Would you want your kids to become Pilots?

[BTyyj]

I was watching an interview with Sully on TV, where he was talking about the industry and how the days where Pilots were treated and payed what they deserved are long gone. He continued on to say that he didn't know a single pilot in the industry who would want their kids to become Pilots.

So my question to everyone on here; would you agree with this statement? Could you not recommend flying to your kids, due to all the issues in this industry already? Do you feel things in the future will get better or will they get worse?

[Cat Driver]

Do you feel things in the future will get better or will they get worse?

We can send unmanned rovers to Mars and they send back years of information.

We can pick out and destroy small targets in other countries using unmanned drones.

How long before pilots are replaced with computers that will be monitored and controlled from the ground?

[JMACK]

Maybe the days of the 360000 dollar Delta 777 Skipper are gone or rapidly disappearing but there is a lot more to aviation than the airlines. That being said I almost fell over when I saw a Westjet Skipper scoring over 200K. Looks like the glory days are still out there if you are at the right company!

I know I wouldn't want to do anything else and if a son or daughter wanted a life in aviation I would encourage them.

Jim

[Kabloona]

Yes I would, as a matter of fact my 17 year old son has completed high school and will be starting PPL training in the spring. He has made the choice on his own and I support him although I would support many choices he could have made. I'm fortunate to fly for a good company, make a good living, have a good schedule and life style. My dad was a pilot as well. I know first hand the pitfalls and obstacles that are out there but the rewards of a career in aviation are great, even as a young pilot starting out.

I think the "After math" article by Katherine Laidlaw was great, she really captured the brotherhood that exists among pilots and those in the aviation industry. Her article was in response to serious tragedy but that sense of camaraderie exists all the time even if it isn't on the surface at all times. My son recognizes that aspect of our industry and it has compelled him to join our ranks, he will be a welcome addition.

I would encourage anyone who is considering a career in aviation to perform due diligence, my experience has made for a fulfilling and rewarding career.

Shaun

[TeePeeCreeper]

My wife and I will support our kid 110% to do whatever profession he "thinks" is "right" for him.
With that said, I sincerely hope that one day he'll want to take up flying... If he decides to do it as a career, than great, but I will admit that I hope he only flies on week-ends for "fun"...

Ultimately, support your kids no mater what career they choose... We as parents may guide our children (that's part of the job) but who the hell are we to influence a choice which should be solely their own to make?

TPC (is off to buy more diapers... A few more years of bliss before the worries begin!)

[azimuthaviation]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKQJx3L_CDQ

[frozen solid]

Can I make a long post here? This is a subject I think about a lot. My wife and I have been unlucky, and won't be having children, so this is just an academic exercise for me, but I often think about the lot of a modern aviator compared to what I thought it would be like. For the record, I am very happy with my job on a small multi-engine turboprop, with copilots who are at the beginning of their careers and lots of exciting places still to fly to.

One of my favourite books as a kid was "Fate is the Hunter" by Ernest Gann, and "A gift of wings" by Richard Bach. I wanted to start my big rant here by talking about status. Status is recognised as being one type of compensation in a given workplace. I think no matter how humble we are, almost everyone enjoys status. The pilots in the old days had lots of it. They were very highly regarded. One of the reasons of course, was that in two world wars pilots had a prominent role. Maybe not the most important, but very prominent nevertheless. Most people my age grew up with the notion of the Commercial and/or Military pilot occupying this high position of status. Pilots themselves when I was a young boy were still surfing on the cachet earned by the aviators of the immediate post-war period.

But think about the pilots who had this status. These guys had basic tools. They used maps, compasses, spotty weather reports and wind forecasts. The long-range guys practiced celestial navigation. The planes were less reliable and required more mechanical knowledge to operate and more than a little bravery. Society had a higher tolerance for risk. Pilots were the ones who could mitigate this risk to acceptable levels, like we do, but using greater resources of personal knowledge and bravery.

