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Is all the traveling enjoyable/exciting, or does it get tiring?
I'm not a pilot, but do travel a lot, and I think it depends on how much you like flying. Being in it for the money that a mainline pilot makes is different than enjoying what you do. I've met many of both in my line of work.
I don't believe those that love flying and helping out their passengers get tired of what they do.
A number of my family members are/were pilots and loved it.
I think it entirely depends on your personality type. While it would bore the begeezus out of me, some are perfectly suited to it and excel.
These days it does seem to take some years to 'work up' to the major carriers and better paying positions, but if it's something you want to do and enjoy, then go for it
I've been at it for over ten years and I find it tiring. I'm a Captain for a Low Cost Carrier, I have good company senority, but terrible base senority. I live in a very senior base and won't see much upward movement for the next ten years. (I grew up in the area and family is here, which is important to my wife and me).
The amount of time off can be great but it's not always the time off you want or need. I end up sacrificing my schedule to get one or maybe two things I need off. For example, my daughter is getting baptized next month and I wanted to attend a networking event at my alma mater. I was unable to get the networking event off.
February consits of a 30 day scheduling period at my airline (January 31 - March 1). I have 15 days off and will be away from home 15 days or 300 hours. I also have two weekends off. None of our schedules for Febuary had more than three weekends off. Those that did were only 5% of the schedules available.
The days away are filled with cities and hotels that I've been to hundreds of time. That gets old. Most of my airline overnights are on average of 16 hours. Factor in 8 hous for sleep, 30-45 minutes to and from the hotel in transportation, you are left with about 6 hours of free time. I usually go for a run, grab something to eat, talk to my wife during and then head to bed.
The reason I mentioned it is important that family is close earlier in my post is that my wife becomes a single parent for those 15 days I'm gone. There will times that your main sewer line clogs, power goes out, a pipe bursts, and more when you are gone. (Those all happened have happened to me). It's extremely helpful (as for most people) to have family around when you travel for work.
If you like constancy, this is not the job for you. I now have a family and I miss that consistency. As a single guy with not much going on it was great job!
The flying aspect is great and it's surprisingly different from day to day. There is very little supervision or contact with your boss (chief pilot). I enjoy turning my phone off and just focusing on work. I also enjoy not bringing work home with me. As soon as we complete our parking checklist on the last leg of trip, I'm done with work. I don't have to think about anything work related until I go back to the airport.
The last paragraph of your statement to me is worth all the volatility in your schedule. When you take off of work you are really off. When I head out on Friday I'm still thinking about work and periodically checking email and doing small work projects over the weekend.
That hard line seperation of work and home is invaluable.
Is all the traveling enjoyable/exciting, or does it get tiring?
My father is a retired airline pilot and he always loved flying so in that sense he never got tired of being a pilot. The physical demands of the job was another story. The layovers to places like Europe and Asia can be brutal. You lose a night of sleep flying over there and you only have 24 hours to recover before flying back to North America. You also have to factor jet lag into all of that. It wasn't all bad though. He always had his list of restaurants that he enjoyed visiting in the different cities he traveled to and he ended up becoming friends with a lot of the owners of these places.
I'm an airline pilot. My first reaction is to say that it is very tiring. Then I think of what it would be like to sit in a cubicle 5 days a week 9-5 and I am extremely grateful to have this job. Yes, the schedule is brutal, being away from home causes problems, dealing with abnormal situations can be stressful, etc. But the joy of flying can't be duplicated, the opportunity to visit places that I probably would have never dreamt of, the freedom of not having a boss breathing down my back, not having to sit next to the same obnoxious co-workers for years on end, not having to sit through endless staff meetings, etc. are all great benefits of the job.
It takes a while though to get to a point where you are making a comfortable living right?
I saw those shows where people have to start at the bottom flying low cost carriers and living in cheap motel rooms with other pilots. Starting at the bottom is normal everywhere of course but I think some are under the impression that a wanna be pilot goes to school and right after is making six figures.
As mentioned above there are aspects of being a pilot I would like. It does beat being at a boring desk job or other job requiring tedious manual labor. Something I might have considered 30 years ago.
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