What are the advantages and disadvantages in being a pilot?

Question

Question 1: What is the salary for a newly recruited pilot?

Question 2: Do you have to accept the promotion to long haul flights or can you just say you are happy doing short- medium haul?

Question 3: does a cabin stewart stewardess have the same working hours as a pilot?

Question 4: Please describe the typical working week of a pilot doing short-medium haul routes. In detail please.

question 5: Is your social and family life really that jeopardized if you are a pilot?

Question 6: my eyesight is relatively bad, can I make up for it by using contacts, by the way, I have perfect color vision.

Question 7: How long does it take from scratch, and is a University degree and PPL required beforehand, or are they just an advantage?

Question 8: I speak fluent English, German, and a lot of French and Irish, and I am learning Russian and Italian, will the airlines take this into consideration when employing me?

If there's anyting else I should know, please tell me, here's my situation, I am Irish, 17 and I just graduated, and I am working on a gap year between highschool and further education, and I am not sure whether or not to persuit a government job or a career as a pilot, so please help me out, answers from pilots would be a Godsend.

If you are going to answer, then please answer all my questions, and put in as much effort as you possibly can, and if you dont know the answer to a certain question just refer to it and say '' idk'' or something.

well thanks so much for oyur help people you are so great for answering ..... God Bless

Answer 1

Just a quick suggestion, you can get a 4yrs degree in any major of your choice and still become a pilot. Don't fall for majors like professional pilot or aviation science that are being offered in many universities. They don't give you any thing beside if you loose your job as a pilot your degree is worth nothing. I wish some one had suggested this to me when I was in college.  

Answer 2

You say you are Irish...are you living in Ireland or elsewhere?  

1: Typically, not much.  It depends on what type of service you are talking about, but as a rookie First Officer short haul for a regional airline, expect an annual starting salary in the $20-30K USD range.  There was a recent question asked here about how much pilots make, do a search for it.

2: No, you can generally stay at any position/level you choose, provided those positions stay open.  Why you would want to is another question.  The more seniority you have (and accept through promotion), the better you will be able to manage through tough times and the lower the chances of being furloughed.

3: Enitrely depends on the airline, but more or less, yes.

4: Working schedules typically are some number of consecutive days on, some number of consecutive days off.  For example, I currently am working 4 days on, 3 days off.  They may be 4 on/4 off, 7 on/7off, or some other arrangement.  For a regional airline or flying for a private owner, during the "on" days, you may only be flying a small percentage of the time.  The time that you actually are working is split between flying, and preflight and postflight routines.  The rest of the time you are essentially on-call and can be at home or doing other non-work related things, but you need to be at the airport within 2 hours if called (2 hours is pretty standard for most regional airlines).

5: It depends on the type of service you are in.  If you are working a steady 4 on/3 off and fly for a regional carrier, then you sleep in your own bed at home most nights and it's no more taxing on family than any other career.  On the other hand, if you are flying an air tanker during summer fire season and are sent to chase fires all over the country, forget the thought of ever having a home or a family.  Major airline carriers (international) fall somewhere in between but have somewhat more strenuous lifestyles than regional pilots.

6: Yes, there are acceptable ways of correcting your vision.  However, this leads me to a related point: the first step before you do anything else is to go to an FAA medical examiner to make certain that you will be able to pass a 1st Class medical examination.  If you can't, sorry.  You can't be a professional pilot, but it's better to know that in the beginning before you spend thousands on flight training only to find out later that you can't get a 1st Class medical certificate.

7: Generally, all airline companies require a bachelor's degree.  As far as aviation certificates and experience, you will need to get pretty much all the certificates and ratings including private and commercial certificates, with instrument and multi-engine ratings (all can be done inside of a single year if you crunch it), and you will need to become a certified flight instructor (CFI) and teach for a couple years to build at least 750-1500 or so hours (many airlines have been hiring with only ~700 hours PIC time and put you through their own in-house training for turbine, jet, and type ratings and so forth).  Realistically, if you put your whole life into it, you can be employed by an airline after only 2-3 years of training and instructing.

8: Being multi-lingual may give you an advantage, but English is the international language of aviation so that's all you really need in practice.

Answer 3

A chara

Becoming a professional pilot requires  a desire, passion and sacrifices well beyond most other professions.

The days of Aer Lingus paying for your ratings are long gone. If this is truely what you want the answers to most of your questions should be irrelevant.

That said my respect to the previous person who took a lot of time and care to answer your questions. There is nothing I could say any better.

Good luck