A job as a professional pilot can offer both a great lifestyle and financially stability. On the other hand, pilots can work long irregular, anti-social hours and often at short notice periods, impacting your social life. The overall package offered does mostly depend on the type of flying being carried out, but the amount of duty hours you are able to work are strictly controlled by regulations.
Broadly, you can categorise professional flying roles into a number of categories:
Generally, regional companies give you excellent balance of work and leisure. You rarely overnight and the shifts are usually either mornings or afternoons. The salary isn’t as well paid as the airlines, but the flying is a lot more hands on.
Again charter companies don’t pay as well as airlines. There is a less stable rostering system due to the nature of the job and you quite often have to go away for a couple of weeks at short notice. Some of the larger charter companies have a slightly more stable rostering system, although the these jobs are often in high demand. The flying however is second to none, you’ll get to fly the rich and famous to all manner of exotic destinations.
On short-haul, you can often work up to six days in week, with four or more consecutive sectors being flown during one day. The upside to short-haul is that you will mostly be at home by the end of the working day, providing you with a stable lifestyle. However, although you might be scheduled to fly to some exciting destinations, you usually only spend up to an hour on the ground before returning.
Long-haul operations can provide an attractive lifestyle if you can survive the brutal time zone changes and don’t mind being always on the go. Due to the length of some trips, you maybe away from home up to a week at a time, but this results in reduced number of flights per month, when compared to short-haul. Larger carriers usually have a seniority based system for flights and unfortunately the lower down the list you are, the less choice you are given.
