Money

kostcoguy

New Member
I just started looking into places to get my private and mostly in my area its somewhere up around 3,000 bucks and it comes with 45 hours of instruction total. It was all split up between ground instruction, flight instruction and a bunch of other stuff. Is this a good price?

I am hoping to get into the commercial airline industry if all goes well.I am only a sophmore in high school but my parents are getting on my case about what i am going to do with my life, and they aren't too supportive of my idea of becoming a pilot. But I am quite scared of taking that jump to become a pilot and then something falling through and me being stuck with some boring business job. So should I go try and put all my energy into getting that future for sure or should I go with plan B (boring business job) because the industry isn't doing that well? Thanks for listening my rampling.
 
kostcoguy, I know all the advice you might get from this thread won't mean much until you actually
choose one path and learn from experience but my advice would be to do WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.
I chose the desk job path...got a job as an engineer because of the lure of the money and HATE it. Now
I'm 27 and busting my butt to get all of my ratings so that I can catch up to where I would've been
if I had stuck with flying at a younger age.
You'll hear this a million times but here it goes again...dont do it for the money, dont do it for the
glamour, dont do it for the prestige.....do it because you can't imagine any other job where you
can climb into a cockpit, leave the ground below you, climb through that cloud layer, and gaze at
that beautiful blue sky above you.
 
I'm in the same boat you are (also a sophmore and going to begin training for the PPL shortly), kostcoguy. Fortunately, I have relatives that are pilots. My advice, is to read and learn as much as you can about aviation. If the love is there, then by all means go for the pilot career instead of the boring desk job, you'll regret it if you don't.
 
What's up kostcoguy... I was you 3 years ago.
---

Here's what happened to me (I'll keep it short):

I asked (begged) my parents for $$$ to fly and they would hear none of it. I had to either ride my bike or bum rides to the airport. So I saved up for a year or so, went for it on my own, got the license and proved to them I could do it. Since then they have been really supportive of it; they know I'm serious, and I have definately learned to respect their concerns.

----

So the moral is that if you really want to do it, don't let anyone stop you; as for the money, get a job and save aggressively. It's tough as hell at the wages us youngsters make but it can be done. Most kids spend $$$ on steros and making their cars closer to the ground (good for them but it's not for me). Just spend wisely and it can be done.

As for the school, realize that the national average is something like 70hrs for the private. You can probably bet on 50ish if you fly a lot during your training but make sure you have a buffer to fall back on so you don't get to 44.9 with no money.
 
SkyGuyEd...I was like you in 1978. I didn't get much parental support until I paid for my own private. That sort of proved I wasn't screwing around, being a pilot at 17 and all. I got a lot of support, both financial and otherwise, after that. You could ask my dad today if supporting me was a good move and he'd say it was a great move. I make about four times what he made as a school teacher and work less than half as hard. Plus...I paid for part of his big motorhome....
 
[ QUOTE ]
I paid for part of his big motorhome....

[/ QUOTE ]

Bribery always works!
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Seriously, though. Every field is in a slump right now. I saw a list of the top five companies that had laid people off and not one of them was an airline. K-mart cut like, what, 36,000 jobs and closed half their stores? A co-worker's husband is in charge of hiring sales people and he's had literally hundreds of applications, and many from people with six figure previous incomes, all applying for one or two $40,000/yr, entry-level sales jobs.

The whole economy is in the sh*tter right now, not just airlines. We only pay attention and notice the airline problems more because we want to break into the field - but I promise you if you were interested in any other field you'd be feeling the same way right now. Because everyone is down sizing, in hiring freezes, going bankrupt (as the people at Enron about how well the economy is doing).

Everything sucks right now.
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(Edit: Umm, yeah, great post I guess but not quite on topic, eh? Oh well ...)
 
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Most kids spend $$$ on steros and making their cars closer to the ground (good for them but it's not for me).

[/ QUOTE ]

Or some of the less-affluent kids fill their cars with bricks.
smile.gif
 
I was in the same spot when I first started two years ago. My parents thought I was joking when I said I wanted to get my pilots liscense. They said if I wanted to do it I had to pay for it 100% myself. So the next week I came home with a application for a Salie Mae loan. I fooled them
grin.gif
After that they realized how serious I was about it and now there behind me 100%.
 
Go for it!

Do what it takes and get you private. You will find out if flying is for you and also show your parents that you are serious.
 
Hey Koctocoguy, I would go for it. I worked several boring business jobs before getting back into flying. Nothing was as satisfying.

The airline industry is cyclical. It will be back. People are always going to need air travel.

Even if you don't get hired as an airline pilot, a pilot license can be a valuable asset in business. You can fly yourself on business trips so you don't have to rely on expensive airline tickets and inconvenient schedules. It also provides a good subject for interview questions and show that you have the motivation to get things done. You could also instruct or fly for pleasure on the side, no matter what you do.
 
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