Can you imagine navigating a 707 (or Connie, or Boeing 314) across the pole to Europe, or across the Pacific to Hawaii, taking star sights on a periscopic sextant, following a spotty range or NDB air route if you're still within reception, dead reckoning with a drift sight, having to switch to grid navigation over the Arctic, basically cross-referencing all these things during the course of a typical long-range flight maybe. I might sound like I'm trying to sound like I know what I'm talking about, but I think it's clear that I don't. There was no inertial, no LORAN, no GPS, compasses had to be set using star or sun shots near the pole, which in turn depend for accuracy on knowing your latitude or longitude... etc.

Not to mention, the (comparatively) aerodynamically and mechanically unrefined aircraft, requiring skill and knowledge and team effort just to start, let alone fly. The weird, uncivilized world some of these pilots had to make their way through in other countries. Commanding or being a part of a crew of not just two, but up to five guys, not counting the cabin crew. Being out of contact with company for the whole time you were on duty. Being responsible for the safe accommodation of your crew, and sometimes your passengers, in strange places around the world.

I know I'm laying it on a little thick, but this is the basis of the status these people enjoyed. And I do think it was a big deal. We are more or less the first generation of navigators in almost the history of mankind who don't really know how to navigate. We don't like being compared to bus drivers, but there we are following a GPS that any boy scout could use on a hike, sending texts and playing with our computers, wondering why we have to work on the ramp when surely we have, after three years of college (or even FOUR years of University), earned the right to wear those four gold bars on our white shirts, (were there ever less than four? Ask your "Co-Captain" ) and take our heroic place in the clouds.

I sometimes wonder if Chesley Sullenberger truly understands the extent to which professional pilots have been marginalized by technology, complacency, the attitude of the corporate world towards those who make their living in places other than boardrooms, and the "quick seminar"-like educational experience new pilots get. Exams that are easy to pass if you memorize the limited selection of possible multiple-choice answers.

I know I probably sound like a raving idiot, but I wouldn't mind if the whole GPS system crashed. Ditto the satellite communications and cellphones we all have. We would have to go back to being capable and self-sufficient, which I think are urgently desirable characteristics in even modern aviators, and we (and our corporate superiors) might be forced to concede that a safe and qualified and well-educated and well-compensated (money and status) pair of pilots are more valuable than any number of safety management systems, risk assessments, orange safety vests, and cockpit-resource-management seminars.

I think if I had a child who wanted to be a pilot, I would wish upon him or her the experience that I have had, living at the tail end of the era and at least having had the pleasure of meeting one or two of those pilot equivalents of "iron men in wooden ships", but I don't honestly think we will ever have the quality of experiences they did, or ever enjoy the authority, freedom, pay and status they did. I am fearful that we are at the beginning of a process that will see professional pilots marginalized further and further until we really are nothing more than bus drivers. Our kids will secretly not believe us when we tell them that the Space Shuttle and the Concorde were hand-flown, and that the stars can tell us where we are if we care to learn to understand them, and that we used to be able to retire in a nice neighborhood with a good pension and some really inspiring stories. I honestly don't know how I would feel to see my son coming home from his job as the single pilot/monitor/head steward of a completely automated airliner, wearing a hoody, baseball cap and orange vest, and then going to his room in my house or his second job at Starbuck's.

I really hope I 'm wrong, but this is how I sometimes see things turning out. I don't feel like there is very much adventure left in the world.

[Cat Driver]

That was a wonderful post frozen solid.

Thanks for taking the time to write it.

. ..

[Beefitarian]

Isn't working three jobs and drinking several Rock Star brand energy drinks per day an adventure?

[Donald]

Professionally? No.

For personal use? Sure.

Can you imagine (...) having to switch to grid navigation over the Arctic (...)

Thanks to Transport Canada, we have to use grid nav in the southern arctic every day in 737's...

[frozen solid]

Thanks to Transport Canada, we have to use grid nav in the southern arctic every day in 737's...

Well, it's probably not killing you.

All that old-fashioned stuff is kind of a pain in the ass, but of course, employers consider "old-fashioned stuff" like large paycheques and giving you the authority to make your own decisions to be a pain in the ass too.

