On Becoming A Pilot: Or, Yeah, I'm Going To Be THAT Asshole

"No, I don't thank you for the fish at all" (notindetroit) 06/10/2014 at 10:16 • Filed to: Planeopnik, How to Fly

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Being a pilot can be kind of awesome. It can also be full of suck. I'm intimately familiar with both of those things.

Just to be clear, I do like how !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and I like the advice she gives to everybody (and especially the young female Earhart wannabes) who want to replicate her success (as I mentioned in a reply to that article, I've actually met her since she's a local news personality known to frequent the flight club I was at). I like what !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! have done and their advice on how to be the next them. Everybody who listens to them will at least give some half-hearted thought towards molding their own career or life path after their advice, but not everyone who does will crank out the next The Fault in Our Stars or even !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ,* and even fewer will become a game development rockstar !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Flying is no different: just like video game development, not everyone is cut out for it, and for the vast majority who are, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

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The Call of Flying

Flying is probably the most aspirational and sexy career choice imaginable. So much so, that !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Perhaps nothing else embodies exactly why that is than John Gillespie Magee Jr.'s poem !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and its opening line: Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, / And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.

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Everyone who's ever soloed in an airplane has that moment where they realize what it means to slip those surly bounds. Mine came on a mid-April day in 2005 when I was puttering around in a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . It's just about the most miserable aircraft imaginable: underpowered (to the point where on hot days when the density altitude spikes, the flight club won't let you go up in one), cramped, dirty and noisy, and virtually everyone who has been at the controls of any aircraft whatsoever has been at the controls of a '152. It's so awful an aircraft, in fact, that the squeaks and rattles and claptrap nature of the doors that feel like they've been secured with chicken wire give it an undeniable charm, perhaps even a greater connection to the sky above and beneath you. This being Jalopnik and Opposite Lock , the many of you who have driven a Malaise Era shitbox you've fallen in love with no doubt know exactly what I mean (let alone those of you who have also soloed). The early spring sky was dotted with cotton !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! replicating the pattern in shadows on the still golden brown farmland below, and I could almost lift up the little side window and stick my hand out to touch one (by the way, don't fly into clouds kids. That's almost literally Rule Number One). At that moment, I got exactly what the original Amelia Earhart meant when she said !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

The exact aircraft in question, at the exact airport in question about half a year before the events in question. Photo by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , used under Fair Use.

Now that's the romanticism, and then there's the reality. Like all dream jobs there's a confluence of conspiratorial factors that tend to drown out and wash away most people who apply.

Aviation is Still Pretty Deadly

Aviation has become much safer even compared to just five years ago, but it doesn't change the fact that if something goes wrong, it's going to cascade into something much, much worse very quick. I realized that moment !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! And again in May 2005 when I crashed my '152 (a different one from the one previously pictured) while fortunately coming out in one piece (actually, the plane too - that was a rather fortunate !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ). The biggest and most important safety component of any aircraft is the pilot - it's a moral choice to decide if you are competent enough to handle an aircraft.

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It's Just Plain Old Expensive

And you think car ownership is bad?

!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! It's far, far too easy for a brand new aircraft to cost half a million dollars, and I don't mean bizjets, I mean stuff little better than what's pictured just above. Naturally a market has come in to fill in for cheapskates: the (still expensive) Light Sport Aircraft market (more on that later), the dirt-cheap ultralight market and of course the used market. Depending on what you're looking for (or more accurately, what you're willing to settle for) prices can range from the low $20 grand range or even less, up to about $150k for a decent, well-equipped aircraft.

