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I'm a young pilot. Any advice?


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Hello, I'm a 17-year-old student pilot about to get my private pilot license. My dream has always been to become a commercial pilot for large airlines such as united, delta, american etc. I'm a senior in highschool and still haven't decided on which college to chose. I visited Ohio University and Kent State, and went to their airports to check it out. They were nice and all but I was wondering if getting a 4 year degree in something aviation related and minoring in business (as a backup) was a good idea or if there was a better path to take. My main goal is to join a regional airline such as Republic, as they're based in my home city, working towards my hours to hop on with the main airlines.

 

I would really appreciate it if current commercial pilots could give me some advice or share the path they took towards commercial flying.

Thanks :)

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Keeping in mind that the term "commercial pilot" actually means someone who flies for hire, not just airline pilots, there are a multitude of ways to go.

 

Your general approach sounds pretty good for a start, and it's an excellent idea to have a degree in something you can fall back on should you fail your medical some day, as sometimes happens. Whether that something is aviation related or not depends so much on your interests, since most any degree will meet the airlines' requirement for college. Ohio State has an excellent aviation program, as does North Dakota, to name a couple more schools to look at. Here's a list of the 10 "best" aviation degree colleges. Besides the degree itself, most of those also have programs to take you through flight training.

 

Note my comment above about "commercial pilot." I am a "commercial pilot," meaning I have my Commercial certificate, and I've flown for hire -- I started in 1971 for hire as a part time flight instructor, and I've also done banner towing, glider towing and charter flying over the years, but always as a sideline, with my main income in a non-aviation field. And I haven't done too badly, have flown about 60 different types of aircraft over the years, all light singles or twins, including gliders, open cockpits biplanes, antiques, etc., much of it for pay.

 

There are also corporate pilots, agricultural pilots, pipeline patrol pilots and many, many more fields needing pilots, in addition to the airlines, which could give you a flying career.

 

A good friend of mine flies for United and, until a couple of years ago, also flew for the South Dakota Air National Guard (F-16s) -- he finally retired from that). A guy down the street is a corporate pilot, making a very nice living flying bizjets, and gets to go many places that an airline type would never see, without the (to many people) boring aspect of flying the same route over and over and over until they can bid another route to fly over and over and over.

 

If you choose to be a CFI while you are building time, you'll learn as much as or possibly more than your students do, especially for the first 200-300 hours of teaching, but teaching is a specialized field, in itself, whether aviation or another field, and requires a certain dedication to be good at it.

 

Note that often (not always) people you know in aviation will give you leads to jobs, perhaps even give you recommendations, so get to know a lot of folks in the field -- there's a lot to learn, even just hangar flying. Also, reading all you can about aviation, not just magazines, but peruse the library for books written over the years, some fiction perhaps, but non-fiction such as Fate Is The Hunter by Ernest K. Gann, Weather Flying by Robert Buck, Stick and Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche and many more (there was a thread on this site about that recently) can provide you with valuable information.

 

One final comment: Airline pilots spend as much (if not more) time keeping up to date with the latest info, recurrent training, and many other tasks as they do actually flying. Corporate pilots often do the same. ALL other pilots flying for hire have a lot of that to do, too. So bookwork and drudgery will be there for most flying careers part of the time. In other words, it's not all glamor.

 

Best of luck to you.

 

Larry N.

As Skylab would say:

Remember: Aviation is NOT an exact Science!

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  • 3 months later...

Look at the ATP minimums for starters. If you go the 141 route you'll qualify for your restricted ATP at a 1000 hours. I went part 91 and didn't qualify until I reached 1500. A structured program, in my opinion, is the way to go and you'll have many resources along the way. I just interviewed at SkyWest and all applicants were flight instructors. This is ideal as you'll build hours quickly. Short comings of flight instructing will be building cross country time so manage that carefully.

 

https://www.boldmethod.com/blog/2013/08/1500-hour-rule-restricted-atp/

 

The airlines like to get proficient IFR pilots so go for CFII and be a good proficient IFR pilot and use Jeppesen.

 

An Alternate route would be to build enough hours to get hired by a 135 operator and the airlines offer bonuses for 135 experience. You only need a few hundred hours and a multi rating with roughly 15 hours to get hired flying right seat.

 

Good Luck!

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  • 6 months later...

In 2008 I was sent to Almaty for a 40-day course of flight executives. After passing them and passing the exam and some questions on geography, I got the right to become the flight director.

