Careers

Becoming a member of the Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, is a dream of many current and aspiring Navy and Marine aviators. Each year, the team selects three pilots for its F/A-18 Hornets, and one Marine Corps C-130 pilot to fly Fat Albert, the team’s Hercules support aircraft. Minimum qualifications: Jet pilots […]

Boeing predicts a need for 617,000 commercial airline pilots by 2035 due to an increase in the airline fleets and an impending mass retirement of airline pilots. This amounts to 31,000 pilots each year. To address this need, Boeing is expanding its international pilot development program, which includes 15 campuses worldwide. The pilot development program […]

Nearly as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a pilot — nothing more, nothing less. I said as much in a second-grade project that my mother saved for posterity. Over time I developed additional interests and even dabbled with the idea of becoming an architect or practicing law, but I never seriously […]

Even after almost 32 years with my airline, I am not one to reminisce. That being said, I sometimes reflect on life events by referencing my career at a particular snapshot in time. For instance, when I contemplate the age of the adviser that ably manages my finances, I realize he probably wet his first […]

There are pilots who enjoy the long cross-country flight. I’m certainly in that category. I’ve flown my airplane from Florida to Maine to Seattle, San Diego and back, crisscrossing the country more than a dozen times. With that considered, Abingdon Welch has me beat by a long shot. Welch, currently a regional airline first officer, […]

Jerrel Storrud was always interested in aviation, but circumstance led him to become an auto mechanic. Eventually, he became an aircraft mechanic at Neptune Aviation in Missoula, Montana. He continued to pursue ratings, gaining the experience to step into the roll of first officer at the aerial firefighting company.

Capt. Peter Nadon never envisioned himself as a pilot when he was a child because he never knew anyone who flew. He actually studied geology in college, but he got the flying bug. He turned aviation into a career at Neptune Aviation as an air tanker pilot flying Lockheed P-2s, a career he says is […]

Skip Stewart’s career in aviation started at an early age, whether he realized it at the time or not. As a child, he flew with his grandfather in a cropduster. Stewart started his “airshow training” at 9 years old, when he began flying model airplanes.

We call it flying in a black hole — no stars or ground lighting to guide you. You are flying a TP-3, a heavy, lumbering beast of an airplane, and you are just 350 feet above the ground, accelerating toward 150 knots. The cockpit glows an eerie Halloween green. Your captain indicates it’s time, and […]

If you fly with an iPad, there is a good chance you do it with ForeFlight leading the way. It’s hard to find an app in any industry that dominates the way ForeFlight Mobile does because it just works. It has to because flying is serious business, and a lame product would have been laughed […]