The Owner-Assisted Career

It is that festive time of year. Frosty air combined with wet leaves blowing up against my hangar door signaled that this is the season for an owner-assisted annual for my humble Cessna 140. 

I think that owner-assisted annuals are the best way to do this chore. I learn quite a few things every year, and the cost of doing it this way is far less expensive than a "retail" annual at the local maintenance shop at the big airport.

I was enjoying the cool temps in my hangar as I bent like a rusty Tin Man without the benefit of a Dorothy oiling my rusty old joints to pull my wheels for an IA-observed packing of their bearings.

Henry, my IA, was busy looking at my aileron cables while talking with me about the wisdom of frequent air filter changes for my mighty 85-horsepower plant. Neither of us saw or heard Chad come into the hangar but come in he did.

Chad is a nice guy and a competent pilot. It isn't his fault that he is young and has his whole future ahead of him. 

I have the perspective of an older person who has already had an airline career. I think it was my perspective that Chad was looking for because as he sat on one of the lawn chairs scattered around my hangar, he unburdened his heart to Henry and me.

"We just found out that my airline is furloughing three hundred and fifty pilots," he said dolefully.

I looked up from my squatting position near the main gear and replied with a well-thought-out, "Huh."

"That means," Chad continued, "I am now only fifty from the bottom of the seniority list and could be laid off soon. I'm going to have to fly on Thanksgiving and will also have to fly on Christmas unless they furlough me before then. Whatever happened to the pilot shortage? After two years with the company, I thought I'd be a captain by now."

Henry found an excuse to get away from Chad's pity party by schlepping off to go over my airplane's logbooks. I took a break from looking at my brakes and, after getting Chad a hot cup of semi-rancid coffee, sat down to offer some advice. He took a sip, made a face, and set the cup down on the floor.

First of all, I began, get over yourself. At least three hundred and fifty pilots would kill right now to have a Thanksgiving or Christmas trip. 

To quote a talking cartoon lion, "That is the circle of life, Simba." For every pilot shortage, there will soon be a pilot glut. It has been this way ever since the first airline pilot put on a funny hat and showed up for work. 

Flight schools and flying colleges love an announced pilot shortage. It ups their numbers. Most will not tell you that a piloting career is like a series of waves. There are huge ups in seniority when things are good and large wipeouts when things go bad.

You need to think about this career as a long-haul flight, not a touch-and-go. It is hard to believe that you will look back on your career setbacks with fond memories, but you will. 

I was furious every time I got bumped back to flight engineer, but now, when I look back on it, the experience was not all that bad. For example, even though I temporarily no longer had a control wheel, I went from the harsh life of being the most junior copilot to being a very senior engineer. There were no more all-nighters with Shreveport layovers and more weekday trips with Palm Beach layovers.

Your piloting job is based on you passing a first-class medical exam, meaning you are one bad exam from being forced into another life. 

Use some of the significant amount of time off your job provides to find something else that you like to do that might someday be a second career. 

You are young, ambitious, and new to this, so you might think that the airline you work for is your life. 

That is not true. Your life is your life. Your airline is a job. You are not a member of your "airline family." As you have seen, your airline "family" will lay off your brother and sister pilots in a heartbeat if they can save a buck by doing so.

You control your career, not the whims of your airline or a pilot shortage. Make some choices, hunker down, and grind it out. 

Welcome to the uncertain life of an airline pilot, Simba. That's right—I'm calling you Simba from now on.