job related rant
 

I had this student pilot. Eat, breathe, sleep and defecate aviation type of guy. knew all the airliners, knows the route structure for most major airlines, what cities they serve what cities they don't.

started flying when he was 16 years old. I got him soloed, we became fast friends. he got his license and i was super proud because I had mostly worked with the weekend warrior types and this kid was on his way to the tippy top.

He got his private and instrument ratings. headed off to school and spent 4 and a half years getting an aerospace degree. Got his commercial single engine and multi engine under his belt. Finished his flight instructor certificate and instrument instructor certificate. graduated with that degree in hand.

he had this dream that one day he would be a major airline pilot.

after he got his school finished up, we worked together on a number of "charter flights" all over the south central and southwest USA. really knows his stuff. great pilot.

today he walked away from that dream after dedicating all that time and energy to it.

I think it finally occurred to him that he would be much better off - financially speaking - if he went out and worked in the mud of the oil field with his brother.

his brother spent the weekend with him, apparently he earns a six figure income doing some job out in the field. which job im not sure. and whether my buddy can get the exact same job and whether or not it will take him 10 years to get to that earnings potential - I dont know. but with looming school loans to pay back and absolutely ZERO job prospects for pilots of his age/experience/flight time he made the decision to do what he felt like he had to do.

I understand why he did it.

you cannot expect a man to go to work for $18,000 a year in this country doing a job that cost him well over $100,000 in school loans to get into, flying hundreds of thousands of passengers a year all over the United States, on that wage... 240+ days a year away from home barely able to afford to feed himself let alone any family he may or may not have.

i cant blame him either - this time next month i will very likely be entering the insurance business at the recommendation of a family friend. My fairly long and varied career in aviation becoming an occasional weekend hobby.

I just hate to see it come to this for the guy. I know how frustrating it can be.

I have told him 3 things he needs to do over the next 12-18 months to get an airline job.

1. get a flight instructing job as there are a couple of positions to be had around here.
2. build about 500 more hours over the next 12-18 months
3. get about 100 hours of multi engine flight time over that same period and apply for any regional airline job - he'd be sure to get ONE at least.

but he wont have it.

I guess it says a lot about our country and the aviation industry itself when a young man would be better off to squat in the mud and bore scope pipelines than fly multi million dollar aircraft all over the country.

:nope:

Very bad, but sounds familiar.

Fact is, there are never enough jobs even for well-trained people. I would never have thought to serve in the Navy, then study with some success, and then never get a real job.

But face it, CNC machines and computers are making more and more jobs obsolete, and since there is so much offer manpower-wise, the relation of supply and demand is screwed up - there is no shortage even of well trained people, so companies can pay low prices, it's an open market.
There are doctors in machining and medicine, meanwhile driving a taxi to make a living. I am happy i don't have to do that, but if i had to .. you can be lucky if you get a job at all, nowadays :-?

Your rant has inspired my rant that ties in with your rant.

Allot of the blame belongs to these trade schools that pump out thousands of graduates a year for a field that has a 3% yearly new hire rate. The market becomes saturated with skilled labor and as competition increases the wages plummet. Its a win win for the schools and businesses alike and a no win for the graduate\employee.

Its a sad state of affairs that our country has gotten itself into. I see no future for anybody anymore. The American dream is officially dead.

hammer - check


nail - check


head - BAM

In fact my fiance has gone through the Certified Nursing Assistant program and completed it looking to get her foot in the door for nursing. Nobody is hiring because the field is so saturated, After three years she gave up.

So she looked to skip the basic experience requirements and jump right into nursing. It's a three to five year waiting list just to go to nursing school!

So she looked at being an x-ray tech on the advice of a friend and checked out the local program. They want 47k for 18 months of school and then to top it off they want you to work a year externship for free no pay! That school and its very same program was just 6k 5 years ago!

So she found a community college that's quite a drive to get to that has the same program but its only 9k but yet again its a three year waiting list just to get in!:damn:

Indeed!

