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Always happy to talk to aspiring pilots 🙂 My grandfather was a pilot, my dad was a pilot, my mom was a flight attendant, and my husband is a pilot – we are an aviation family for sure!
HOW TO GET IN
Traditionally, there have been two ways to get the necessary training: join the military or go to one of the couple colleges that specializes in aviation (Embry-Riddle, North Dakota, there might be others). The colleges and the necessary flight hours are eye-wateringly expensive; 25 years ago, the cost was $100k for the 4 year degree and the flight certificates. For the military, your daughter would do ROTC at any college of her choice (or a service academy, if she’s very athletic). She could go to college for free on an ROTC scholarship, but she won’t know if she got a pilot “slot” until her senior year; she’d have to be ok with any other job in the military in case she isn’t picked for aviation. While the Marines do have some fixed wing ( = airplanes vs rotary wing = helicopters) assets, her options in the military are really the Air Force or the Navy. The Navy is more fighters, while the Air Force has cargo jets, flying gas stations, radar planes, and more in addition to fighters. For the last 20-ish years or so, flying for the military has come with an 8 year obligation that starts after the pilot finishes 1.5-2 year flight school, so basically a 10 year commitment. That big commitment is because the cost is so expensive and they spend so much time training baby pilots.
I don’t know if you’ve seen headlines about the looming pilot shortage, but because there’s a mandatory federal retirement age for pilots at age 65, the airlines have been trying to get creative with how to fill their ranks. All of the legacy carriers (= United, American, Delta = the big guys that have been around since the beginning of commercial aviation) have now opened their own flight “academies.” You’ll have to research these. I don’t know anything about their requirements (do you need a bachelor’s to enter? what if you have an associate’s and will finish your bachelor’s while there?) or their cost (is there a cost? if not, do you owe a commitment like the military? student loans?) or their target audience (mid-career job changers? 18 year old students?).
WORK-LIFE
Most people have no idea what pilot and flight attendant schedules look like. Unless they’re trying to earn extra money, they work typically no more than 15 days per month. A pilot or FA signs up to work a certain number of hours per month. As a baby pilot, she’ll “sit reserve” (on call). Brand new pilots get the super short calls – e.g., be here at the airport in 2 hours. For those calls, you have to be located within X minutes of the airport. When you’ve got a few months under your belt, you get more notice, and can be within X hours of the airport. When you get enough seniority, you’ll get a regular schedule. What’s “enough?” When my dad started flying, the airlines were full of WWII pilots and he had to sit reserve for years, and the pay is pretty crappy. Today, baby pilots are only sitting reserve for 6 months because senior pilots are retiring so rapidly.
A regular schedule is called a “line.” You hold a line and you bid a line. When enough pilots above you have retired that you graduate off reserve, you’re said to have enough seniority to “hold a line.” Certain lines always go to the seniormost pilots – the ones with a 36 hour layover in Turks & Caicos, for example 😉 A baby pilot won’t have the necessary seniority to hold that line; the more senior pilots will snap that one up. A young pilot will be able to hold a crappy line with icky hours and destinations, but it’ll be yours and you can plan around it.
Pilots and FAs put in their bids every month for the different lines based on what they want to do. Have a dentist appt on the 21st? Great, arrange to be home that day. Recital on the 30th? Ditto. Pilots and FAs always “go out on a trip” for 2-4, rarely 5, days at a time. You, passenger, are only going from hub-to-destination, but your crew has other places to go, so that plane will get freshened up and go out again in 90-ish mins. The crew will do 3-5 “legs” in a domestic day, depending on the length of legs.
This may vary by airline, but FAs and pilots sign up to fly a number of hours/trips per month.
Pilots and FAs have federally mandated crew rest requirements, so there’s a limit to how many hours they can work. At the end of day 1, the crew will check and see that they’re staying in the Airport Hilton or whatever tonight, so they’ll call for the airport shuttle, and they’ll pick them up, and each crewmember will check into their own hotel room, all paid, and they’ll meet up in the morning in the lobby and catch the airport van again. The rooms are paid but food is not, but there is a modest per diem. And they’ll do this for 2-4-5 days: fly to 3-5 cities per day, stay at a hotel, go back to the airport and fly to another 3-5 cities… Yes, it’s absolutely exhausting. But you choose your schedule! And say you personally hate the Hilton in Cleveland that the airline has a contract with…well, just don’t bid Cleveland again. And you can choose how many days you’re home between trips.
My dad died when I was young (car accident, not aviation) and my mom was always able to help out and be as hands-on as she wanted to be (she was an awesome Girl Scout Cookie Mom <3) and she could always make recitals and that sort of thing. But there were plenty of things she wasn’t around for because she had literal places to be. The older you get, the better your schedule gets (because it’s just you and your friends bidding that Turks & Caicos trip). But when she was home, she was available during the day, which was great for helping out at school.
DOWNSIDES
Did I mention this life can be a grind?
Need I mention winter storms or computer meltdowns?
The aviation business is cyclical. Is there money to be made for pilots? Yes. Is it guaranteed? Nope. Wait half an hour for some airline to have some crisis. My mom is fully convinced that airlines never actually make money if you balance out the bad years with the good years. And what happens when there’s a downturn? Layoffs and furloughs. Which means your income dries up and the only thing you’re good at isn’t a viable way to make money. For a sample crisis, American Airlines is in a bunch of pain right now because they had ordered a bunch of new Boeings that are years delayed and so AA is flying older planes that aren’t as fuel effecient which is decreasing profits – airline execs have to have crystal balls to do their jobs well. AA is hurting so badly they’ve turned off their pilot hiring, even though they have the oldest pilot workforce in the US.
Union contracts expire and you’ll work years without a contract. Strikes are not uncommon.
There are other ideas just on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t remember them, so this will have to do. Hope this helps!
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Kat
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