Pilotage

A former editor of AOPA Pilot, Mark R. Twombly is a freelance writer and pilot.

My son is dividing his time this week between finishing up his last few days at work and packing. He's fresh out of college, and in a few days he's leaving Florida for New Hampshire to start his career.

Given the sluggish economy, I suppose he's lucky to even have a new job to report to so soon after receiving a degree. Some of his friends have not been so fortunate. While he cleans out his apartment, they are still sending out résumés. Make that doubly lucky, because he landed a job in a discipline that is not in terribly high demand these days. He is a professional pilot.

Like most beginning young pros, he is entering the profession as a flight instructor. And like many young instructors, he aspires to something else. He wants to fly larger and faster airplanes, go to more distant ports, hang out in the flight levels, and be compensated well for it. When he achieves all of that, I'm hoping he'll return to instructing at least part time to lay his experience, wisdom, and enthusiasm on young aspirants not much different from who he is today.

For now, however, he must begin his flying career at the beginning, and I would think the road ahead must look daunting.

Professional piloting is harsh on new entrants. There aren't many careers that put such a heavy emphasis on experience as a basic qualification for getting a decent-paying job. If he had decided years ago that he wanted to be an attorney, he would have attended law school after earning an undergraduate degree. Once he had cleared the state bar exam, he could hang a shingle out on Main Street and begin accepting clients. Or, he could accept a position with an established law firm. Either way, he'd likely be earning a very nice living not long after turning in his cap and gown.

From what I read, it's much the same with MBA graduates, engineers, and computer scientists. If he had wanted to be a history teacher, I'm sure he would have been hired immediately after completing the necessary certification studies.

Not so in aviation. As an aspiring pro pilot, he first must go through the time-consuming and expensive process of obtaining the basic certificates and ratings. But that beginner's resume — commercial and flight instructor certificates with instrument and multiengine ratings — won't open very many doors except the one labeled Flight Instructor. The fact that instructors typically earn a subsistence income says a lot about how we in aviation perceive that calling.

A pilot certificate with at least a couple lines' worth of certificates, ratings, and endorsements is a given for a pilot who wants to be a professional. But the resume item that largely determines who gets hired for a flying job other than instructor is the thickness of the logbook.

For better or worse, that's the way it is. So, my son is about to do what most beginning professional pilots have always done — go out and get the experience any way he can. Build time. Look for opportunities. Log quality multiengine hours and, especially, precious turbine time.

As he gains that experience, what can he look forward to? The central truth about piloting as a profession is the cliche that says the only constant is change. Aviation has always been defined by cycles of highs and lows. If he had graduated five years ago he would have caught the wave before it crested. Now we're in a bit of a trough. But it doesn't seem to bother my son. He takes the long view. "It'll come back," he says, showing patience beyond his years.

Looking deep into the future, what does he want to be doing, flying, and earning? He hasn't said, because he doesn't know. He's still excited by it all, by the wonderfully confusing spectrum of possibilities for getting paid, sometimes poorly, sometimes very well, for flying an airplane.

Right now he wants to try, and fly, anything. That gives him away as a true enthusiast. I hope he stays that way instead of decomposing into the saddest of creatures in aviation, a bitter and cynical professional pilot.

He may follow two of his uncles and wear the uniform of a major air carrier. They've set dazzling examples by never allowing flying to become just another job. In fact, his Uncle Gerry welcomed him into his house last summer, instructed him, checked him out in his Piper Cub, and let him build time in it so he could take his commercial certificate checkride — in the Cub.

He may follow his grandfather's path and get paid to fly airplanes for individual and corporate owners. My Part 91 and 135 father never earned as much as his two Part 121 sons do, but he would have chafed under the rigid structure necessary to the success of a big airline. When I hear my son say he could never make a career out of a job that required him to park himself in an office every day, I think he must be a lot like his grandfather.

The longest shot would be for my son to follow his dad's lead — write for dough and fly for show. I doubt he'll do that, however. He's spent enough time with his airline uncles to understand that professional flying can sure beat working for a living.

Gook luck, Ian, and remember what your grandfather used to say: Keep the shiny side up.