Real Answers from Real Pilots

6 Month delay

(Julian Gazzelloni) #1

Hi everyone,

So I’ve been accepted into a flight school, with a choice of start dates. The earliest I can start is May as long as my Medical submission gets confirmed. Or, I could continue to work at the current job I have now for one more summer to make it a little more comfortable financially, especially given my current student debt. That would push my start date back to November. My question is, realistically, how far behind the 8-ball would the ~6 month delay put me with the industry constantly changing and such? Thanks for your help

#2

Julian,

The answer is you may never actually know. Seniority dictates everything in this industry. Forget 6mos 1 week could make a huge difference in a career. Whenever there’s an upgrade, a downgrade, a furlough, bid for a base, an aircraft etc. at some point there’s always a cutoff. Always. Imagine there’s a line to get into a concert. You don’t know how many seats there are but whether there are 50, 100 or 1,000, the closer you are to the front of the line the safer you are. So if you’re number 99 or 101 in line and there’s only 50 or 1,000 seats it makes little difference. Either way you were nowhere near either side of the cutoff, BUT if there are 100 seats, well now you’re the last person to get in OR first person to NOT get in and that’s when it hurts. As I said you’ll never know the impact until you’re in it. Make sense?

Adam

(Julian Gazzelloni) #3

Yes it makes sense, thanks Adam. I just know I’m not getting any younger, not that I’m old (27 in 2 months). I just know that financially I’ll be much more stable if I work all summer, but I don’t want to push myself back by waiting too long. So I’m just trying to weigh the options. I also have not officially had my paperwork submissions confirmed or been officially approved for a loan yet as I’m waiting to finalize everything, so I suppose it could be a mute point after all.

#4

Julian,

In the aviation industry, sometimes six months is not a big deal, sometimes it is huge. When Continental laid off pilots in 2008, people six months junior to me got the ax and were out for three years. So for them, it was massive. People that are six months senior to me enjoy slightly better schedules, but not terribly. There really is just no way of telling what kind of difference six months will make.

Chris