Mid-life Career Change to Airline Pilot. It's Doable.
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falconkidding
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We dont have the "big picture" as they are wont to tell us. Crew scheduling is the only place other than military where you can make daily 10,000 dollar mistakes and no one bats an eye.
Uh, that’s pocket lint for investment bankers.
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Yes sir yes sir three bags full. 
Groundpounder
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If that qualifies as a bad day, be happy you never did retail 135.
Also, there will be days way worse than that. I've had worse even at my fancy legacy airline. But it's very important that you make like a duck and let it roll off. There is so much out of your control at a job like this, you really have to crank the "I don't give a crap" dial all the way to 11. No one to run the jetway? Oh well, that's out of my control. One of the mechanics forgot a part? Oh well, that's out of my control. Want me to extend cause of something that was out of my control? Nope, sorry, we're going to the hotel.
Perhaps its like weather forecasting -- success depends on chosing a favorable baseline. If the ordinary state of affairs is abject ignorance and being continually shocked by what happens next, then getting it right 50% of the time looks like a huge win.
"Do you drink? I don't remember if you drink. Of course, there's drink, and drink. I drink, but I haven't been drunk since Reagan was President."
Tarheelpilot
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Nah. Old IT is a thing for airlines.
Roger Wilco
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Even if that wasn't a bad day, he should be happy that he never did retail 135. OTOH, there may be no better character-building experience in
Always the right answer.
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MauleSkinner
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135 isn’t part of GA.
Roger Wilco
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You are correct. That's what I get for being lazy, but from my own perspective, on-demand 135 has much more in common with GA than with scheduled commercial operations.135 isn’t part of GA.
flyingcheesehead
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Hmmm...135 isn’t part of GA.
There's 135, and then there's 135.
Scheduled 135 is pretty much "121 Airline Lite" and is used by the little guys like Cape Air, and presumably Great Lakes when they still existed, and Colgan and the like. Mini regionals. As such, I'd call it airline, simply because it's people buying tickets for seats on a scheduled flight to get from point A to point B, it just happens to be on a smaller plane.
On-demand 135 may be "Air Carrier" but IMO it's GA. It's not airline, and it's not military, so... It's people paying for an entire airplane to be on their schedule. It's very much like 91 corporate but with the airplane "rented" and a bunch of extra semi-airline-style requirements to ensure the safety of pax who are flying with crews and airplanes that are unknown to them.
Bacho
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IIRC it is/was ~$8k per hour to have a RJ on the ground. It's cheaper to have you on site in case of a quick fix compared to not.
In a former life, upper ACMX management always wanted an unrealistic ready time published the moment an AOS event started. "This is gonna take all day" was almost never acceptable. Hopeless ready times were almost always fed to crew scheduling. I met many pilots in your shoes.
Thank you for this thread. I got distracted from my airline pilot goals over the course of my airline MX career, and used the negatives to justify that. This is a good reminder that some of those negatives do not have to be so negative.
Groundpounder
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I only did it for a year, and it was the worst job I ever had.
MauleSkinner
Touchdown! Greaser!
As long as definitions are what we choose to make up, communication will be poor.
Roger Wilco
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True, and in the Internet age we seem to be experiencing a pandemic in which people--and organizations--re-define words to fit their narratives, words that already had perfectly good definitions. But that's a whole 'nuther topic, and here it makes no material difference with regard to the claim that I made in #409 about non-sched 135, which itself referred to Groundpounder in #405.As long as definitions are what we choose to make up, communication will be poor.
Half Fast
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You mean words like "downwind?"
Roger Wilco
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Maybe in the military, but I very seriously doubt that there are any US airlines where no one bats an eye at daily $10k mistakes. But eye batting doesn’t solve the underlying problems.
Roger Wilco
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Not going there.
MauleSkinner
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flyingcheesehead
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I've always seen General Aviation defined as "Everything that isn't military or airlines."As long as definitions are what we choose to make up, communication will be poor.
Looking it up now, the official ICAO definition is "all civil aviation operations other than scheduled air services and non-scheduled air transport operations for remuneration or hire." So, that would put non-scheduled 135 in with airlines.
