In my 45-year flying career I have been fortunate to experience many of the different ways to earn money as a pilot. Occasionally I am asked what the best flying job is. I have to answer, “That depends. … It depends on the kind of person you are, what kind of flying you like to do, how much money you want or need to make and how much uncertainty you can stand.”
Of the many kinds of flying I have done, some were a good fit for me, and others didn’t agree with me that well. My least favorite was serving as an airline pilot. Big caveat here — my entire airline career lasted for two months flying as a first officer on a Merlin Metroliner for Cochise Airlines, operating out of Tucson, Arizona. While I was excited to finally be an “airline pilot” after flying for 15 years, and I enjoyed the challenge of learning and flying the Metroliner, for me the whole airline pilot gig got old very quickly. I like challenges and change, so the idea of flying the same routes day after day, with the same clearances and the same frequencies, just wasn’t my cup of tea. To me a lot of the satisfaction of flying comes from the challenge of planning a flight to a new destination or in difficult weather. As an airline pilot, I had the dispatch sheet handed to me as I walked out the door to the airplane. It almost didn’t seem fair that the dispatcher had all the fun of checking the weather and planning the flight.
