The Future of JC

Maximilian_Jenius said:
So, on 11/03 I was flying back to PHX from BNA on WN. I saw a guy wearing an Ameriflight lanyard. We talked briefly as I was in the aisle walking back to find a seat.

Me: Hey are you guys hiring pilots? I'm a pilot. (i tell him my hours)

Him: Depends.

Me: On what?

Him: If you want to die, or not. Seriously, this place is bad. I wouldn't come here, there are better places that you should go. The planes are old and we just had a crash. We've been having a lot over the past few years. Single pilot in a 99, is not for weak at heart."

That was pretty much the entire conversation as I had to keep it moving. Not really a shining endorsement, from someone on the inside.
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I wouldn't take much stock in that. The planes have always been old.

Why would he still be there if it were that bad. It's 135 freight. That's what 135 freight looks like. The Beech 99 is one of the easiest turbo props that you can fly. It's an unpressurized king air. Nothing hard about it.
 
Maximilian_Jenius said:
Just asking a question, I just want to state that, so I'm not accused of being argumentative, making excuses, etc. Or not taking sage advice. I hear you. I absorbed what you said. But I got questions.

So, yeah that sounds cool. But how exactly does one do that, exactly? Honest question. My only issue with that is, again, how people do that? Just hangin' out around the airport all day three to five days a week. When they got food, rent/mortgage, car payments, electric bills, et al. Again not slamming the idea, but just wondering.
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Totally fair to ask. I don't know the details of other people's personal finances. What I do see, is someone having a bunch of roommates, other side gigs (boat captain in this case), and doing it 7 days a week. And probably a good bit of cash saved before going into it. The A&P is like a 3 year grind to get. For terrible pay. It's by no means the easy way.

Doing that is going to take a toll on your personal life. I've not been as gung ho about getting things done fast, but it still means not being around when people you care about would like you to be around. That's probably harder than the money end of things.

Even in my case, after teaching on the side for many years - if I get a job offer, and if I get a class date, I'll probably be selling my car, renting out my house, and supplementing my income from savings for a few years. And that's best case, for someone already close to ATP mins.
 
Maximilian_Jenius said:
Just asking a question, I just want to state that, so I'm not accused of being argumentative, making excuses, etc. Or not taking sage advice. I hear you. I absorbed what you said. But I got questions.

So, yeah that sounds cool. But how exactly does one do that, exactly? Honest question. My only issue with that is, again, how people do that? Just hangin' out around the airport all day three to five days a week. When they got food, rent/mortgage, car payments, electric bills, et al. Again not slamming the idea, but just wondering.

A while back someone told me that one of the FBO's was hiring a fueler. I was interested and I went to look at the job on Indeed, the pay was $12 an hour. I can't survive off of that in this economy.
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Bluntly, the airport rat approach depends, to some degree, on being a young, white, fresh-faced kid whose parents are paying rent.

In my opinion, just hanging around airports just isn't going to work for you. If you want to effectively achieve the goal, you're going to have to take some risk. The decision tree is one you'll have to build, because I can't call your risk for you. People tend to give advice that worked for them, or people they know, but everyone's situation is unique. Especially now.

I know some of your situation, and I know it's not as simple as it appears on the surface, as it often is.
 
🦈💜 said:
Bluntly, the airport rat approach depends, to some degree, on being a young, white, fresh-faced kid whose parents are paying rent.
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They guy I know doing this is not at all young. He does have a successful significant other, which may or may not make things easier. That said, it's pretty hard to get experience and time in airplanes if you aren't at an airport. A lot. I do agree, what works is going to be different for everyone. I stayed an a high paying day job longer than I wanted to, but that cost me years of doing something that I mostly hated.

At some point, you have to rip off the band aid and make it a full time job. With a plan. And a plan B. And a plan C. And be okay with none of those working out. I'm on week 6. Week 1 was at a job fair where no one was hiring. I figured that's as good a time as any to go all in.
 
drunkenbeagle said:
They guy I know doing this is not at all young. He does have a successful significant other, which may or may not make things easier. That said, it's pretty hard to get experience and time in airplanes if you aren't at an airport. A lot. I do agree, what works is going to be different for everyone. I stayed an a high paying day job longer than I wanted to, but that cost me years of doing something that I mostly hated.

At some point, you have to rip off the band aid and make it a full time job. With a plan. And a plan B. And a plan C. And be okay with none of those working out. I'm on week 6. Week 1 was at a job fair where no one was hiring. I figured that's as good a time as any to go all in.
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Sometimes it’s time to get in with both feet.
 
derg said:
I really don’t think you read what I wrote very carefully.
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You're just not super-brilliant enough. Musk bought Twitter for $44b, it's now worth $10b. And yet he is basically living at MAL now and directing US foreign policy, at least as pertains to Ukraine. A serially bankrupt nepo baby just got elected leader of the free world. You are simply not thinking/monetizing hard enough.