I also feel compelled to comment that, again thanks to Transport Canada I had to learn grid on my own, because unlike many countries that DO NOT have airspace north of 65 degrees, TC does not require this knowledge for the ATPL. I'm supposed to be an AIRLINE TRANSPORT pilot and I've got to go all autodidactic just to learn something that's considered essential knowledge in Lithuania. Transport Canada has done their fair share in making sure Canadian pilots are not among the most knowledgeable in the world.

[The Mole]

Im a mountain rescue pilot. I use none of this fan dangled technology too fly. No auto-pilot, GPS sure, but its not really that accurate for what i do. I fly an aircraft thats a 40 year old design. No body i've rescued has ever said thank-you to me or tipped me.... The only advice can say is, don't do it unless you really really love it and don't do it for the money or women, because both don't exist.

[complexintentions]

frozensolid,

I enjoyed your post. I do agree with much of what you say, in broad strokes. I agree with your lament of the loss of self-dependence and how technology CAN make us complacent and insulate us from some of the adventure of days past. If we allow it.

I too am a huge Ernest Gann fan. Fate of The Hunter is a classic in the truest sense. My shelves are filled with Richard Bach and Antoine de Saint-Exupery and cheap paperback novels about Sunderlands and Pan Am Clippers and Spitfires over the Channel. So I do have some sense of longing for the romance of the past eras of aviation.

However I do take great issue with your comments about pilots past having, in your terms, "greater resources of personal knowledge and bravery". To consider so, is to do a great disservice to yourself and those of us still exercising what personal knowledge and experience we have to do our jobs.

I do admire and respect the skillset of pilots in the past. It was certainly much more difficult to do certain tasks such as navigation, and mechanically the machines just weren't as advanced or reliable. Fair enough. Hell, I could say the same about my own early career! But in your - dare I say, overly-romantisized view - you completely disregard many other elements of the profession that have changed as well.

I am a captain on a B777 for an international airline. It's true the 777 is a lot more advanced than a Connie. We don't regularly do celestial navigation. But on the other hand, we're not lumbering along at a couple hundred knots either. Nor do we carry a large excess of fuel to allow for the crudeness of navigation circa 1950's. On a ULR flight it will take half a ton of fuel to carry one extra ton of fuel to destination. So it's shaved as tight as is legal. This presents its own set of pressures.

We do routinely cross the pole. (One doesn't go "across the pole" to go to Europe from North America, btw.) At times we ARE completely out of comms with everyone, if there's intense solar activity. It's no big deal. Unless one of the several hundred passengers has a medical emergency, or there is a technical problem. Our engines may be a quantum leap in reliability, but there are only two of them. Does this make us brave I wonder?

I may not have five other pilots along for the ride, but for the ULR flights I do have three. Who invariably come from three completely different nationalities, cultures, and primary language than my own. As well I have to manage 16 flight attendants, also drawn from 160 different nationalities within our company. I doubt very much that most pilots of the past had to deal with our multi-national world within their own crews, as routine. Unique challenges.

Speaking of strange places. Our route network spans Asia, Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, North America, South America, and Australia. I operate to them all. I am required to be proficient and knowledgeable about the procedures and regulations of every place we fly. The range of modern airliners has massively increased the knowledge requirements of modern pilots, not decreased it. Our flights range from the shortest at 35 minutes, to the longest at over 17 hours. With the same aircraft type. That just didn't happen, 60 years ago.

Because of the nature of aviation these days, we fly far more hours and cross far more timezones in any given month than anyone in the past. Gone are the days of multi-day layovers in Paris after the derring-do of an Atlantic crossing in a piston-engine powered airliner. It's minimum rest, then back. Where a 1950's pilot might marvel at GPS, I would trade it all to have their schedules from back then!

We have much more pressure to manage the operation these days. Manage bigger, faster equipment, more crew, more passengers, resources that are multiples more than in the past. At the same time, we are expected to still be able to physically handle the actual aircraft to it's limitations. Sometimes that works out (the BA captain at Heathrow who raised his flaps when he lost both engines on short final). Sometimes it doesn't (the AF crew that stalled their A330 at high altitude). The requirement to actually fly is still there, with a ton of other duties added to it.

