How does one get to become an airline pilot?

So how do I get to be a pilot, anyways?

There are really 2 routes to becoming a commercial airline pilot. The first, and what most people think is the traditional, is the military route. Finish college, enter the Air Force, or Navy, etc, get your wings from them, then retire at the end of your duty period and go to work for the airlines. This works nicely; somebody else pays for your flight training, which is expensive, but has a major drawback that you could end up getting shot at. Most pilots would rise to this challenge, but really, you are getting shot at.

The second route, is to go through civilian training. This is the route that I took. There are University programs that cover everything from soup to nuts and give you a degree in Aviation Management (what the heck does that mean, really) along with all your flying time, or you can do it the really hard way, and fly in your spare time.

Being slightly of a strange bent, I took that last of those. It didn’t start that way; I entered college on schedule, but I dropped out after my first year. I even had won a most highly coveted pilot’s slot upon graduation from Air Force ROTC, but the reality was, I was in no way mentally disciplined at that point in my life for either college or for military life. Sure, I could do it now, but who the hell wants a 42 year old military fighter pilot. Besides that, I’m old… and a chicken. “There are old pilots, and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots.”

Early on, I heard this about pilots—The more you fly, and as you gain more experience, after a short while, you should start to develop a yellow streak down the center of your back, that gets wider and wider as you get older and older. This will be set off early on, by you scaring the beJesus out of yourself, hopefully living to tell the tale, and really deciding not to do that again. That wide yellow streak is what keeps you alive.

Really, that is pretty funny. Pilots tend to be fairly aggressive, Type-A personalities. We want to lead, we want to be at the business end of the stick, we tend to be proud of our accomplishments. This is one of the reasons why as we go through the winnowing process moving forward in flying careers, there are far more men, far more men, flying for a living. It has very little to do with the “Old Boys” club concept. It’s just that there are simply not enough women who want to go through all the crap it takes before you can even get hired, let alone have the mental attitude it takes to fly. There is a certain mindset that you need. You need to be able to look at a number of possibilities, throw out the crap, make dangerous decisions now and then, and do it all rapidly and decisively. You have to be able to act. Pilots are “Doers.”

I am sure there is some “Old Boys” club mentality out there, but at this point in my career, I have flown with enough women that I can tell anyone flat out, There are girls flying who can fly circles around me; they are better pilots, and I’m never going to hold a candle to them. I’ve also flown with men of whom I think the same. On the flipside, I’ve flown with both men and women that make me wonder “How the H*ll did you ever get through flight school?” It’s all out there.

So I went the hard way, so to speak. I took my first flying lesson at Midway Airport in Chicago, at the tender age of 19, from a bodybuilder named Dave who also flight instructed to make a little extra $$. We had a trade; I would wash airplanes with him, and he would give me instruction, hour for hour. This was good, since instruction was about $24/hour, I was making good ca$h to wash airplanes.

So what you do is, you buy your time. There is aircraft rental fees, landing fees, the fees for the instructor, and other ways to send your hard earned money out the exhaust.

Once you start flying, you take your Student Pilot Medical Certificate. This is a medical exam, that also acts as your Student Pilot Certificate. It has pretty low standards, as far as medical exams go (pulse, see that wall, hear my voice,) but once you have it, you can do the little bit of magic that is in every pilot’s logbook. Fly your first Solo Flight.

So when you start, you learn some about the airplane, usually a trainer (Cessna 152 or 150 in my case, maybe a 172. Piper had the Warrior and Scout. They have all gotten really fancy since I flew.) So you learn a little aircraft basics, some basic aerodynamics, some basic airspace, and then you go practice landings. Lots of landings. If you take off, you gotta land... you’re pretty much committed at that point. You start practicing at a safe altitude, say 3,000’. You practice your descent to the airport, then ‘land’ at a safe altitude. After a few of those, you get to try out a real landing, at a real airport. Then you do more. Many many more… and they have a phrase for how you practice; “Touch and Goes.” You touch down on the runway for landing, clean the airplane up, and then take off again, all in the same roll. Then you do it again… and again.

Eventually your instructor thinks you are safe enough to be turned loose, and you have that magical moment when he or she says “Turn off on the taxiway after the next landing. I’m going to get a cup of coffee, and you do the next few yourself.”

Then you start to taxi back to the runway, and you realize “I’m all alone in here. There is nobody to help me. Sure, I can call on the radios, but really, fate is at my command.”