Now, drive to the airport, and look at what the sign says when you turn into the parking lot to meet your 135 charter... "General Aviation." It still has a lot more in common with the rest of GA than it does with the airlines.
flyingcheesehead
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I was thinking about this as I was washing the dishes earlier tonight, and it got me to wondering...
What was so bad about "retail" 135? And what do you mean by "retail" 135?
I had some really great experiences flying 135. Maybe that's because I was working for a company that (at the time) was at least trying to do things right, or maybe it was because I was flying a measly little turboprop instead of the latest GlobalFancyJet50000, though the measly little turboprops were brand spanking new. And maybe it's because I was flying brand-spanking-new airplanes.
I'm interviewing for jobs where these things might not be the case... What might I be in for?
Groundpounder
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Retail 135 is when an airplane is owned by a charter company and is used exclusively for 135 flights, and it's on the open charter market. You are vying for business from various charter brokers, and a lot of times their clientele is shopping by price. So the airplanes are normally old and poorly maintained, and the certificate holder likes to play it fast and loose with the FAR's. There are exceptions of course, and there has been some increased oversight by the FAA since I was in that line of work, but its still a shady industry. Charter brokers are one step below used car salesmen on the human scum of the earth chart. But it was really good experience, I am glad to have done it, but I am also really glad that is in my rearview mirror.
Roger Wilco
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Please allow me to temporarily revive this thread with a personal account that, I think, describes what many of us have experienced working for "retail 135," or on-demand 135, operators. With your kind indulgence...
You're on a short tether. Always.
Your phone rings at 0217 and you race to the airport because
In this operation, every flight is time critical,
Which means time of arrival at the destination, not time-of-day, and so
Your duty day often begins in your night WOCL, and will stretch 14 long hours, and,
Once at the airport, you will frantically make coffee, throw together a cooler of drinks and a snack basket for passengers while getting a briefing from FSS over a speaker phone (this when mobile phones were science fiction), and
If it's a destination you're familiar with you file right then, or,
Maybe you will get an IFR to VFR On Top clearance from Local and file airborne after you engage the autopilot and study the charts, but first
You must install the seats in the King Air, or
Remove the seats from the Baron, or
Pull the right seats out of the Lear and wrestle the incubator into place, and
By now you're soaked with sweat or rain or you have to de-ice, and
You begin to preflight the plane but are interrupted when the organ harvest team shows up and they have to go NOW, so
You diplomatically temper their expectations and finish readying the MU2, or was it the Seneca? or
The crew arrives from the MRO across the field with a CF700 that will just barely squeeze through the doors of the 402 but only if you work it in just exactly so, or
It's Hazmat and you have to process the documents while referring to the book on the dark, windy ramp, and
Be sure to be sure that it's properly packed and secured, and also
Calculate the W&B and adjust the load as necessary, and speaking of which,
Your Citation I trip was scheduled in advance by a wealthy client whose Falcon 50 is in the shop, and you arrive at the office at 0700 for a 0900 departure--plenty of time to prepare to fly 4 people and 200lbs of stuff into Eagle or Aspen, and the cigar chomping client finally arrives at 1545 except they're now a party of 7 plus two dogs plus about 1000lbs of suitcases and golf clubs and hunting gear and of course, no effin way that's going into a CE-500, which infuriates the client and you are dragged into the ensuing melee between the client and the salesperson who booked the trip, and so on.
Keep in mind that, as a pilot, you will not be provided operational support. The company books the trip and assigns a pilot to fly it. There's no dispatcher, no load planner, no weather desk, no de-icing crew, no ramp service to load and unload, no handy line mechanic, no ATC or customs liaison, no cabin cleaners, no lav service, no flight attendant...You will wear ALL of those hats, and as a special bonus, YOU get to be the customer service representative charged with the job of pleasing difficult and demanding personalities and diplomatically defusing the inevitable imbroglio that arises when unreasonable expectations cannot be met.
You also have to actually fly the plane, often single-pilot, often into strange and sketchy airports/situations, day/night/VFR/IFR, figuring it all out yourself as you go. You are responsible and accountable for virtually everything that happens on your shift, and, since you are working for a commercial operation, your work is always subject to official scrutiny and therefore your certificates can be jeopardized by even a small, unintentional mistake or oversight. Unbeknownst to you, your employer could discover some incidence of non-compliance and self-disclose, leaving you twisting in the wind. And the pay? It's an entry-level job with entry-level rewards, the greatest of which is jokingly referred to as "character building." And lest I forget, one day each week you are assigned standby duty at the airport, which means you either fly, or you get to enjoy the special privilege of updating an entire set of USA/Canada/Central America Jepps.
