"...plenty of pilots willing to fly—if the pay’s right."

[GypsyPilot]

I didn't say it was a vacation. It certainly has challenges, but FOR ME those challenges are minor in comparison to a 9-5 job at a software company, a 9-5 job at a well-known sports apparel company, installing carpet at a flooring company, managing a warehouse at a flooring company.

I agree with you, to each his own. I'll share my experiences, and you do the same. You do not have the right to determine what I say, or how I say it.

This is how I feel about it. Not a vacation at all. There are certainly times at work when I am incredibly frustrated at the incompetence or uncaring attitudes outside of the flight ops staff. I have a HUGE list of stuff that I'm very passionate about doing on my off time, and none of it has anything to do with airplanes or an airport.

Overall I really do enjoy my job... I've discovered it's something I'm good at, and I feel like I'm often learning new and interesting things. Aviation encompasses many technical fields such as weather, engineering, data analysis, and so on. For anybody to say they are bored with aviation or think they've mastered it, they really aren't getting it and quite frankly aren't respecting it.

I am underpaid as a FO at a regional (even as a lineholder at one of the best paying ones), but I understood exactly what I was getting into. My goal is to work at a Legacy carrier, and I feel this is the best/quickest path for me to make that happen. I've already turned down several better paying opportunities that would have me returning back to the 135/91 industry, which believe me is a tough thing to do. But I'm confident that the path I've chose will work out for me eventually, and in the mean time I try not to get too wrapped up in negative side of regional 121 drama.

Like you said earlier, the most bitter and dissatisfied people I come across are the ones that have never had a real career outside of flying. That's fine to feel that way, but what I don't understand is why they stay in aviation while complaining. If you don't like what you're doing, change your situation. I've done it, and I had very little help aside from encouragement from family and friends. If one constantly complains about this industry while staying in it, my assumption is that they have no confidence in their ability to do anything else. That's just sad, and at least ATN Pilot discovered his passion for the family business and is moving on. That's something I can totally respect and understand, even though it might not be something I would do (or maybe I would, I don't know).

 

[GypsyPilot]

I never said that. Your own prejudices are coloring your interpretation.

There are other great jobs out there, I'm sure. The one thing I would quit my aviation job for would be running my own farm. If I could replace my salary by having a farm on my property, I would leave aviation. I still dream about it though.

There are a few other things that I would leave aviation for, but I think it is disingenuous to suggest that most of us could leave our jobs with 6 figure incomes and find a job to replace that salary and keep the same level if schedule flexibility and quality of life.

Well said. If I could make a good living doing stuff in the mountains (hiking, climbing, snowboarding), I'd leave aviation in a heartbeat. But making that work out financially and long term is far less likely than my current plan.

 

[PhilosopherPilot]

Don't get me wrong Todd, I'm glad you're happy.

 

[SlumTodd_Millionaire]

Don't get me wrong Todd, I'm glad you're happy.

Thanks. My goal is to just get people to look at alternatives. Almost every captain I fly with (when I actually go fly ) bitches about the "golden handcuffs." Almost all of them want out, but they feel trapped. They don't think they're capable of making a six figure income doing anything else. And for some of them, that's probably true. But certainly not for all. I find it profoundly sad that so many people feel stuck, with many years left to go before retirement.

 

[BEEF SUPREME]

Ha! Not even close. The average FO I flew with had over $80k in student loan debt to cover both the ratings and the degree. Many had over $100k. And that was 7-8 years ago. That's why I'm saying that it's impossible to justify this expense, even if you think you'll get to a major in 10 years.

My god. Over 100k in debt? Community college was 200 bucks a semester in the 90s. They used to have a private pilot ground school. It was 16 bucks.

Graduated debt free and some flight hours from age 16 on. My multi commercial rating cost 14K when I finally went to a mill to git er done in 2004.

No debt. Worked my way up the food chain. Sitting in Kona. Gonna go swimming. It gets better but I never could have done it at an airline with all that debt.

 

[BEEF SUPREME]

Well said. If I could make a good living doing stuff in the mountains (hiking, climbing, snowboarding), I'd leave aviation in a heartbeat. But making that work out financially and long term is far less likely than my current plan.

You and me both buddy. I'm starting a non profit in hopes to build mountain bike trails and pump tracks to create recreation opportunities for everyone. Hopefully just a few more years of flying and I'll be done with it.

 

[🦈💜]

In regular "jobs," like mine, employers expect 50-60 hours actually worked per week. Not away from home, hours worked. Mine only counts time spent that is billable to a client, while work done on their behalf, like writing proposals, internal accounting, travel time, etc, does not count as work. 550 hours away from home per month is not at all unusual.

I know I'm late to the party, but I just wanted to say that I started saying "fox that" to working more than 40 hours a week* many years back in my career. I had one job that wasn't really ok with it (A startup where people came in early, •ed around all day, played stupid games**, stayed for company-provided dinner, and left really late), but no other problems at all.