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That's just the initial purchase price, of course. As any car owner can tell you, the real expense comes in what comes after: insurance, registration, maintenance etc. You can imagine what the insurance must be like for an object that can fall out of the sky and kill all occupants if even a minor component fails. For related reasons, the cost of parts and labor make Lucas Electronics-era MGB ownership look like a cakewalk. Minor components simply cannot fail lest, well, what I just said. Therefore, they're tested to extremely stringent requirements, said tests and certification are extremely expensive, and the end result is that aircraft design tends to get frozen (to the point where the big Cessna single-engine sellers, the 172 Skyhawk and 182 Skylane, are until very recently basically the same aircraft since 1956. Think about that for a moment - the state of General Aviation near-globally is in the same boat as the state of automotive ownership in Castro-era Cuba). It also means that a 180 horsepower four-cylinder engine !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (and isn't too far behind on displacement despite the massive power discrepancy).

Now, flying doesn't mean having to own your own plane. Most people who fly don't. It's simply cost-prohibitive. Renting isn't much cheaper (figure $100 per hour) but at least it's more manageable. Where cost becomes a crippling factor is in the human element. As in, you . Getting that pilot's license is expensive: you've got that $100 an hour rental figure I just mentioned, plus the hourly rate of whatever flight instructor you hired, and potential other miscellaneous fees such as ground school (i.e., the classroom portion). Now multiply that by at least 60 hours (which, last time I checked, is the minimum requirement the FAA says you need to have before you are license-eligible). Yes, that's at least six thousand dollars, and ten thousand isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility, especially if you don't want to haphazardly rush through instruction.

Six grand, or even ten grand, isn't entirely out of financial reach for many people, or even most people. You'll save up what you can, or you anticipate getting that cool flying job and hey it will eventually pay for itself, right?

Not Everyone is Cut Out For Flying

As I mentioned in my previous article about flight training (linked way above), not everyone who tries to fly is really meant to fly. Just like firefighting and the military, it requires deep, introspective thought and self-discovery to decide if it's truly something that suits you - and just like firefighting and the military, far, far too many people rush into it without thinking it through, with predictably disastrous results. Fortunately, and unlike the military, you'll probably find out (or rather, wash out) long before you're in a situation where your own life and others are on the firing line. I'd say, maybe after a few grand and many weeks trying to find out the hard way.

All that pessimism aside, chances are most people who try will probably be competent enough hobby pilots (provided they can afford it). The real question is, are you good enough to cut it in the professional world? Thanks to high-profile and deadly airline crashes like what happened at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! pilot professionalism has become the critical buzz phrase. Not that (most) airline pilots weren't highly professional to begin with, but as with teachers working with pre-teens on a daily basis in a world highly charged with daily sex abuse headlines, it's put those professionals under an annoyingly scrutinizing lens. You better make sure your pilotage skills are up to snuff.

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If there's a lesson to be learned from either of these crashes, or any crash, it's that once again there's a moral component to flying - where you, as the pilot-in-command, have to decide whether or not you truly are a fit enough pilot to safely transport up to 300 individuals on a daily basis working extended hours away from home. Working conditions have improved since the Colgan Air Buffalo crash especially, but the profession itself is actually still full of tons of suck.

Flying as a Profession is Actually Full of Tons of Suck

Yeah, let's talk about that some more because it tends to be a hidden secret among many people who are smitten and taken in by the pure romanticism. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and outwordly it doesn't have much distinction from sitting in a chair for a whole work day.

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It's a bit ill-advised to go straight to a Porsche Carrera GT as soon as you turn 16, and for the same reasons it's a bit ill-advised to try to prove you can fly an airliner as soon as you get your private rating from flying '172 Skyhawk "bug smashers" all day. In fact, the FAA flat out won't let you - you first have to get your commercial rating (which is at least another $10 grand) and work your way up to an Air Transport License (ATP) - when it's all said and done you've spent as much as law school and med students with about an equal amount of scholarship done (seriously, a large part of flying is book reading !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ).

You know how med students are always complaining about the crippling debt they've accrued? Yeah.

Chances are you'll begin your professional flight career as a Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) - which, by the way, also requires its own training and rating to achieve. You might start to think, given how expensive flight training is to begin with, that it's finally your time to get in on a piece of the action. Not so fast - remember, most of that cost gets sucked right into the airplane itself. It's a glorified part-time contract job for the most part, which means you're on your own for insurance and the pay honestly isn't great. It's a different story if you get to be a full-time employee of a really big flight school, but those are far and few in between. Many CFIs work on a self-employed basis getting most of their customer base through fliers stuck on tackboards at the local flight club, renting airplanes to train students on just as the students themselves would.