Status? In a previous life I did literally drive a bus, and now it just makes me laugh to hear people (mostly on aviation forums) call pilots glorified bus drivers. No bus I ever drove was worth 270 million dollars. I was never able to put a low 5-figure sum of money in my pocket every month driving a bus. In spite of aviation managers trying to denigrate the profession, most of the public, while recognizing that pilots don't exactly cheat death on every flight, still respect the job. We are often our own worst enemies in that regard.

My point of all of this is, I feel that aviation is every bit as challenging, in fact in many ways far MORE challenging and intense than it once was. And there very much still is adventure left in the world, it's just found in different ways. You have to go find it, where in the "olden days" it came to you, because we weren't hidden behind a wall of iPads and lattes and Jersey Shore.

As far as, would I want my kids to become pilots…I wouldn't even want to have kids in the world we live in, let alone wonder about what profession they'd choose...

[Sidebar]

How long before pilots are replaced with computers that will be monitored and controlled from the ground?

How many people will buy tickets when they find out the software is from Microsoft?

[yycflyguy]

How long before pilots are replaced with computers that will be monitored and controlled from the ground?

How many people will buy tickets when they find out the software is from Microsoft?

Ha! Blue screen of death.

[frozen solid]

Complex intentions, I enjoyed reading your post. I think you may have highlighted my bad attitude, or at least caught me on a day where it was rearing its head. It's the "wall of Ipads and Lattes and Jersey Shore" that gets me down. I get the idea that you understand what I was getting at even though you took exception to it, and you've found a place in your career that makes you feel better about the whole thing. Your statement about "not wanting to have kids in the world we live" is kind of telling though.

By the way, I looked it up and while polar routes are now used to connect the far east to places like New York and Toronto, in the "cold war" era they were used more frequently in and out of Europe in order to avoid flying over the USSR. So I still feel that my "707" example may have some validity. Anyway, as you point out, I was being dramatic.

[bandaid]

I think every parent struggles with this question regardless of what career you're in. I would not have wanted my children to become paramedics in B.C.. Anywheres else in Canada would be fine.

[godsrcrazy]

Frozen Solid that was an excellent post and i must say i can't agree more. I flown with many people that feel they don't need to pick up a map. They feel all you have to do is follow the needle. I have flown in the back and watched pilots flying everything from a 185 up to a 777 and it is rare to see anyone with a map on their knee. I wonder how many of those 777 pilot complexintentions talk about have a map open and can broadcast their exact location within seconds notice when things go wrong. Especially if them fancy lit up dash's go black.

[flyinthebug]

Frozen Solid... That was a great post!

For me, I love the industry. I joined aviation when GPS was only for the military planes and my 1st commercial check out was in a 206 at 500' with a map in my lap. I have to admit that I loved the jump to GPS technology as it made my job ALOT easier. The problem now is though that NONE of the new grads even know how to read a map! The technology has left "old school" navigation behind...and sadly, when the GPS fails many are and will be lost!

I pushed my son into this industry and he loved it at first. He didnt share my passion though for the industry and he went along with my wishes, just to try to make his dad happy. In the end, he became a licenced plumber.

If your children want to become a pilot, id say encourage them. Its a great industry filled with great people from coast to coast. I wouldnt trade a single day of my career for any other. Yes, there is a down side to the industry, infact many down sides at times...but what industry doesnt have them? You pay your dues in one way or another in any industry, and ours seems extreme at times. Overall aviation is something that if its in your blood, you know it at a very young age and it becomes a reality rather than just a dream. There is no better feeling than pushing those power levers or throttles forward and defying gravity time after time. (Well except maybe sex lol)

Fly safe all.

[FenderManDan]

Frozen Solid... That was a great post!
.......There is no better feeling than pushing those power levers or throttles forward and defying gravity time after time. (Well except maybe sex lol)

Fly safe all.

I don't know man, maybe it is weird, but I get a real pleasure listening for the Trentons/PWs spooling up for the take off.
Hmmm my misus will be surprised when I start playing a recorded jet take off MP3 during...