[QUOTE=JoeyBalls,Oct 18 2010, 06:02 PM] I love to fly Tailwheels with no doors or radios, flying an airliner is difficult, you are bound by THOUSANDS of Federal Regulations, company policy & procedures, you have hundreds of checklists, have to fly the airplane specific way, everything you do is scrutinized, job is on the line ALL the time for what?

 

This was a good way to start my day.




How did you get your pilot's license? I'd want to keep flying, just not for a commercial airliner. Private companies or air taxis seem like a good idea. Can you become a bush pilot?

 

Maybe try to serve as a consultant for some of the big house aviation design houses (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.)

I am sure with their major aeronautic programs they have pilots that serve as consultants. You would provide a unique perspective that engineers, etc. can't match.

 

Dude, you are so wrong it's not even funny. You have absolutely no clue how the airline industry works. First of all, My "ego" are you kidding me? I would go to a major airline in a heartbeat, however I can not upgrade here to Captain, hence I won't have "captain" experience to allow me to even apply to major airlines. Drive? I have drive, I was an airline pilot at 24 years old, that takes drive friend. The problem is once you get hired by the airlines, it doesnt matter how much "drive" you have, its all based on a seniority number. It's all a crapshoot. years ago people snickerd at pilots who could only get hired at fedEx, now they are the highest paid and hardest airline to get hired with. I can't apply there until I upgrade to Captain here, I can't upgrade to Captain here because my airline is shrinking, I have no control over when I upgrade. Jesus your post was aggravating

 

Do you have enough experience to do private work? I.E. work for a Oil Co. or equivalent large co. that needs Corporate Jet pilots?

I know a guy who flies the Budweiser regional managers around from San Antonio. He has a cush life and gets to do all the fun stuff with the manages. Sounds like a Win/Win.

 

While espelir has a good point, you must understand not everything is cut and dry.

Joey has had his fill of the BS factor. I know from my experience with Pilots that the profession took a big dip as Joey describes.

Why do you think US airlines suck so badly? Overregulation coupled with cost cutting measures coupled with unhappy employees.

I flew international on American Airlines. What a HORRIBLE experience. I had connections on a couple of foreign airlines. Those had new planes, flight attendants that looked like models and excellent food.

Again I can empathize.

 

First, props for being a pilot - so much respect from me for that.

Second, I personally reject the standard resume format that is generally sent to employers in the US because I can't put enough details into it - I follow a more European style curriculum vitae and spread it across 4.5 pages.

Third, as far as new career choices go, if your logic and math skills are decent you can look at being a number of different types of network infrastructure engineer, such as a the Cisco Certified Professional series. You can certainly learn Ethernet, TCP/IP, routing, subnets, etc on your own but if you can invest in it the Cisco training may be worth it.

At the lower end of that is cage monkey or network cable jockey - either maintaining equipment inside datacenter cages or running network cables in cages, offices, etc with snakes or crawling through tight spaces (does kind of suck) and such. There's not much room for career growth but the pay can be pretty decent and you can't outsource physical work like that. I haven't looked in a few years but terminating (putting the ends on) fiber optics was a high demand job that little were qualified for but requires nothing more than a little patience and some precision tools.

Of course programmer is always an option, the most bang for your buck languages for ease of learning and ability to get a job would be either Ruby, Python, or PHP - they are all decent growing languages with wide spread use, they should be around for quite a while as well.

As for pay, it might be hard to nail another $50k/year job with out a lot of relevant work experience but this is going to depend on your market.

Good luck! I'm sorry to hear that you are getting assed out of the industry while it goes to hell. Pilots deserve so much better than that. I read an interview with Sully Sullenburger and he laid into the industry as a whole saying basically no new pilot is going to be able to make a decent living wage; he was pretty unhappy.

 

Ever thought about flying private? I figured those guys with the G6s have the money and WANT to spend money on a good pilot.

 

I have a life long friend that flies a G5....for a very large corporation... He is NOT married, for reasons being....He has an awesome life, and makes lots...of money....but......He has told me, soooo many times, when I pack for a trip,taxie to the active..... and we are cleared for take-off....I might not see home, for a month....( and that is true )

...What Joey has told you, in a nutshell...being a pilot, is not all that it used to be....
I too, know this, from ambitions that I had years ago...I too, have flown many, many hours....Now it's just for fun !!! Times have changed...It is not all the glory, that it once was....and he wants "OUT".....

If you can...help him out !!!

 

your period key is stuck. Just sayin'