recalled. if you went to school fulltime, you'd be done right around when hiring started to pick back up in 2013-2014 (hopefully) and you'd be that much further ahead. go to college (much better investment if you're going to go into debt). if you lose your medical, youre done for flying as a career for the most part. i met someone who lost their 1st class at 26 while at the airlines b/c of his eyesight. he is able to instruct on a 3rd class medical and does this part time while using his college degree in computer science to get a full-time job.

Go to an fbo and fly on the side (i know many people who have done their ratings in the summer and fly off and on during the school year). You'll get it done for less and in many cases, with a better well-rounded experience. besides, if the airlines do start hiring again and the legislation mandating ATP standards for 121 ops (ATP will not be able to get a hiring agreement around a federal law if this passes), it will take time to get your ratings/flight time anyhow so this lets you build up time for this while youre knocking out school.
 
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