So, you want to be an airline pilot..

Yes, one of those CGI videos

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkAKAheQIAA[/ame]


Any comments from those who have been there?

 

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=919IA_Lj0Ko&feature=channel[/ame]
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVe9zjO6-O8&feature=related[/ame]

 

The good old days ...

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pZ9IngGZpc[/ame]

 

I totally understand that this is supposed to be funny and some of it is, but it is readily apparent the maker of this video is some ***** regional pilot who never was able to rise above regional status and get with a major airline, probably because the idiot never bothered to get a college degree or hes screwed up one too many times cause hes a ****ty pilot and his record blows. All his buddies have now gone to bigger and better things and hes left with

A) The crusty older version of himself as a captain to fly with making 70 grand a year flying some turbo prop or crappy RJ
and/or
B) The 25 year old chick with 300 hours as a first officer who talks like a mouse on the radio and still really doesnt know how to make a crosswind landing and wont hang out with him on an overnight cause hes so miserable and negative.




First officers at my airline make 100k+ , Captains 200k+

In the 12 years Ive been with the airlines the vast majority I fly with are highly professional (ex-blue angels, guys who used to fly Airforce 1, ex-thunderbird pilots, ex-doctors, etc, etc.)

I have averaged 16 days off per month the entire 12 years.

I get 3 vacations per year each at 7 days off and i can easily turn each of those 7 day blocks into 20 days off or more by juggling my schedule and still receiving my average pay. Then i hop on any airline and fly free to my vacation spot.

If i dont want to work tomorrow i change my schedule. If i dont want to work this week i drop my trip (with the payloss of course)

We see incredible sunsets and sunrises from our "office" while chugging on some starbucks and discussing the big hooters on the chick in back.

We get to fly these really cool, new, fast shiney jets with all the bells and whistles.

Every day is different, one hour your in snow deicing the next couple of hours your in south FL. enjoying the palm trees.

You never have a boss telling you what to do.

You never take your work home with you, unless its checkride time.

Some flight attendants are hot and fun to hang with at the beach on an overnight.

I get a good healthcare plan and retirement bens.

Someone please tell me again why this is not a good job????

Of course the bad side is the instability in the airline environment but the good far outweighs the bad.

 

Highly paid bus drivers who are only there to handle break downs if the plane breakes because most of the new planes are automated. A profession w ith a very limited life span. From someone with the same licenses but doing something else for a living. Well past their retirement age and couldn't take the pay cut, the 200 wouldn't pay my taxes.

Art

 

You seem bitter, might need a Tic Tac.....

 

+1

 

Who pissed in your cheerios?

 

Agreed. Not the sort I want at the helm when his boredom is "punctuated by moments of sheer terror".
The fellow who made the(admittedly funny) video would be well served to seek another career.

 

Yea thats kind of my point, i know several guys who could be the guy who made that video. If your that miserable go do something else......yet, they never seem to quit. Heck they could go be a total badass, king of the world stud like ART who has gold plated toilet handles and revel in their self importance.

 

Wow Art. Does automation really have anything to do with what a pilot should be paid? Would we better justify our salaries if we had our hands on the controls at all times? I would think any pilot would understand that there is much more to flying than just stick and rudder. Knowledge, experience, judgement, dedication, and professionalism are as important today as they were in 1948.

You didn't mention what you do for a living Art, but I am sure modern technology is involved. If you are a surgeon, have you taken a pay cut because you rely less on a scalpel? If you are a lawyer did you cut your rates because you have a blackberry, westlaw and the Internet? If you're an architect, do you get paid less because you use a CAD program instead of a drawing board? yada yada yada

I thought the video was pretty funny and it hit home. But, when the pilot character said pilots weren't professionals, he meant they weren't treated as professionals by the industry/unions. I have flown with pilots with degrees in law, medicine, engineering, business, etc. Most pilots love flying and that's why they do it. A good salary makes it possible. Take that away and ask yourself who will fly your airplanes. I wouldn't do it for $50k/year. I do not believe in caste but you may not want the same guy driving your taxi flying your plane, or is it so automated that you would rather save $5 on your ticket?

Dave

 

I think he's a lawyer based on an old post of his a few years back iirc.

Anyway, about the comment on $50k/yr and not flying. I heard somewhere that airlines were able to make paycuts more often/severe because they knew pilots would be okay with it to an extent (because they love flying). Is that true? I know everyone has a price and $50k may be too low, but $200k -> $150k would probably not be as severe in attrition, yes?

 

Thats actually a big problem at the Regional airline level. Those companies are aware of people who will fly for virtually nothing in the beginning just to get into the front seat of a High performance turbo-prop or Jet. The problem is that eventually those people realize the amount of responsibility that they have and that it is a Job and not fantasy land and they start wondering why their buddy employed at Golds Gym with no college is making more money than they are flying airplanes for a living. Now with the economy the way it is and Regional pilots being "stuck" at their regional and some people flying as first officers at regionals for 7 years or more, its my understanding that many are looking for other careers and many young people are not even considering it as a career to begin with.
Regional Airlines are a great way to build time and experience and make a decent living, but there is no way in the world I would do this for a career if i had to stay at a Regional Airline.
At the major airline level the problem is by the time you get to 200K you've got so much of your life tied up into one company and you have pretty high seniority that youd rather take a paycut than have to start over at the bottom at another airline. Thats why some people advocate a nationwide Seniority list instead of company based.