So however ICAO may choose to define GA, the job that I have described here clearly has much more in common with GA than a scheduled 135, or any 121 or 125 carrier.
If, having read this far, you yearn for the adventure and character-building of "retail 135," be advised that this is only a brief glimpse--there's soooo much more that won't fit here.
You're on a short tether. Always.
Your phone rings at 0217 and you race to the airport because
In this operation, every flight is time critical,
Which means time of arrival at the destination, not time-of-day, and so
Your duty day often begins in your night WOCL, and will stretch 14 long hours, and,
Once at the airport, you will frantically make coffee, throw together a cooler of drinks and a snack basket for passengers while getting a briefing from FSS over a speaker phone (this when mobile phones were science fiction), and
If it's a destination you're familiar with you file right then, or,
Maybe you will get an IFR to VFR On Top clearance from Local and file airborne after you engage the autopilot and study the charts, but first
You must install the seats in the King Air, or
Remove the seats from the Baron, or
Pull the right seats out of the Lear and wrestle the incubator into place, and
By now you're soaked with sweat or rain or you have to de-ice, and
You begin to preflight the plane but are interrupted when the organ harvest team shows up and they have to go NOW, so
You diplomatically temper their expectations and finish readying the MU2, or was it the Seneca? or
The crew arrives from the MRO across the field with a CF700 that will just barely squeeze through the doors of the 402 but only if you work it in just exactly so, or
It's Hazmat and you have to process the documents while referring to the book on the dark, windy ramp, and
Be sure to be sure that it's properly packed and secured, and also
Calculate the W&B and adjust the load as necessary, and speaking of which,
Your Citation I trip was scheduled in advance by a wealthy client whose Falcon 50 is in the shop, and you arrive at the office at 0700 for a 0900 departure--plenty of time to prepare to fly 4 people and 200lbs of stuff into Eagle or Aspen, and the cigar chomping client finally arrives at 1545 except they're now a party of 7 plus two dogs plus about 1000lbs of suitcases and golf clubs and hunting gear and of course, no effin way that's going into a CE-500, which infuriates the client and you are dragged into the ensuing melee between the client and the salesperson who booked the trip, and so on.
Keep in mind that, as a pilot, you will not be provided operational support. The company books the trip and assigns a pilot to fly it. There's no dispatcher, no load planner, no weather desk, no de-icing crew, no ramp service to load and unload, no handy line mechanic, no ATC or customs liaison, no cabin cleaners, no lav service, no flight attendant...You will wear ALL of those hats, and as a special bonus, YOU get to be the customer service representative charged with the job of pleasing difficult and demanding personalities and diplomatically defusing the inevitable imbroglio that arises when unreasonable expectations cannot be met.
You also have to actually fly the plane, often single-pilot, often into strange and sketchy airports/situations, day/night/VFR/IFR, figuring it all out yourself as you go. You are responsible and accountable for virtually everything that happens on your shift, and, since you are working for a commercial operation, your work is always subject to official scrutiny and therefore your certificates can be jeopardized by even a small, unintentional mistake or oversight. Unbeknownst to you, your employer could discover some incidence of non-compliance and self-disclose, leaving you twisting in the wind. And the pay? It's an entry-level job with entry-level rewards, the greatest of which is jokingly referred to as "character building." And lest I forget, one day each week you are assigned standby duty at the airport, which means you either fly, or you get to enjoy the special privilege of updating an entire set of USA/Canada/Central America Jepps.
So however ICAO may choose to define GA, the job that I have described here clearly has much more in common with GA than a scheduled 135, or any 121 or 125 carrier.
If, having read this far, you yearn for the adventure and character-building of "retail 135," be advised that this is only a brief glimpse--there's soooo much more that won't fit here.
Doc Holliday
En-Route
Hmmmm. I never flew the GIV single pilot, and it was definitely not “entry level pay”.
Updating my jepps was really simple by connecting my EFB to the internet and pushing download, same as APG.