But after a few years as a CFI, you feel like you've put in your dues, and it's time to go up to the big leagues. Or, you were one of those poor suckers who went to one of those near-diploma mill type schools that made insane and near impossible promises about getting you on the fast track to a flying career. If you're really lucky you had the money to begin with to go to a four-year institution like !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the civilian world's Air Force Academy (indeed, ERAU does contract work on behalf of the AFA). Let's go ahead and assume you beat out the rest of the extremely crowded and competitive professional pilot job market. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which is the likely position you'll start out as as a professional pilot. Ignore the high sums from the big names - look at the salaries for all the airlines you've never heard of (usually flying tiny aluminum sewer tubes like !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that have the names of more recognizable airlines painted on the sides operating under !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) that typically take up all the fresh hires. Also keep in mind that seniority vastly skews these figures - that near-$50k figure might only be obtainable after many, many years of flying for the airline. Hopefully you'll make it to the true majors before then - but keep in mind the higher you go, the fewer spots there are to fill. That ridiculous six-figure number for United FOs is more than likely skewed by FOs helping to push Boeing 777 or 747-sized tin after decades of loyal employment. You'll have to wait until that FO retires (and whoever's after him or her, and whoever's after that) to see that kind of money.

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Which, well, is decades.

One of the alarming things highlighted in the Colgan Air Buffalo crash is just how sucky starting FOs at these smaller operations have it. You're spending days if not weeks away from home, kissing your family and social life completely goodbye (to the point where if you don't already have a family life now, you can pretty much completely forget that notion because you will be putting your career not first but solely into consideration whether you like it or not) while bouncing around at various "crash pads" and living a completely transient, gypsy-like lifestyle !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . All so that if you do happen to get assigned to a lousy-to-the-point-of-literally-deadly Captain, you get to experience !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . There's a very good reason why Amelia Rose Earhart anticipates making most of her money through speaking engagements and book deals, and really why the around-the-world stunt is mostly a promotion to make said speaking engagements and book deals lucrative. It's because flying for pay actually kind of sucks.

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Aviation Itself Might Be Dying

That's assuming there even is a job to trudge through in the future. Air travel brings taxing infrastructure along with it, including expensive, fuel-thirsty planes and land-swallowing airports that destroy farmland and steal from residential development far beyond the actual footprint of the airport itself. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the days of air travel as a common conveyance may soon be over. Rail infrastructure simply has too many economic and environmental advantages that make air travel look unattractive in comparison beyond the (decreasing) romance. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! I can all too easily see the day when most intercontinental travel is done by rail, all the inland international airports are plowed up for real estate development (or reverted to farmland) and almost 100% of commercial flying is strictly for trans-oceanic travel. This becomes doubly so if the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ever happens - and I actually believe it will. This will almost instantly kill any real money-making profession as a pilot, let alone the sky-high (pun intended) six-figure salaries senior Captains make.

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Even hobby flying isn't guaranteed to last forever. The number of General Aviation aircraft manufacturers that have completely disappeared between 2000 and now is nothing short of shocking. If you look at the number of individual aircraft model lines that have disappeared in the same time, you will be outright floored. Piper Aircraft, who gave us the Cub and Super Cub, the Ford Model Ts of the air, barely makes aircraft anymore, period, and the few that they do have prices in the $300k range and up . The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! now goes for over a million dollars, nearly twice its cost in 2006 dollars. There is almost no way that's sustainable, especially since there are better aircraft out there for a similar price (the turboprop-powered and pressurized PC-12 that Amelia Rose Earhart plans to use on her around-the-world flight !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ). Even the basic Cessna 172 is in the $300,000+ range new, about a $100k increase compared to what it was just a few years ago.