 

Hes pissed cause his dad turned out to be right...........................
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It is a difficult problem. Pilots are sometimes willing to take deep concessions, not because they love to fly, but because they live in the real world and understand that the business is cyclical and highly competitive. They want to "live to fly another day" so to speak.

A new airline may be able to get pilots to fly for $50k/year but the new pilots would see it as a stepping stone to a higher paying job with a Major Airline or they would expect salaries to go up as the new airline grew.

However, human nature can't be overlooked. A pilot working for $50k, with no hope of anything greater, may not have his/her heart in it. Of course their butt is in the seat so the airplane will hopefully be flown safely but there is much more to the job than safety alone. Modern Airliners are not nearly as automated as people think. A pilot can make a huge difference in how efficiently an aircraft is operated. Computers can spit out a flight plan in seconds that would take a pilot hours to calculate by hand but it is just a plan. Nothing ever goes as planed! Managing the efficient operation of a (600,000lb/$100,000,000?) aircraft is where a happy pilot can be one of an airline's biggest assets. I am not just talking about efficient fuel burn but decisions based on weather, delay management, routine system failures, aircraft wear-and-tear, weather, etc. Of course an airline Captain has the excellent help of dispatchers, mechanics, and air traffic control but there is no substitute for being in the seat with years of experience under ones belt. Airlines know this, and this is why, in spite of deep cuts, pilots are still paid fairly well. The dollar figure that relates to a pilots worth is still being hashed out in the industry, but I don't think it will go much lower. I believe we are at or below rock bottom for long term retention of pilots and good economy for the Airlines.

Dave

Edit: Being a mere co-pilot myself, I should also mention that in addition to the dispatchers, mechanics, and ATC... airline Captains also have the excellent help from co-pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, ground support, crew scheduling and let's not forget the real heros of the industry. The engineers that design and build these amazingly reliable aircraft.
dave

 

God, I just ran across this vid. He speaks the truth!

 

Good example of how to ruin a reputation in only a few lines lol....

 

You sir, have no clue what you are talking about. Typical little pilot "wanna be" who couldn't shine a true professional pilots shoes. We have to watch out for amateurs like you.

Oh by the way I retired from the profession ....and pay 10 times the taxes you do if you catch my drift. And your ATP that you got in a Baron? What a joke.

 

You nailed it.

 

No worries, Art's like that in Silver too.

I would love to fly for a living. At 44 I think I am definitely too old to pursue it. In the early 2000's, when I was training and still in my early to mid 30's, all I remember reading everywhere was that pilot pay sucked, and you'd be lucky to make $25k at a regional. The other thing was that high paying FO and Captain jobs were a thing of the past. I was making more than $25k at the time so I thought "cool job but no thanks".

 

^^^ I think Dave NAILED IT.

Given that the responsibility of conducting a safe flight is no less for a captain piloting a RJ than it is for a captain of a 'heavy' it makes you wonder whether the entire pay scale (a/c type and experience level) is backwards. Seems to me that senior pilots with the most experience should be flying high requency routes through conjested airspace in RJ's and turboprops at the lower FL's in crappy weather rather than 10 hr overseas flights with crew rests and relief pilots.

 

That is they way it is throughout aviation, although it's not as backward as it might seem at first glance.

My experience is all on the corporate/charter side, but it's similar. Basically, it's much easier to fly a G550 with modern avionics, a flight attendant, etc domestically than it is to fly an old Learjet or a turboprop.

However, many people with G550s don't want to just fly around domestically. They want to go to Buenos Aires, and from there to Dubai, and maybe into India somewhere, before coming home with a tech stop in Russia. When you do that sort of flying, there are so many issues beyond simply managing the airplane that you NEED the airplane to be easier to fly so that you can concentrate on all the other aspects of the job.

I'm sure the same thing, more or less, is the case with the airlines.

 

I was always curious about the airline promotion system, if I understand it right you start off in the right seat of the small stuff, then progress up to the bigger and heavier aircraft, but remain in the right seat.
Then when you get to Capt you go back down to the smallest stuff again. Is that the way it is at every airline ?
Would it not make more sense to go from the right seat to the left on the regional, then to the right seat of say the 737, then to the left, then to the right seat on the 757 then on to the left seat of that, etc etc.
In other words you are FO then Capt on the same type before moving onto the bigger ones..
How does it actually work ? is it Union driven or just airline culture ?

 

And, I see in your profile that it says your interests are "pissing off lawyers". I love it. Was this added after making that comment to Art, or do you really just have a knack for it?

 

No proud to say that byline has been there awhile. Although it applys to some not all Lawyers (you know who you are LOL)