People (in normal jobs) should absolutely refuse to work more than 40 hours a week unless directly compensated for it. I have absolutely zero sympathy for anyone who DOES provide "bonus labor" to the company, because they're lowering the bar for everyone else.

That DOESN'T mean that if something broke I wouldn't put in extra time to fix it, but it DOES mean that if I put in extra time to fix it, I took that time back after it was fixed.

We have a 40-hour work week, and that's what our pay basis is. Not a 50- or 60- hour work-week*.

To the point of $50k jobs... I just want to point out that people are being manipulated by numbers. $50k doesn't buy what $50k used to. A $50k job in 2014 is a $27k job in 1990!

This is an important distinction. Pay attention.

-Fox
* - I'm referring to a desk job, as per the subject, and not a flying job.
** - Literally games. Video games, mostly.

 

[Maurus]

Thanks. My goal is to just get people to look at alternatives. Almost every captain I fly with (when I actually go fly ) bitches about the "golden handcuffs." Almost all of them want out, but they feel trapped. They don't think they're capable of making a six figure income doing anything else. And for some of them, that's probably true. But certainly not for all. I find it profoundly sad that so many people feel stuck, with many years left to go before retirement.

Some people just need to learn to let stress go. I get captains that are always pissed about something and it does show in their flying and there overall look. One guy I had recently was willing to sacrifice safety to make a turnoff so he could get home 1 minute faster.

 

[ScorpionStinger]

A former student of mine is a junior or maybe a senior now at the big university and he informed me that he'll be $200k in debt at the end of it. He kind of chuckled when he shared this me with, as if he didn't realize how big a number that is. Granted I'm pretty sure he's not clipping coupons while grocery shopping or other methods of living on a budget.

Sad part is (being that it's associated with a 4yr college loan), he will not be able to declare bankruptcy. He'll owe 200,000+ interest (Soo add $10,000-$20,000 on that) for the rest of his life. Lol That's a house payment.

Lol for a $25-30K a year job for at least 3 years after training. Then maybe $35K for another 3 years.... -----> HAAH !

 

[Dugie8]

Some people just need to learn to let stress go. I get captains that are always pissed about something and it does show in their flying and there overall look. One guy I had recently was willing to sacrifice safety to make a turnoff so he could get home 1 minute faster.

This

Stress is terrible. Let go of what you can't control. You will find it much easier to get through the day if you just do what's safe and legal. Let therest of the chips fall were the fall.

 

[SlumTodd_Millionaire]

It's easy to say "let go." It's a bit harder to actually let go when you're looking at a loss of your seat, a loss of money, and a commute to the west coast just to maintain bidding power. People shouldn't just "let go" over something like that. They should look for solutions instead of being pissed off or just giving up.

 

[TheFlyingTurkey]

And that industry is just like the airlines. You start out as a "helper" out of trade school making $8-$12/hr depending on locality. If you're lucky you'll get to $15/hr doing house calls. The guys doing the install work don't make as much they are mostly turn and burn. Eventually if you get lucky you can get out of residential and into commercial work where the "big money" is. By "big money" I mean $40k maybe $50k if you work 24/7 and are on call. Some might hit $75k but they are few and far between and in the bigger cities. You think airline reserve life is harsh? How about being on call throughout the night and weekend and not getting paid any for it unless you are called out? Personally I think that life would suck.

The big big money (if you are LUCKY you'll hit 100k eventually) is in the design portion of the job. Guys who are HVAC qualified but also have an engineering degree can make decent money in a "normal-ish" job but it takes time to get there. And the jobs are few and far between.

I looked into doing HVAC on my time off with an EPA 608 cert and found it just wasn't worth it. The time it takes to start making any kind of money, working out doors sweating/freezing your cojones off you are better off on 2nd year RJ pay.

Your view of life/jobs is quite eye opening.

I think I can clear this up, being in the HVAC trade for 24 years.

In the HVAC trade you have different specialties. They are residential, supermarket refrigeration, commercial, and industrial technicians. (You can even toss in building automation, but they are all computer geeks so we'll leave them out for this discussion.Their pay would be equivalent to commercial technicians)

Yes, like most jobs, the easier work pays less. Residential technicians make a lot less than industrial technicians because the systems are more complex in industrial. Residential is like Kindergarten, and industrial is like having a masters degree.

I make six figures turning wrenches. But I am skilled at what I do and reliable. Skilled technicians like myself are becoming harder and harder to come by. Why? Because too many people are unreliable due to personal problems, alcohol or drug issues. And many more avoid the trades and went to college. People like Jtrain look down on the trades like we are all knuckle draggers with plumbers crack. Well, I made more last year than probably all regional captains, and I didn't kill myself working tons of overtime. I do have to take emergency duty, but it's only twice a year.

