Flying an airplane is fun, getting paid to do it is even better. For some people,
it's the perfect job: an office that travels with them and a view that's constantly changing.
If you want to be a pilot, then you need to get a private pilot's license,
and this requires 40 total flight hours, 20 hours with an instructor, and 10 hours solo,
which will cost you about $10,000, depending on the flight school.
To work for an airline, you need a commercial pilot's certificate, which requires about 250
hours of total flight time, 20 hours with an instructor, and 10 hours in a complex airplane.
Additionally, a commercial pilot needs an up-to-date first- or second-class medical
certificate, an instrument rating, and a multi-engine rating. For you to receive
a medical certificate, an aviation medical examiner must verify that you meet the health
and fitness requirements to be a pilot. To fly with low visibility in bad weather and clouds,
you'll need to earn an instrument rating, which takes 15 hours with an instructor and 40 hours
of simulated or actual instrument flight time and costs between $15,000 and $20,000.
To fly planes with multiple engines, you need to have some lessons and pass a multi-engine
check-ride. But this is not where it ends. And this process will cost you on average: $100,000.
Airlines prefer to hire those with a college degree, and this depends on where you live,
countries like Germany and Norway don’t even charge tuition at all.
At this point, you’re still not qualified to fly for large airlines like Emirates, Delta,
or Qantas. To qualify: you need to get an airline transport pilot certificate, which is the highest
level of aircraft pilot certificate, and to get this, you need at least 1,500 flight hours,
which will cost you about $100,000 in aircraft rental fees. But most pilots don’t do this,
what they do is fly for airlines that don’t need an airline transport pilot certificate or
work as an instructor to build time. If you took a student loan, at the end of this,
you will be about $200,000 in debt. Briefly, in the late 1960s, some airlines
hired people without certificates or flight time and trained them from the ground up. These days,
a major airline hiring a pilot with a freshly minted commercial pilot's certificate
is almost impossible. Most successful pilot applicants at major airlines have thousands
of flight hours. The easiest way to get into a major airline is to start with a regional airline.
There are two major career paths for being hired as an airline pilot: civilian or military:
In the civilian career path, you can attend a college that offers a two-or
four-year degree (some universities even offer advanced degrees in aviation)
along with flight training toward various pilot certificates.
Several universities in the United States and Canada offer courses along with flight training so
that you graduate with a bachelor's or associate's degree in aviation, along with a commercial pilot
certificate and multi-engine and instrument ratings. There are also technical schools
that offer flight training toward a certificate, often in less time. In both types of programs, you
often graduate with an instructor's rating, and you've built up some flight time teaching others.
An alternative to a professional school or college is to get your flight training
piecemeal from a local flight school. It will take longer, and the level of instruction
might not be as rich, but all commercial certificates are equal in the eyes of the FAA.
Civilian training costs a lot of money. Basic flying lessons start at about $80 an hour,
and you'll need at least 250 hours before you have your commercial license.
In the military, you commit too many years of service after your one year of pilot training,
which is usually 10 years of commitment in the Air Force for most countries. You must also meet
other requirements, such as college coursework, good health, and adequate physical ability. There
are no guarantees that you'll pass the military flight training on the service's rigid schedule,
or that you'll get to fly a specific airplane. In exchange for these compromises, the military
pays you to train, and you get the best training in the equipment that an airline pilot would fly.
A military pilot lives a military life, follows orders, risks bodily harm, and
uses lethal weapons. These aren't things to take lightly, so if you are considering the military,
then explore it thoroughly and see if it is right for you and your career needs. It is an
excellent experience for many people. Some pilots even make the military their career.
After a pilot is certified, the next step is to get more experience and flight hours before
an airline will hire him or her. Because of the military's service commitment, a military pilot
will probably get a lot of flying experience before he or she leaves to join an airline.
A civilian pilot, or a military pilot who needs more flight hours,
may work as a flight instructor, then perhaps move to a charter company,
then to a regional airline. Once hired, regardless of
your background, the regional airline will train you based on its procedures.
The initial training at a regional airline takes about 10 weeks. Basic indoctrination lasts a week
or so. Training on general subjects, which include regulations and company-specific procedures, takes
another week. You will spend two weeks on aircraft systems specific to the equipment you'll operate.
Pilots will usually specialize in one type of airplane to get their type rating:
like 737s or A320s, until they move to a seat on a different airplane. After that,
you'll pair off with a training partner and have two or more weeks of simulator training.
In the simulator, you'll experience just about every emergency and anomaly imaginable.
You'll focus particularly on crew coordination and successful landing. All maneuvers are practiced
until they are satisfactorily completed. Once the pre-checks, oral examinations,
and final check-rides are over, then you have completed the airplane training.