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With that kind of inflation, it's inevitable that the GA market will continue to contract. It's entirely possible that in the very near future we'll just have Cessna poking around with its 50s-era high-wings, its Lancair Corvalis high-performance fiberglass-body and its $10 million bizjets with only Cirrus providing "competition" and Piper and others being complete history.

With Clouds, Come Silver Lining

There are two takeaways I want you as the reader to have from this long-winded blathering - the first is that, in all honesty (and this is where I really disagree with Amelia Rose Earhart), I cannot recommend to anyone, boy or girl, to plan on putting down "pilot" as a profession (at least not without joining the Air Force) for all the reasons stated above. The other is that there are still many ways to enjoy the miracle of flight.

Remember that "Light Sport Aircraft" thing I was talking about? That's a great way to get into hobby flying, and it's probably the future of hobby flying. The requirements to earn your license are greatly reduced (and consequently, the cost) and the planes built for the LSA market are limited in performance but are cheap (and there's also a bewildering variety available). Average LSA prices are still north of $100k, but not much so, and there's a plethora of cheaper options including kits to build yourself. The relative cheap prices and ease of entry will probably ensure that the LSA and ultralight markets are here to stay, in the same way that the Tesla Model S and Google "Koala Car" will never replace the Harley or Gixxer.

Things like super-high speed rail trail and the Hyperloop might also give an incentive !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to provide a competing transportation service, especially over water (where supersonic flight is much less problematic anyway). So if the future of aviation is going to be more limited, at least it won't be any less amazing.

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*And, oh yeah, what's up with that The Fume of Poppies anyway? From what I can tell, it's Johnathan Kozol's first and only fiction novel. Who's Johnathan Kozol? He was a NYC English teacher who allegedly got fired for teaching Langston Hughes in his class for "going outside of the approved curriculum." Apparently The Fume of Poppies was written just to pay the bills (you can see it's amazingly low score from the linked source). He's since gone on to be a controversial "take it or leave it" type of school and education reform activist and has written a number of highly praised non-fiction books on the subject. It just goes to show that there's a career path for everyone and that it doesn't always immediately land when you need it to, so don't sweat if if aviation doesn't work out for you - and that goes for males and females. In no way am I trying to aim this at a specific sex or gender.

macanamera > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 06/10/2014 at 10:18

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I'm about halfway to my LSA!

yamahog > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 06/10/2014 at 10:25

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Great write-up, I'm an aerospace engineer who has worked in defense so I really appreciate the insight into the state of non-military aviation.

KatzManDu > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 06/10/2014 at 10:26

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As a perpetual student pilot who doesn't have the cash at the same time I have time to finish my license, I kind of agree with what I skimmed over, since this was pretty long and I'm pretty swamped.

Used GA aircraft are very affordable, though.

http://www.barnstormers.com/classified_903…

Mosqvich > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 06/10/2014 at 10:27

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As a frequent flier, I hate flying on the RJs. They are uncomfortable and I'm always wary of the pilots. I'd prefer AF airmen, Navy, Marine, and Army aviation vets any day over a guy who is over their in debt to do a $40k job.

Chris Clarke > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 06/10/2014 at 10:45

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Aviation as a career is certainly not for everyone. But flying is very much for everyone. Ideally, it shouldn't be any different than driving a car, motorcycle, or boat. But its become a complicated issue by some who want to overcomplicate it. Media hype, lawsuit happy attorneys, over-regulation, and greedy flight schools/instructors have all contributed to the decline of aviation.

Racescort666 > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 06/10/2014 at 10:48

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I haven't finished yet but so far this is great.

Some of the comments on that Amelia Earhart article were downright infuriating. This provides some much needed insight into the world of aviation from the entry level pilot's perspective.

webmonkees > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 06/10/2014 at 11:13

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My oldest brother enrolled in the Air Force and leveraged that into a big-bird job. Less freedom of choice initially of course. That was decades ago, though, it might be good to check first.