When we flew international we had various companies take care of aircraft handling, flight plans and customs. We just verified the paperwork.
Our dispatch handled customer problems if they arose.
Sounds like you weren’t at the bottom of the barrel but underneath it.
Roger Wilco
Line Up and Wait
As it relates to the job I referred to in #424 above, my employer was reputable and diligent, with a culture that placed a high value on regulatory compliance. They had a good working relationship with their POI and never pressured pilots or, so far as I was aware, mechanics. There were times in which I felt that the proposed operation would incur unacceptable risk, and management backed my decision when the client took issue with my decision. Nonetheless, there were many unscrupulous operators that fit the description you provide. I was lucky to land a job with one of the good operations, and still have great respect and appreciation for their ability to compete profitably against the dirtbags in a cutthroat industry.
Doc Holliday
En-Route
Roger Wilco
Line Up and Wait
Ha! What we would have done for a GIV when I was a kid. Jobs like you had were, in the early 80s, very rare and open only to pilots with extensive previous corporate experience and the right connections. Or ex-military pilots, who had their own extensive network of connections. Low-time civilian-only kids like myself had to pay our dues under the barrel. Here's the official uniform of the lowly on-demand 135 pilot, circa 1980.
Roger Wilco
Line Up and Wait
Which was what?
Doc Holliday
En-Route
Doc Holliday
En-Route
Your "story" in post #424 in which you state is a "personal account" paints this doom and gloom company, then is post #426 you state "my employer was reputable and diligent". So you worked for two different companies?
Roger Wilco
Line Up and Wait
What's your point, Doc--moving the goal posts? Working without a net? Should have been a groundskeeper?
Roger Wilco
Line Up and Wait
Why put "story" in quotation marks, Doc?
It was a challenging job, but the company was reputable. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Doc Holliday
En-Route
Point is you are spinning this story of the worst case scenario of 135 Ops and relating it as a "personal experience", then in another post you are going on how wonderful your company was. Then when questioned you move the goal post by putting in about "in the 1980's". That was 40 plus years ago. At this point why don't we include flying open cockpit biplanes in the 1930's or dilapidated Beech 18's in the 50's?
Roger Wilco
Line Up and Wait
Doc, I wasn't "spinning." I have neither the need nor the desire nor the time to fabricate fictionalized war stories about jobs I once held--what I wrote was from actual personal experience, and if it differs from your own, well, that's just the way it is.
"Wonderful" is your characterization, not mine.
When questioned? I didn't realize that I'd have to face The Inquisition (but then again, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition).
The 1980s was the actual time period in which I held the position, which, yes, was 40-plus years ago. I'm not quite old enough to have experienced flying in the 30s, or even the 50s, but I'm certain that those were interesting times--much more so than my own.
I hope this helps clear-up any misunderstanding. I wrote what I meant and meant what I wrote.
Afterthought: Beech 18's would not yet have attained dilapidation in the 1950's. Those that existed would have been relatively young, and they remained in production through the end of the 1960s.
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flyingcheesehead
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OK, so as you mention this was in the 80s. I was of pre-solo age at that point, but when I hit college I worked as a lineman for an FBO and charter operation that had been around since then and was probably something like what you describe. They had a 310, four 414s, and a B200 on their certificate.
But, let me share my experience at a modern combined 91/135 for contrast...
Nope... We had scheduled days on that varied - It started as 5 days a week that were kinda random from week to week, then went to a couple of more regular on/off rotations. If you were off, you were off, period. We did not accept any trips for the next day after 5 PM, and as a pilot if you weren't given a trip dispatch by 6 PM for the next day, you were free - Go ahead and go out drinkin' with your buddies. If there was a last-minute trip, it was emailed (no phone calls) and completely optional as to whether to accept, and if you did accept, there was a mandatory $500 surcharge that got split between the pilots.
There is that. I'm a night owl, but for our (frequent) 7 AM departures I had to wake up at 5. We occasionally had a 6 AM departure, which sucked. We did not accept anything prior to 5 AM, and if the departure was prior to 6 AM you got a free hotel room next to the airport so you could get a little extra sleep by eliminating your commute.
This was all done by ground crew when the plane returned the night before. Pilots are expensive now, so they've hired other cheaper people to do the dirty work.