But you're not ready just yet. Next, you'll fly with a special instructor pilot and get initial
operating experience. This experience, which includes at least 25 hours of flight time, will
teach you to integrate your newfound technical skills with the daily requirements of the job.
After the initial operating experience, you face another flight test, called a line check.
After you pass the line check, you are released to operate scheduled flights as a crew member.
Airlines are now required to set up 100 hours of flying for you after a line check,
so you can get immediate experience. After all that, you'll want a vacation.
After spending over $180,000 in pilot training and spending several months training at the
regional airline that employed you, you will start flying passengers, earning about $30,000 a year,
the same as an average person working at McDonald’s with a high school diploma.
The reason for this is that, on average: pilots can only fly about 1000 hours per year,
which is about 100 hours per month, for a maximum of 30 hours each week, but
in most cases, most pilots can barely manage 20 hours of flight per week. You might think
it’s a good thing, you might feel pilots have so much time for themselves, but the truth is:
the 20 hours is only flying hours. It doesn’t include the time you spend on non-flying duties.
For example, if you took off from JFK to Atlanta and just as it was time to embark on the return
flight, the weather gets bad, the flight is canceled. The airline won’t pay you for the time
you sat in Atlanta, they won’t pay you for the time it took you to get to the hotel and back when
the weather is clear, they won’t pay you for the time you spent clearing security, they won’t pay
you for the time you spent on inspections. Your money only starts to count from the moment you
turn on the engine and take off. And this is why senior pilots only want to fly the longer route.
A regional pilot's weekly trip looks like this:
On Monday, they will travel from London to Paris, Paris back to London,
London to Barcelona, and Barcelona to, let's say, Munich, where they will sleepover.
When they wake up on Tuesday morning, they will fly from Munich to London,
London to Brussels, and Brussels to Amsterdam, where they will spend the night.
Wednesday's flight might take them from Amsterdam to Madrid, then Warsaw before they return to base
in London. They will continue this way till the end of the week, averaging about 10 to 20
hours of flight time. In comparison to senior pilots at British Airways flying long haul,
they would take off from London Heathrow on a Monday night, and head to Los Angeles,
landing on Tuesday morning. Then rest for two days and fly back to London on Thursday.
These pilots will accumulate about 22 hours of flight time. In just two flights, they will make
more than double what the regional pilots will make in over 10 flights. This is why regional
airlines barely retain pilots because most pilots quit after gaining enough experience to work for
a major airline. It's not just regional airlines that are losing pilots; airlines in North America
and Europe are also losing pilots, especially to airlines in the Middle East and China.
Emirates pilots are among the highest-paid in the business.
Even young Emirates pilots earn more than $200,000 a year, which is tax-free due to local laws.
The reason for this is that the UAE is a small country with two large airlines, Emirates and
Etihad, therefore they rely significantly on recruiting foreign pilots, and you have to offer
almost twice as much to get most individuals to leave their country to fly somewhere else.
China, on the other hand, is not a small country, but few Chinese people enjoy flying,
resulting in a shortage of local pilots to staff their rapidly expanding airline industry.
As a result, Chinese airlines pay foreign pilots a starting salary of $320,000 per year,
with those with a lot of hours earning up to half a million dollars per year.
The reason pilot training is so expensive is that; flight schools need airplanes, and airplanes
are very expensive. With fuel costs, maintenance costs, tearing the plane apart, inspecting it,
and putting it back together after every 100 hours of use, insurance, storage fees,
administrative costs of running the school, and a few peanuts an hour for the instructor,
even a non-profit college program has to charge at least a couple hundred dollars an hour
for a common training airplane just to break even. Engines typically last 2,000 hours,
with lots of maintenance and some major (and expensive) parts replaced along the way.
After those 2,000 hours, it's time to overhaul the engine at a cost of over $20,000. After 7,000 or
8,000 hours of abuse from student pilots bouncing down the runway, it's time for a whole new plane.
Figure $30 per hour to buy a new plane after 8,000 hours. $10 per hour to buy a new engine
after 2,000 hours. $5 per hour for oil changes and parts that are replaced on a scheduled basis.
$30 per hour toward the 100-hour inspections (including prop inspection, pitot-static system,
transponder, and ELT inspections, as required). $45 per hour for fuel,
and $30 per hour for the instructor who only makes $15 but costs $30 to employ with benefits,
and employer taxes are taken into account. That's $150 per hour,
and we haven't even gotten into unscheduled maintenance costs when avionics or engine parts
wear out unexpectedly, insurance, storage, or the administrative costs of running the school.