NaturallyAspirated > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 06/10/2014 at 12:37

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I'm an A&P, and from the FOs I've known, you are spot on. It's pretty neat when the $16k/year FO shows up 3 hours early and wants to go over the plane with you, his or her enthusiasm for flying obvious even at 4AM. But it is a rough life.

PS9 > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 06/10/2014 at 12:49

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Doctor-level education debt, middle management level pay? That's fucked.

Jayhawk Jake > Mosqvich 06/10/2014 at 13:05

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I'm going to pick on you for a sec to vent a point that annoys me.

It's not the jet's fault, it's the airlines. I'm sure that's what you meant, but as a passionate aviation enthusiast who also happens to work for an airplane manufacturer there's an attitude that really pisses me off: people blame the manufacturer instead of the operator. Regional Jets aren't uncomfortable, but airlines shove as many seats as they can into them which makes them uncomfortable.

The CRJ series actually started as a business jet, the Bombardier Challenger 600. In its original guise it's insanely comfortable: flat floor, high ceilings, lots of space, tons of noise insulation making it very quiet, comfortable seats, useful tables, well lit, etc...

Then Bombardier turned it into an airliner, and at the request of operators shoved as much passenger capacity as possible. Gone are the high ceilings, sacrificed to accommodate overhead bins. The large aisles were shrunken to fit that extra seat. The walls have been thinned, stripped of their noise insulation to fit extra passengers.

If I'm totally honest, I think airlines have really hurt aviations image in the last 20 years or so. There was once a time where airline flying was a romantic experience, now it's just glorified sheep herding and people hate it. It's no longer a mystical journey into the sky, it's a burden that's made worse by the annoyances of security and random delays and crying babies and smelly people. Flying has become so routine that no one values it for the beauty of flight, they loathe it for the mild discomfort.

Honestly I hope trains take over the sheep herding aspect. Flying can once again become a special experience, and people might finally appreciate it for how amazing it is again. Everytime someone complains about something on an airline I want to grab them by the neck, shove their head against the window and say "Look outside! You're flying 30,000 feet above the ground at 500 miles per hour, taking mere hours to travel a distance that a century ago would have taken weeks if not months." Flying to me is incredible, and I wish everyone else could appreciate it properly.

thebigbossyboss > Jayhawk Jake 06/10/2014 at 15:08

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Hard to appreciate it properly when being subject to a full body pat down. Taking off is totally the best though.

The accelerations!!

Honestly if given the choice between driving and flying....I pretty much drive every time.

I also hate overhead bins, literally the only thing I ever put there is my winter coat. Eliminate da bins!

Jayhawk Jake > thebigbossyboss 06/10/2014 at 15:19

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Exactly my point though, it's not the airplanes that are the problem, it's everything around them.

Turbineguy: Nom de Zoom > Chris Clarke 08/09/2014 at 11:32

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Respectfully disagree. I'm a 14 year CFI, and have flown with a number of people who just can't keep their heads wrapped around the task at hand. Whether it's ADD or just extreme forgetfulness these folks just didn't show the ability to keep up with the airplane. That's just a required trait for a pilot. You can't make the comparison to a car or bike or boat (I've had all of those) because there's much more to be mindful of when flying. And that's not even considering what to do if something unexpected happens. Airplanes operates in a very different environment and trying to make them safe through technology (which has increased the safety level, no question) will only lead to a false sense of security, similar to what I've seen and read about Cirrus' airframe parachute.

You are dead on about the factors contributing to the decline of general aviation though. The media sucks, and will always sensationalize acft accidents. Lawyers that sue aircraft mfrs after fatal accidents make me sick, esp when the accident is a result of pilot incompetence - Cory Lidle is a perfect example, but there are many more. Greedy flight schools suck too - I worked for one of them, a nationally-know outfit. The regulation issue is being addressed though, through a Part 23 rewrite which is intended to make certification of light aircraft less onerous and expensive.

Tom Ryan > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/02/2016 at 12:58

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It’s not what people think

http://www.culturewars.com/2011/Pilots.ht…