It's sad that it's like that in any field... you can name almost any "dream job" of 'ole days and I that is indeed by and large a dead dream to day. In the one that I grew up dreaming of getting into, teaching, things are also looking bad. I'm seeing so many good people give up, just crushed by the blood-sucking system that it is. I myself am on the verge of getting out... and it's really disheartening.

As someone who still has aviation fantasies, that is also rather disheartening. I guess someday the best I can hope for myself is being a weekend warrior like that, but it's a shame to see someone put in so much work and real talent, and walk away with nothing.

Yup. It's time to switch over to the 21st century career model. Do something really dumb or lame on YouTube...or better yet have your kid do something really dumb or lame and put it up on YouTube against their will. Then cash in on the inevitable publicity machine. Recent winners include Rebecca Black and Dental Visit Boy.

I don't know what trade schools you're talking about but the one I teach at has to maintain a 76% placement rate or it looses it's accreditation and is no longer eligible for student loans. My course averages in the high 80's to low 90 percentile range.

Same sort of problem I had, I was training to become a sound engineer , then things started training. Rather than having a basic degree and a good chance of getting a job in the field. I would have to have God knows how many qualifications and about a one in a million shot of landing a job afterwards. I decided to quit whilst I was ahead and not fork out the stupid sums on tuition fees. :nope:

I recently left the Paramedic field for the same reasons. I made almost no money, was constantly in a high risk (driving, bio exposures, even been shot at a few times), High responsibility, high stress position, with little to now compensation.

I'm in the process of trying to get a factory job with my brother, who moves large cans of paint dye around and makes over twice what I did, and is far happier than I ever have been.

They say do a job you love and you'll never work again.

Not true. I loved my profession, and was pretty damn good at it. People regularly came to me for advice on various things. I was trying to get my instructors cert, but there was never enough interest overall to hold a class. I walked away a few months ago because I hated my career, but loved my profession.

It's different in each profession I guess then.

The paramedic programs have to maintain a minimum registry PASS rate. Nobody cares about placement in this field.

Another problem with paramedic programs, the schools teach you how to pass the test, not how to be a good medic. It's a catch 22 though. I know a lot of these instructors, and they are damn good medics themselves. But if they taught how to be a good medic, nobody would pass the test so it'd be moot anyways. So they spend all their time focused on the book work, and not teaching real life techniques.

That's a pretty pointed way of summing up what this thread is all about, yeah. Very sad :nope:

Embry Riddle Aeronautical University

Spartan School of Aeronautics

Daniel Webster College Aviation Program

Southeastern OSU aviation studies program

just to name a few.

go talk to any of their "recruiting" guys and they will lay out a whole degree plan and tell you about all the 23 year old first officers making $150,000 a year flying boxes around at FedEx and any number of other stories about young people making tons of money in the aviation industry.

they pump up young impressionable 18-19-20 year old kids with this BS and they go into debt chasing this dream only to graduate, start paying against their loans, and have almost NO job prospects besides flight instruction.

then, the flight instruction industry suffers because if you lined 100 flight instructors against the wall... 90 of them are there just to get a quick 500-1000 hours and go elsewhere. they may or may not be decent teachers, they may or may not be interested in whether or not you get your license... and most of them are just wanting to go home with what little money they made, grab a seat at the kitchen table and total up their logbooks every night.

the other 10 are in it to teach you for the right reasons. they love to teach, they love to interact with students and would do anything to get you a license.

and the "job placement" of institutions such as the ones i have mentioned are a bit askew of reality - reason being is that they offer flight instruction positions to a fair number of recent graduates which boosts their "placement numbers" by a considerable amount i would imagine.

the reality of it is - i know more pilots who are working in the insurance, retail, food service, construction and petroleum businesses than i do who are working in aviation.

sounds like me with teaching:shifty:. I discovered the semiconductor industry, and I gave teaching the "bird". Now I can't imagime teaching. Bratty kids, letigeous(sp:dead:) parents; no way!