Commercial Pilot

[Threestep]

What counts are your hours, ratings and ability to live under poverty limit for a while.
Are you financially able to push from zero to ATP? Are you able to retain and use the technical data necessary for the job? Baby right seaters make around 18-24k with regionals.
A poster mentioned 50/hr plane rental. That may have applied to a single engine dry about 10 years ago.
What can you get out ouf it? Either you will go broke, wash out or make it. About ten years after his first flight hour my respective half is where he did not dare to dream about and loving it.

[mbuszu]

Commercial flight school is expensive (30k+ per year) and upon graduation you stand to make peanuts (20-27k). A friend of mine did that route - as much as I enjoy flying, there appeared to be such a lack of potential income early on that I currently feel that keeping flying to a hobby is the most sound financial advice to give. Sure, later in life a pilot can earn a lot more, but I don't see the appeal of going massively in debt educationally only to work a job which pays 20k per year.

My own research showed that the best way to become a commercial pilot is indeed what another person on this thread recommended - join the Air Force and have them pay for your training and hours of flight time in return for a few years of your life, and life-risking. To do this right, you're still going to want to pursue as much flight time as possible right now (before joining - and note, you will want to join as an Officer), additionally you'll want to evaluate how bad you want to do this because you certainly don't want to join the Air Force only to end up in a non-flying career path because you didn't put in enough effort to make the cuts necessary.

Another idea once trained - If you buy your own plane and start your own courier business I think you could indeed make an excellent living doing something enjoyable.

[Threestep]

Mbuszu - why waste years and then unlearn it all? You have not checked into tuition at the big flight schools latelyt:>) Depending on how good and how motivated you are - the jobs are there. You can be in the 6figures in five years.

The poster mentioned something about mass communication, then a job as a deckhand, then radio ... sounds like he is a long ways from a runway

[barrowgm]

so i definately just invested a lot of money to start my private pilots license and this is kind of a downer