Do You Really Want to be an Airline Pilot?- from Airline Pilot Chatter

Today, Brad Tate from the blog Airline Pilot Chatter wrote a nice and thorough post about becoming an airline pilot. He writes about what expectations he had going into the career in addition to the contrast he witnessed while actually being a pilot. He gives information as to how the career has been going recently and what it might look like in the future.  Towards the end of his post, Brad also wrote a message to future pilots like myself. 

If you are an aspiring pilot, I highly recommend that you check out his blog, post, and Twitter (available from his blog) 

Here is the post: So You Really Want to be an Airline Pilot?

Brad Tate is "an Airline Transport Pilot with over 20 years experience in commercial aviation. Crisscrossing the United States, Canada and Mexico as an MD80 First Officer for a major U.S. airline, he enjoys sharing the view and a few stories along the way." After having such a long and continuous career as a pilot, I find it helpful to receive advice from him. 

After a month or so of emailing with Brad, he decided to put a little bit about me into his post. Just like Karlene did a few weeks ago, Brad offered some seriously good advice for new pilots and what kind of mindset you need to have in order to go into a field like this. 


My favorite passage he wrote in his post today is this: 

"I am sad to say that it is not uncommon for me to come in contact with people who have forgotten that they have a job they once longed for and worked very hard to get. Maybe their expectations were not met, but it is far too easy to get caught up in all the negativity...and that's no way to live.   Is the job as good as it used to be?  Will it ever be as good as it once was?  Maybe not, but I think my friend, author and fellow blogger Karlene Petitt put it best when she said  "I guess it depends if you are flying for the end goal, or the journey."  I am here for the journey and I think Swayne is too."

An Image Brad captured climbing out of KDCA in August