Realistic career path?
Posted: Sat Aug 26, 2017 7:52 am
Apologies if this isn't the best forum for this conversation, but it seemed like the best fit so here goes:
I'm 32 and have been teaching ESL overseas for 10 years. It's time for a career change and I'm seriously considering flying. I'm probably the opposite of most people, though, in that I'd actually prefer to find a seasonal-only job. Ideally, I would work in Canada flying over the summer, and spend the rest of the year overseas here staying warm and doing some other odd jobs that I enjoy. I don't really know anything about the industry so I'm hoping for some advice, recommendations, or a slap to the face with cold hard truth if necessary
How easy would it be to find a job flying seasonally? What operators would I be looking at? Where would these jobs likely be? What kind of planes would I be flying? What kind of hours? Earning for a season? Pilot room and board likely to be offered anywhere? Is there room for salary growth if working seasonally every year? Lots of questions I know, but if anyone can help answer even one or two of these it would still be really helpful.
Training: I would have to borrow money, but I have confirmed the funds will be available if needed, so that's not an issue (paying it back will still be an issue of course ) The idea would be to just hammer out the training as quickly as possible and hopefully be ready to work within a year. Feasible? I would likely train at a small local airport to keep the cost down for the PPL, and then do the CPL or part of the CPL on floats at Air-Hart in Kelowna so I would already have 100 or so hours on floats when I'm ready to look for that first job, hopefully making me much more employable.
Long term: If I like the seasonal flying and the pay isn't horrendous, I might just keep doing that. I might be interested in flying some more "exciting" stuff in developing countries, or trying to get on with Kenn Borek later on, as they have some rather attractive routes. I wouldn't rule out the airlines later in my career either, but that's definitely not a goal in the near future.
As you can probably tell I've put a fair bit of thought into this, but without any feedback from people in the industry I'm not really ready to just dive in yet. Thanks to anyone who can help me out in any way here.
I'm 32 and have been teaching ESL overseas for 10 years. It's time for a career change and I'm seriously considering flying. I'm probably the opposite of most people, though, in that I'd actually prefer to find a seasonal-only job. Ideally, I would work in Canada flying over the summer, and spend the rest of the year overseas here staying warm and doing some other odd jobs that I enjoy. I don't really know anything about the industry so I'm hoping for some advice, recommendations, or a slap to the face with cold hard truth if necessary
How easy would it be to find a job flying seasonally? What operators would I be looking at? Where would these jobs likely be? What kind of planes would I be flying? What kind of hours? Earning for a season? Pilot room and board likely to be offered anywhere? Is there room for salary growth if working seasonally every year? Lots of questions I know, but if anyone can help answer even one or two of these it would still be really helpful.
Training: I would have to borrow money, but I have confirmed the funds will be available if needed, so that's not an issue (paying it back will still be an issue of course ) The idea would be to just hammer out the training as quickly as possible and hopefully be ready to work within a year. Feasible? I would likely train at a small local airport to keep the cost down for the PPL, and then do the CPL or part of the CPL on floats at Air-Hart in Kelowna so I would already have 100 or so hours on floats when I'm ready to look for that first job, hopefully making me much more employable.
Long term: If I like the seasonal flying and the pay isn't horrendous, I might just keep doing that. I might be interested in flying some more "exciting" stuff in developing countries, or trying to get on with Kenn Borek later on, as they have some rather attractive routes. I wouldn't rule out the airlines later in my career either, but that's definitely not a goal in the near future.
As you can probably tell I've put a fair bit of thought into this, but without any feedback from people in the industry I'm not really ready to just dive in yet. Thanks to anyone who can help me out in any way here.