I am home every night. I am home every weekend. I am home every holiday, anniversary, and birthday. I was miserable flying for a regional. To me it wasn't worth the misery to get the privilege of flying a fancy airplane.

A very lucrative career can be had in the skilled trades. They are the backbone of this country. So the next time you look down your nose at a tradesman, remember, he is probably making more money than you are.

 

[TheFlyingTurkey]

HVAC guys work a lot and the money is either there or not, the calls come in waves (summer/winter). A lot of companies are getting out of the hourly game and going flat rate - that is you have a house call and the problem is "no heat/no cool". That pays a certainly amount (say 0.8) and you get your hourly rate X that time. If you go over that is on you, and unpaid. Guys are constantly pushed to "sell sell sell" and get a commission based off of the total ticket (can you say conflict of interest?!?). The job is almost always outdoors in the extreme temps, especially for the commercial guys up on the roof tops. It's not all it's cracked up to be. I investigated it heavily as I'm interested in it but I found I could make way more even as an FO at a commuter picking up one day of open time than working a month on my days off at an HVAC job.

This is not the rule if you are a skilled service technician. A good service tech will be employed full time.

 

[SlumTodd_Millionaire]

So the next time you look down your nose at a tradesman, remember, he is probably making more money than you are.

 

[wheelsup]

Some people took out way too much money for flight training. But it can be done a LOT less than $200k.

Once you get out in the real world, and live fairly cheaply, you can also put a lot of $$ away, or in this case pay down debt. I know a guy who lived in an RV he bought and paid off his student loans in about a year after doing that.

There are a lot of people going to liberal arts schools getting degrees that don't mean anything making $10/hr working at Starbucks. At least a degree in XYZ and a Comm/Multi/Inst/CFI/I/MEI will get you to a place you want to be at, that isn't a dead end job, with good benefits. Is it as cheap as it once was "back in the day"? No, but there are better opportunities as well, and significantly higher demand for pilots than 10-15 years ago.

Going to a normal place, I wonder what the cheapest one can get the ratings thru CFI/I/MEI is? I wonder if it could be done for $35k-$40k?

Here's my local place:

Cessna 152 - $75/hr
Warrior - $105/hr
Mooney - $164/hr

Dual is $25 (primary) to $28/hr (advanced)

I'm not sure what the job market for CFI's is these days. Is there a lot of flying to be had, or is it slow? I did just under 1000 hours in 11 months back 8-9 years ago at a career school, if that still exists you can be at a commuter in under 18 months of instructing (I can see the eyes rolling now).

 

[wheelsup]

This is not the rule if you are a skilled service technician. A good service tech will be employed full time.

Sure I can imagine. Depending on location there is more than enough work to go around for reliable, intelligent folks able to troubleshoot problems not just change parts. On a positive note, a trade is a way for someone who is truly head and shoulders above the rest to really excel in their field. As a pilot, you are a pilot, on a seniority list, no matter how good or bad you are, you all get paid the same.

Just like flying airplanes, it wasn't like you just went into that job. Both trades (piloting is certainly a trade) have to spend time at the bottom and work their way up. At 24 years, most pilots are going to be well up the list at a major carrier. You gave it a shot but didn't put nearly as much time into flying as you did your current industry, so hard to compare "new hire FO at a commuter" to "24 year industrial tech".

 

[KingAir]

I'm not an airline guy, so I'm sure I will get plenty of negative feedback from this, But it seems to me the problem with airline industry pay is in the pay scale itself. Why not close the gap by reallocating 20% of the top pay scale to the bottom pay scale? Why should a 15 year pilot make more than a 10 year pilot?

 

[SlumTodd_Millionaire]

I'm not an airline guy, so I'm sure I will get plenty of negative feedback from this, But it seems to me the problem with airline industry pay is in the pay scale itself. Why not close the gap by reallocating 20% of the top pay scale to the bottom pay scale? Why should a 15 year pilot make more than a 10 year pilot?

Because in order to do that after the fact, you have to take from one to give to the other. That doesn't go over too well, as you can imagine.

 

[Maurus]

It's easy to say "let go." It's a bit harder to actually let go when you're looking at a loss of your seat, a loss of money, and a commute to the west coast just to maintain bidding power. People shouldn't just "let go" over something like that. They should look for solutions instead of being pissed off or just giving up.

I said let go of stress. That doesn't mean they shouldn't take steps to try to improve their position. Mulling over how the company sucks for an entire trip and possibly at home is what causes problems. It adds to fatigue and pisses off the people you work with.

 

[KingAir]

Because in order to do that after the fact, you have to take from one to give to the other. That doesn't go over too well, as you can imagine.

I think my uncle would disagree, after spending 27 years with a prominent regional carrier just to get pink slipped at age 62. He took more than one pay concession for the good of the company. From my perspective the airline "golden arms" have been too greedy for too long.