The instructors of various schools and flying places start hundreds of enthusiasts from the top down from small slides in the calmest weather conditions. But they do it as accurately as possible, selecting start points and all other conditions, as well as doing all the launch operations for the pilot as much as possible and ensuring it in the first meters of the flight so that in the absence of any actions from the novice pilot, its flight would still pass safely from start to landing. This is not the same thing when compared to when you are left to yourself (you choose your own equipment, a place to start and land, as well as weather and other conditions).

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In 2008 I was sent to Almaty for a 40-day course of flight executives. After passing them and passing the exam and some questions on geography, I got the right to become the flight director.

The instructors of various schools and flying places start hundreds of enthusiasts from the top down from small slides in the calmest weather conditions. But they do it as accurately as possible, selecting start points and all other conditions, as well as doing all the launch operations for the pilot as much as possible and ensuring it in the first meters of the flight so that in the absence of any actions from the novice pilot, its flight would still pass safely from start to landing. This is not the same thing when compared to when you are left to yourself (you choose your own equipment, a place to start and land, as well as weather and other conditions).

 

For the pilot, a high sense of responsibility, leadership qualities, lack of fear of heights, high emotional-volitional stability, ability to quickly shift attention, quick response, high intelligence, diligence, desire to master something new are important.

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For the pilot, a high sense of responsibility, leadership qualities, lack of fear of heights, high emotional-volitional stability, ability to quickly shift attention, quick response, high intelligence, diligence, desire to master something new are important.

 

Which book did you copy that from?

 

Primary requirement for ANY pilot is the ability to fly, and understand the physics involved. Then it's understanding it's a never-ending learning process, and you WILL be a student for the rest of your flying life even after you qualify...

 

Learning by Rote is never a good thing, but learning the answer `why` will keep you alive when others tumble into the `cumulus granitus` or ocean.

 

Flight sim is almost irrelevant for this kind of learning, and no substitute for getting out there and flying. Flight Sim is relevant for complex systemology and `deep learning`of cause-and-effect. Of course it IS good at repetition and can be very good at practical learning before flight into the unknown. But that doesn't apply to default simming!

 

In our club we invite fly-out pilots to practice approaches and `distance flying` over mimickry of terrain and airfields when it takes them out of their comfort zone or into new airspace. We haven't had an airspace infringement caused by poor pilotage by a club member in over two years - and given this is Southern England, that's quite something!

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Primary requirement for ANY pilot is the ability to fly, and understand the physics involved. Then it's understanding it's a never-ending learning process, and you WILL be a student for the rest of your flying life even after you qualify...

 

Learning by Rote is never a good thing, but learning the answer `why` will keep you alive when others tumble into the `cumulus granitus` or ocean.

Amen!

 

For the pilot, a high sense of responsibility, leadership qualities, lack of fear of heights, high emotional-volitional stability, ability to quickly shift attention, quick response, high intelligence, diligence, desire to master something new are important.

That is the sort of meaningless drivel expounded by managers who just barely understand something about the job you're doing (or don't understand anything about it), but want to sound encouraging, knowledgeable, or otherwise make themselves seem important.

 

It certainly has little to do with being a professional pilot. For example: "lack of fear of heights," is irrelevant to a pilot. I'm afraid of heights, yet had no problem flying in a wide variety of aircraft (including open cockpit) over more than 40 years of flying. Yet standing next to a large glass window with the sill below my waist in a skyscraper makes me extremely uncomfortable.

 

If you're the "flight director," whatever that is, I hope you develop more sense of what is really important.

 

Larry N.

As Skylab would say:

Remember: Aviation is NOT an exact Science!

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Hello, I'm a 17-year-old student pilot about to get my private pilot license. My dream has always been to become a commercial pilot for large airlines such as united, delta, american etc. I'm a senior in highschool and still haven't decided on which college to chose. I visited Ohio University and Kent State, and went to their airports to check it out. They were nice and all but I was wondering if getting a 4 year degree in something aviation related and minoring in business (as a backup) was a good idea or if there was a better path to take. My main goal is to join a regional airline such as Republic, as they're based in my home city, working towards my hours to hop on with the main airlines.

 

I would really appreciate it if current commercial pilots could give me some advice or share the path they took towards commercial flying.

Thanks :)

 

Please watch these videos:

 

 

 

Sully said he didn't know one pilot coworker who wanted their own child to follow into the same career.

 

But, STEAM careers pay well and are interesting in the same way that flying is. The hours are much better, too.

 

Sean

'Glichy' controls or switches and don't want to pay for new ones? Read on... You can bring a controller back to life by exercising it through it's full range of motion or from maximum to minimum and back again 50 times. I had a Logitech joystick that gave left rudder without touching it but turning it 50X fixed it.
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