Allow me the opportunity to address the insinuation that I no longer like flying (and am presumably a coward for not getting out), or that I am using this message board and others like it in order to stage a mass brainwashing of would-be professional pilots.
Let's start with the first.
A man who hates flying does not continue to pursue it following furlough after furlough for more than a decade.
A man who hates flying does not move himself and his family time and time again in pursuit of a "stable", "long term", flying career.
A man who hates flying does not spend his precious free time participating in Aviation message boards, reading aviation publications, or taking his son to the airport to watch airplanes. It just does not happen.
The fact of the matter is that since I took my first flying lesson in 1988 I have lived, breathed, and slept aviation. I soloed before I got my drivers license. I had a commercial multi-engine before I had a high school diploma.
I was a CFI for an aviation university long before I held a degree from that university.
I started down the path towards an airline pilot profession when that path had no short-cuts. Knowing full well that no turboprop regional (there were no such thing as RJs) would touch a pilot with less than 1500 TT and 500 ME I started building time as a Flight Instructor. But not satisfied merely to be a primary instructor, I earned a CFII, MEI, and passed the written tests for AGI and IGI.
I became an aircraft dispatcher. --- all before the age of 23.
These are not the actions of someone who is not passionately in love with Aviation.
I flew freight in dilapidated Bonanzas and Cessna 402s with no radar, no ice protection throughout the Southeast, five nights a week in weather that those airplanes were never designed to fly in. Bullied by management and pressured by peers I built the experience and wisdom that taught me when to say "No more", the consequences be damned.
I flew 10 legs a day with no autopilot and not even the luxury of a cockpit door in a Jetstream 3100. I was based in JST where I lived in a row-house with 5 other pilots...and where some strange orange fungus that could not be killed lived on the wall!
I moved to Atlanta to fly for an LCC... because shiny jet syndrome had me firmly in it's grip...and those Turkish Air and British Midland DC9s looked damned shiny to me. Less than six months later I was furloughed.
Did I give up? Of course not. Aviation was all I ever wanted. I was young, ambitious, and had plenty of time. I went BACK to that regional to the BOTTOM of the seniority list again. Is that the action of someone who should leave the industry?
After 3 years at a major airline as a blockholder on a DC9 and 737 I was furloughed again... and went BACK to yet ANOTHER regional and to the bottom of the seniority list sitting side-by-side with extraordinarily low-time pilots and finding out that my experience was worth exactly nothing. When that commuter threatened furlough I interviewed with and was hired by yet ANOTHER commuter. I moved my family to Cincinnati for the privilege of making less than $30,000/year AGAIN at the bottom of the list and with nearly 8000 TT once again sitting alongside pilots who barely had enough experience to obtain an ATP.
When the opportunity arose I moved my family to the deep south to CONTINUE pursuit of this career. Not because I had to. I could have given up long ago, but because I wanted to. Every choice I made in this career was based upon a love of aviation and a love of this profession. It is EASY to make those choices on the way up your career ladder.... making them on the way back down is considerably harder.
Questioning my allegience to this profession is absurd. I have had a passion for the art and science of flying for 20 years now. It is remarkable to me that it has been that long and that I still love the sound of engines spooling up as I push up the power. I love that moment after a slow rotation when the rumbling of wheels on pavement gives way to the smoothness of flight. I love to watch the sunlight and shadow play upon cloud formations that look like mountains, valleys, and even caverns. I love the challenge of a well executed approach and the combination of skill, experience, and luck it takes to land an airplane so smoothly that the only indication you are on the ground is the extension of the autospoilers.
I love airplanes more than just about anything. What I do NOT love, is the static -- the "noise" that disrupts that dream. Noise caused by inept management, greedy unions, and pilots who are in such a hurry to step on one another to achieve their own career goals that they irrepairably damage the profession in the process. Noise caused by furloughs and dreams interupted.
What the people who come to this website and to others like it must realize is that the decisions they are making today are no different than those I made a decade or more ago. In many ways we are all tossed around by the sea of fate, and regardless of which regional you choose, whether or not you decide to take an RJ transition course or fly freight in a C210, whether you fly for GoJets or an overseas charter company -- it won't matter.
Two decades from now even the youngest of you will have married and perhaps had children. You will be saddled with a mortgage and a car payment and the shine will have worn from that aviation job. You will look at your life and question the decisions you made that brought you to where you are. You will ask yourself how you can improve your life... will a new job, more money, more days off make things better? How can you spend more time with family and less time in fleabag hotels? These are the lessons of Jetcareers and websites like it. What is the ultimate goal of the aviation job? To fulfill your passion for aviation? To satisfy a little boy's dream? Of course... but at the end of the day it is a means to an end. Putting food on the table and allowing you to spend time with your family.
So do I love aviation? Nobody -- absolutely NOBODY would go through 3 commuters, and LCC, a major, and a corporate flight department if they didn't love it.
So on to your second question. Am I using this site and ones like it to brainwash the next generation of pilots?
That is pure sophomoric idiocy and barely deserves a response. It is absurd to believe that pilots are visiting this message board in order to brainwash a generation of weak-minded pilots into abandoning their dreams in the hopes that one day compensation might improve as a result. If you want mentors to continue to visit this website and share with you their experiences and their knowledge, then you'll have to learn to take the good with the bad.
This career has left me with a decent house, a couple of cars, and enough money to put food on the table. I've never asked anything more of it. I am still anxious for every trip. I love it from the moment the cabin door closes to the moment I open it again. But if you want me to tell you that it has been easy or that your luck will be better than mine, then it's not going to happen. It's been a rough road and isn't likely to get any better. If i'm lucky i'll find another job quickly if and when this one goes away. Because the one thing i've learned is that there is no such thing as an aviation career -- just your next aviation job.:banghead:
Thanks Zap.