Every pilot flies solo occasionally (sometimes even in an airline flight deck.) However, you only Solo once. It is magical. It is high inducing. Nobody will ever really understand, except your fellow pilots. You are entering a very special brotherhood. You are doing something amazing… that runway is the only thing that connects the sky and the ground, and you are going to make that connection all by your lonesome.

I once met a girl who always wanted to be a pilot. She got to the point she made her first Solo flight, and then she stopped flying. She just wanted to solo, to say she had done it. Good for her... she’s done something rare….

After this, it is a race to the Private Pilot’s License. This license allows you to fly anywhere in the air traffic control system. A Private Pilot has all the rights in our airspace as any other pilot, including airline types. ATC does not have a tag on the airplane that says --*PPL,* or anything like that. When you want to, you can fly whatever you want, however you want. If you have the money, you can be a private pilot and fly your own personal Boeing 747. There would be quite a lot involved, but realistically, that is true.

So there is a written exam for the Private Pilot License. It covers airspace limitations, basic flight rules, just what you would expect. There is even some weather questions on there. The PPL is a ‘fair weather’ license, until you add something called an Instrument Rating. This is more testing, and more instruction, and learning how to fly by reference to the instruments in the aircraft alone. A little more of this training is what John Kennedy could have used and it would have saved his life, most likely. It is basic, but when you know how to fly by referencing the outside world, and someone takes that world away (Fog.. night.. whatever) you better know how to fly by the instruments.

Generally, you get the Instrument Rating as soon after your PPL as you can. Then you can fly anywhere in the air traffic system in most any weather, too. Now you can do some real flying.

But you can’t fly for pay. Not yet. The general rule was that as long as you contributed to the cost of the flight, it was considered fair game for a Private Pilot. So, we would rent a Cessna 172, fly up to Lake Geneva for Sunday Brunch, fly back, and the rental, etc, would be about $250. As long as I contributed $0.01, I was legal for the flight. Today, however, they have changed the wording to “pro-rated” costs. Equal amounts, so that Private Pilots are not getting away with that. Too bad… that was fun.

When you are ready to step up, and you have a minimum of 250 flight hours, you can take your Commercial Pilot’s License exam. There is another written (of course!) and another checkride… you will be held to higher tolerances, now. People will be paying you to fly them, they have a right to be protected from someone with a lack of knowledge and experience.

A quick (ha ha) word on flying time, We log our own flying time. This goes on the honor system. Serious! Anybody can call to check up on you if you are a job applicant, and many places do. But you could put whatever flying time in your logbook you wanted, and for the most part, it would be considered yours. This is terribly unethical, and pilots who are caught “pencil whipping” their flying time should be drummed out of aviation.

There are minimum flying times for licenses. I don’t remember all the numbers anymore, but it was 40 hour for Private, 150 or so for taking the Instrument rating, 250 for Commercial. There are also requirements inside there, such as a certain amount of that flying must be Cross Country (to or over an airport 50 Nautical Miles from your starting airport.) For the Commercial, you have to have flown a flight of at least 500 miles, with stops if need be, and a landing airport at least 250 miles from where you started.

Once you pass your Commercial Pilot, now you can fly for pay. But almost nobody will hire you, because you don’t have any experience; you cannot be insured with such low flying time. Flying time is your experience level… low time = no insurance. So you have to keep flying, but some of the ways you can build your time are: ferry airplanes you are already checked out on for a manufacturer, or aircraft sales broker (I did a bunch of this.) Find someone generous who owns a decent airplane that will fly with you until he/she can insure you. That is a nice route. Or, you can flight instruct. This is an add-on to the Commercial Pilot’s License. There are a few tests, knowledge tests, etc, and a flight check, but then you can hang your shingle out and teach budding new aviation hopefulls how to fly.

Now it is just a time building exercise. At every step along the way, people drop off the map. There are a lot of student pilot. There are fewer Private Pilots. Then there are the PPLs with an instrument rating.. Then There is a multi-engine rating for that… then Commercial License. Every step of the way, fewer people continue on. It is expensive if you are not going to make a career out of it, and even then, you may never get your $$ back. It is a “rare bird” who only has a single uniform in his or her closet. Many pilots have been furloughed, bought out, rehired, the works.

Eventually, you find an airline that has hiring minimums that you meet, and then you interview, get a background check, drug tested. Some interviews include flying a simulator to see how you handle an aircraft. My interview with Eagle included 20 minutes or so in a Boeing 707 Sim… that was a rush.

But that is the gist of it.