Posted on 11/26/2007 11:11:07 AM PST by billorites
One of the instructors at my old flight school trained in India. He liked to rant about how paved runways are for wimps because he learned on a 500-foot dirt strip.
With pilots, the reason there’s a shortage of qualified personnel is the cost of training. Unlike IT, it’s not easy to find qualified foreigners so the only option is to fork over the cost of training.
That day is already here. I've seen a ton of foreign born flight students training in recent years. Many return to their countries of origin, but some manage to get U.S. flying jobs. ~ billorites
It's the ones that aren't too concerned about learning how to land ya gotta watch...
my cousin’s son is getting $600 a day as a railroad engineer pulling coal trains out of the Rockies.
I would qualify by hours, etc.
Damned if I would take an 80% pay cut to do it, though.
And I have lots of memories of interesting interchanges between Aeromexico and Tucson Approach from many moons ago...lets just say the approach guys were not amused...
You can make about that much as a shift manager at a lot of fast food outlets - works out to about $11/hour for a full time job.
Folks joked about folks getting a raise when they went from McDonalds to TSA, but it sounds like pilots could get a raise by going to McDonalds.
Is that from the ARCO near Paeonia?
i’m not sure exactly where....the family lives in Colorado....they pull coal East.
Back when I was a young jet instructor in the USAF, we were warned about the multi-hundered hour smugness that would fool us into thinking that we were experts. Only after the first 800 hours or so of instructor (not total flight) experience were we advanced to the point of being considered for bigger and better things. Later, when I was an IP at the AF Test Pilot school, the same thing happened....only with a lot more hours tacked on. The newbies are probably fine...but they must watch constantly for that complacency that can kill. At least, when I made mistakes, I had the option of a “nylon letdown”. Passengers won’t have that option.
I trust the pilots more than the ground crew. If the spam hits the fan, the pilot bears the same risk as a passenger and it is their own self-interest to land safely. On the other hand, the mechanic on the ground a feww hundred or thousand miles away only has to worry about their job...
different mine. ARCO is western slope.
I had several offers to be a corporate pilot (actually an F/O) - at $1000 a month but with weird call-out hours - no personal life. They told me that I was “building hours” so that was part of my compensation ... whoop-de-do .... no guarantee of how many hours I’d be able to fly per month.
“Unlike IT, it’s not easy to find qualified foreigners so the only option is to fork over the cost of training.”
I’ve read some stories where some contractors are bringing in foreign A&P Mechanics. I’m a pilot and A&P and I’ve seen some strange things that pass as repairs on some of the aircraft we used to buy in SA. I don’t think a lot of other countries are as stringent in their mechanic’s training as the U.S. is unless it would be Western Europe. You make a mistake here and the FAA will screw you to the wall and won’t even give you a kiss.
India, the Middle East and Asia are all looking for pilots. Training is available for entry level and experienced pilots, 1st officers and qualified support personnel are heavily in demand. Like anything, you have to go where the jobs are.
60,000+ a year, plus getting upgrade training in VLJ's.
Not a bad thing for a 25 year old to do for a couple of years. Come back with a few hundred hours turbine time, close to enough TT for an ATP? No opportunity like that here in the states.
Well, maybe not a good idea for a chick with any body piercing...
Training centers are being set up in India and soon to be in SE Asia area also. Commercial/business aviation is booming there.
Why not pilots as well?
Best way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start with a large one. (BTW, love your nick.)
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