FOREWORD
The Air Line Pilots Association, Director of this Site has prepared this booklet for young men and women interested in aviation careers. We hope this information will be helpful to you as you plan for your future.
The commercial airline pilot is a member of a proud and demanding profession. The amount of training needed, and the expense of that training, is comparable to the training for a physician. This is understandable because pilots are responsible for many human lives—sometimes more than 400 passengers on one flight.
Indian pilots are intensely aware of their responsibility. Although they consider the comfort and convenience of their passengers important, they uphold safety as their paramount concern.
If you are looking for a career where the sky is the limit, this information can provide you with many of the facts necessary to decide whether becoming an airline pilot is in your future.
INTRODUCTION TO AVIATION
Every child who watches a bird in the sky dreams of being able to fly. The desire for flight is probably as old as the history of humankind, but only within the past century has controlled flight been possible.
Commercial air passenger service began in the 1920s, with just a few thousand passengers a year traveling to and from a handful of cities. Now the world’s air transportation system moves nearly two billion passengers a year to hundreds of cities all over the world.
Early commercial pilots flew their routes by looking for familiar landmarks—a certain barn, a river bend, a farmer’s windmill. Sometimes they followed train tracks, and cases have been reported of near-misses with onrushing locomotives during low-visibility conditions.
Those pioneer airline pilots would be amazed at present-day cockpits. Technological advances have changed the speed and safety of travel, changed the aircraft, and changed the demands on the flight crew. Today’s complex air-traffic system and sophisticated aircraft demand skill, judgment, education, and, most important, experience.
Pilots control multimillion-dollar vehicles, some carrying more than 400 people plus tons of mail and freight. Such a huge aircraft takes off from a strip of pavement over a mile long and 200 feet wide, touching down again hundreds to thousands of miles away on another strip of pavement. Often the entire journey is made with no ground in sight from takeoff to landing. A takeoff or landing is made on the average of every three seconds by members of the Air Line Pilots Association, International. The scheduled airlines of the United States and Canada operate more than 8,000 aircraft, most of them jets.
The big business of air travel requires hundreds of thousands of workers. Many thousands are employed by airlines as mechanics, reservation agents, dispatchers, sales representatives, baggage handlers, office workers, and other important staff members. Additional thousands are employed at airports, in government, and in businesses that support aviation and air travelers. But once the power is applied to the engines, the safety of the flight is the responsibility of the professional crew up front.
Experience Requirements
In aviation, experience is judged in two ways: hours of flying and kind of flying. Most airlines require at least 1,000 hours of flying time, preferably in multi-engine turbine aircraft. The average new-hire at regional airlines has over 2,000 hours; the average new-hire at the major airlines has almost 4,000.
Although flight instruction and similar work are good ways to build up the first hours of commercial flying experience, once a pilot has recorded 2,000 to 3,000 hours of flying, additional time confers no competitive advantage unless it is flown in large transport-type aircraft. A pilot with 6,000 hours as a crop duster is probably a very good crop duster—but the airlines want multiengine, and specifically turbine, experience.
Training
More than half of the pilots currently flying for U.S. airlines have had military training, with the percentage slightly lower in Canada. In both countries, however, the military are training fewer pilots and requiring longer service commitments. You may reach your goal of becoming an airline pilot sooner through civilian training, much of which is geared to airline flying. Pilot training can be obtained in colleges through aviation courses or from privately operated flight schools.