I'm troubled by the seeming lack of interest the utes have in airplanes/flying. When I was a single-digit age kid, all my spare change went to copies of Air Classics, Air Progress, and Flying that I could get at the grocery store every month. The only time I wanted to go to the store with mom was the first of the month when the new copies came out. And, I had the AAA newsletter coming to the house, and a free newsletter monthly that came monthly detailing airplane accidents and causes (and I always read "Aftermath" first in the Flying issues I'd buy). Also, in same Kroger, they had model airplanes on the toy aisle, hobby shops existed with loads of model airplanes, and kids seemed interested in it. Today, unless it is one the TikTok or whatever kids just aren't enamoured with airplanes or anything requiring outside, get off the couch activity. It baffles me. Want to make a gazillion dollars? Figure out the future pilot shortage by actually getting this useless lump children engaged in something.

Finally, as for JC - what I'm hearing from people is "More WacoFan". Many people are saying this. Big strong guys are coming up to me frequently - with tears in their eyes, saying "Sir, Sir...you need to be featured more on JC".
 
WacoFan said:
In Flying, the preferred order of reading was:
Aftermath
Len Morgan's column
Peter Garrisons technical/wonky column
Richard Collins
Bax Seat.

After the "newsy" stuff up front. I miss the airplane magazines.
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Aftermath was also Peter Garrison’s column. Len Morgan covered 121 airline stuff in Vectors. Richard Collins did the corporate/business side of flying and the reports on new aircraft. Gordon Baxter covered all the GA stuff in Bax Seat

Good stuff. All history now, sadly
 
the problem with a no-lav future is that the industry is inherently political. Unions, labor law, safety regulations, mergers, international relations, infrastructure etc…all political. And if there’s nowhere for threads to go other than deletion when they drift political, you become the opposite of jetCAREERS and might as well just be jetforums.com.
 
bimmerphile said:
is it just a sign of the times that there’s not much low time interest in the forum? if people want to know how the career works they’ll find an aforementioned subreddit on a site they already use, or follow some social media con artist for clips of how things work.

things have also been quite good for a number of years industrywide- the stagnation of the post-9/11 post-GFC glut has cleared and things are mostly pretty linear in a career track, outside of low time jobs in the post covid era. I think when times were good things just sort of quieted down, and those users that made real or internet friends here stuck around for the social discussions.

a new userbase could be good but that’s hard to cultivate eyeballs and I can’t imagine running this site is anything beyond a money losing prospect. I could slap a big JC.com vinyl on the side of the race plane @derg, cheaper than paying for banner ads on other sites 😁
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I keep saying this, the lack of traffic in the tech talk is just a reflection of the evolution of the industry, not some grand conspiracy about people only wanting to talk politics. A lot of factors have conspired to where there just isn’t much to talk about, tech wise. On the GA side a lot of the more exotic platforms are dead or dying and not really of interest unless you’re in that niche group that still operates them. On the airline side, the vast majority are flying E-jets, fifi, guppies, or some heavy, and anymore the amount of technique or whatever allowed by airline SOPs is pretty minimal. We can only have the 737 autobrake and flaps 2 conversations so many times and even if you learn something from it, what does it matter if it’s not in your airlines SOPs?
 
Roger Roger said:
the problem with a no-lav future is that the industry is inherently political. Unions, labor law, safety regulations, mergers, international relations, infrastructure etc…all political. And if there’s nowhere for threads to go other than deletion when they drift political, you become the opposite of jetCAREERS and might as well just be jetforums.com.
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Roger Roger said:
I keep saying this, the lack of traffic in the tech talk is just a reflection of the evolution of the industry, not some grand conspiracy about people only wanting to talk politics. A lot of factors have conspired to where there just isn’t much to talk about, tech wise. On the GA side a lot of the more exotic platforms are dead or dying and not really of interest unless you’re in that niche group that still operates them. On the airline side, the vast majority are flying E-jets, fifi, guppies, or some heavy, and anymore the amount of technique or whatever allowed by airline SOPs is pretty minimal. We can only have the 737 autobrake and flaps 2 conversations so many times and even if you learn something from it, what does it matter if it’s not in your airlines SOPs?
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Your mentioning of this made me wonder, regards industry evolution. Almost seems as if the Careers portion of JetCareers, has become obsolete. Not in a bad way. Just in that, it has served its purpose for the members who are here. While, as has been mentioned, the new generation of pilots don’t use forums for anything, they use the aforementioned TikTok, FB, etc. Almost akin to starting a new airline today, and purchasing a fleet of 727s to do it with. Instead of being like a toll road that has been paid off, and stops being a toll road. Just an observation.
 
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