EFBs have completely changed the game here. I got my briefing and filed my flight plan from the toilet right after I woke up.
On the occasions that reconfiguration was necessary, it was done by maintenance - This is required by FAR now.
Naah. We got umbrellas for everyone if necessary.
FBO took care of this.
If pax arrived early and we were ready, great. If we weren't ready, we got ready. We didn't fly any organ teams, but I'd imagine they'd rather not become donors themselves. Attitudes towards safety have definitely improved in most places.
We didn't do cargo. New planes, pax only. I think most of the operators that still do both cargo and pax use different planes for cargo than they do for pax; at least the ones I'm aware of do.
This was the part that made me feel the most hurried - Even though we got pax and bag weights in advance and could do a preliminary W&B, our OpSpec required us to do stated pax weights + 10 pounds each, and actual weights for bags. Dispatch would enter the preliminary stuff into ForeFlight Dispatch. Generally I just had the FO do this while I was greeting and briefing the pax and then I'd quick sign it off as soon as I got in the cockpit. We just emailed it to dispatch immediately upon signing.
Never had an issue with this. The main pax were always on time, and the couple of occasions some of the other pax weren't there on time, the main pax said "F 'em" and we left them behind. Really never had an issue with baggage that was way different than originally stated either.
We did have a non-rated dispatch department, didn't do cargo, EFBs have obsoleted the weather desk, FBO had the de-icing crew and lav service, and FBO would help with bags though we loaded and unloaded them at the plane. Before we had our own full time maintenance department we were almost always able to just grab a different airplane if we had an issue. Didn't do international. What the heck is an ATC liaison??? We did have cleaners who took care of the interior and exterior a few times a week, we'd just vacuum up if things got dirty or we had someone's dog on board.
We didn't do single pilot. In$urance is ridiculous for that. As far as the rest... Bro, do you even like to fly? Figuring it all out to go in whatever situation you're presented is exactly why I love it!
Again, company culture. At our company, when "stuff" happened - and it did - management coordinated the reporting process so that it STARTED with both pilots filling out an ASAP, together, right away, followed by the company self-disclosure. It costs money to train and insure pilots, so getting your own pilots grounded and/or punished hurts your business. Those operators you're talking about are the ones that caused the saying about making a small fortune in aviation, because they don't understand business!
Wasn't gonna get me rich, but it was enough to be comfortable.
For us, a reserve day meant sitting at home and being ready for a phone call until the last plane left, which was usually within an hour or two of the first plane leaving.
Agreed.
Groundpounder
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That doesn’t sound half bad.
Here were some of my experiences.
Phone call at 3pm to repo the airplane ASAP an hour to do an all night flight to the west coast, with a fuel stop. Yeah, I was rested for that….
We had iPad’s for EFB’s, but weren’t approved for EFB’s, but they also didn’t give us any charts. So to be legal, we had to find a printer somewhere and print out all the charts we thought we might need.
Schedule was 14/7. Sometimes you worked 14. Sometimes less, sometimes more. Sometimes you get called in the middle of your days off to just do one flight which turns into 5 days being gone.
Flying into ski country airports with inop EGPWS.
Unloading bags by yourself that weight 100+ lbs. Pax call later on to complain that I wasn’t “gentle” enough with their bags.
Here were some of my experiences.
Phone call at 3pm to repo the airplane ASAP an hour to do an all night flight to the west coast, with a fuel stop. Yeah, I was rested for that….
We had iPad’s for EFB’s, but weren’t approved for EFB’s, but they also didn’t give us any charts. So to be legal, we had to find a printer somewhere and print out all the charts we thought we might need.
Schedule was 14/7. Sometimes you worked 14. Sometimes less, sometimes more. Sometimes you get called in the middle of your days off to just do one flight which turns into 5 days being gone.
Flying into ski country airports with inop EGPWS.
Unloading bags by yourself that weight 100+ lbs. Pax call later on to complain that I wasn’t “gentle” enough with their bags.
SixPapaCharlie
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What I just learned...
I am spoiled.
I am spoiled.
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OTOH, you made your own luck! Still very happy for you.
SixPapaCharlie
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Thank you. I still feel like I won the career lottery.