Pro-Pilot Playbook Podcast #43 // Am I Too Old to be a Pilot?

[Music] hello aviators welcome back to the pro pilot playbook podcast where we bring you all the tips tricks the hacks and the shortcuts to get you through your flying career in the fastest and cheapest means possible to get you into the right seat of the airliner or into that corporate jet or whatever else you want to do in this industry to make money as a pilot i'm sean richie i'm here with uh mike martin and uh yeah let's get into it today uh you read the title we we've kind of done this uh just couple episodes ago we had we were talking about the uh that the ten-year-old from australia that wrote us saying you know how young is too young and then i showed a video of my ten-year-old boy taking his first flight lesson uh but we didn't really talk about the other side of it and that's how old is too old yeah and we get we've gotten a lot of questions about this through uh viewer comments right yeah so that's that's what we're doing today basically we have we're gonna answer four four questions uh four four separate questions all asking the same thing you know how old is too old real quick though before we get into that mike i just wanted to i gotta mention this yeah because i never thought about i mean i did kind of we chose this music based on that or whatever it's licensed licensed music to us or whatever but right um i didn't think much of it but somebody put a comment on youtube uh from ballad motion the show theme song hits my gut when i hear it makes me think of success after the long grind make it play longer at the top end or the bottom end of the show that's great a shout out to us in our music yeah yeah and i think i was telling sean uh uh that uh i had my first celebrity appearance man i was i was yeah i was yeah this is such a cool update too yeah yeah i was at an airport and uh uh somebody recognized me and came up to me and said hey you know i i was uh it was uh i i guess i had started flying years ago and then stopped and then decided to get back in i was working a regular job and your uh your videos really helped and you know i really appreciate it i had to come up and say hello so uh yeah that was uh uh first time man now i'm we're celebrities now right right yeah big time celebrities no but what was interesting about that story he told me mike and unless i'm making this up in my head right right the guy was just hired at his first 135 gig it was like his first day flying first flight or something no jet time this is his first gig and then he runs into you in the hangar on the first day i mean that is so cool it was yeah it was great great yep yeah so yeah yeah yeah just take out of the equation that it was us and our podcast just the fact that it was anything to do with his career progression and his first day there at work he runs into that you know in the hangar uh it's just yeah he was super excited man magic yeah um all right so let's get into it the questions uh these questions are from let's see and i'm gonna name all you guys like i usually do in the you know the the in the textual description of the podcast and the youtube uh but we got from william we got uh manzanaron okay and uh william actually submitted two different questions about the same thing and then there's another one here from uh bruce but they're all basically asking the same thing so i guess we'll just uh i don't know we should read them all at once or maybe we'll just hit them just read the best one at a time and then some of them might overlap yeah yeah that'd be good all right so this first one and i hope i'm saying it the way he it's his handle uh his email whatever maybe it's his last name uh manzanaron all right hello sean and mike it's ron from new jersey i recently came across the podcast and i'm glad i did it's very informative and entertaining at the same time thank you and please keep it going i currently have approximately five years left to retire and i'm planning a second career from a young age i've always wanted and been interested in becoming a pilot but life happened i went on on a discovery flight and was recently hooked my wife is very supportive and after talking to her and telling her how passionate i am about deciding on i've decided to start this journey my question to you guys is how should i approach this since i technically have five years to complete all my ratings and build hours my goal is to finish my private certificate in 2022 however i am not sure how aggressively i should attack my commercial i do want to become a cfi and build hours that way uh my work schedule can sometimes vary but i know in advance what days i have off the ultimate goal is to fly for the regionals corporate charter or the majors i pretty much covered it all there who knows for money right right who knows right now i live 15 minutes from ewr which is newark new jersey wow and was wondering how hard it would be to find to make ewr my base oh nice yeah yeah i don't yeah that's uh i don't think we can start with that will my age make a difference in being hired god willing if everything goes as planned and i am still alive i will be 45 going on 46 years old when all this goes down i guess and uh thank you again for what you guys do yeah wow well the the newark thing's easy i mean that's uh mecca for airline central up there the new york metro area and correct me if i'm wrong sean but a lot of the uh it's it's a junior base usually for a lot of airlines yeah i i yeah i gotta tell you ron most guys in this industry aren't super excited about newark i mean i know i know you guys you live there so it's different for you but i it's not like a sought-after thing you know right so and i i don't know offhand but i'm pretty sure that uh newark is uh pilot bases for at least two or three regionals oh yeah that's it that's a domicile for and it's that's not going to be an issue even if for some reason that regional carrier you get on with or or whatever you go go to do uh doesn't have newark as a as their domicile it's it'll be an easy commute to wherever you're going yeah yeah kennedy anywhere on the planet out of newark or that area of the country right right and then of course for corporate you have teterboro there which is the busiest corporate airport i think in the world i mean absolutely yeah yeah yeah i mean location-wise he couldn't be doing any better right i mean you're you're living underneath the busiest airspace on the planet you got you've got jfk laguardia newark teterboro uh white plains yeah yeah yeah that is the busiest airspace on the planet hands down right right right so so you're already ahead yeah yeah you got that going for you um as far as let's see can you get it all done in five years uh absolutely i mean working a full-time job even so you're i just thinking ahead here your biggest hindrance is going to be trying to do all this up there in that the multiple busy class b airspaces of like i just mentioned busiest airspace on the planet that's going to be your biggest hindrance more than anything just because it's so busy and the the seasonal type of flying you're going to be able to get in right you know this time of year it's probably very difficult to get out there and do lessons um you know the the same advice we mike and i always give of running off to florida or something and getting it done at one of these one of these companies that that focus on uh the accelerated training and they're not just all in florida there's some in arizona there's even a really good mom-and-pop version of it up in minnesota um actually my yeah my next-door neighbor actually uh he's has interest in becoming a pilot he's he's 17 and uh this summer he's going up there he's getting his private pilot's license he's finishing up he's doing some lessons here right now you know but he's gonna get his private pilot's license in under two weeks and then he's gonna come back he's doing that during spring break here actually uh he's taking a little extra time off school mixed in with spring break he's gonna have us private in two weeks um and then he's going back up there again after school is out getting his instrument rating in 10 days so this is actually the private isn't exactly two weeks uh start to finish because he's doing some of it here before he leaves and he'll have his written test done you know but all this stuff is possible um five years is very doable yeah absolutely and and here here's the thing your age um the demand for pilots is so high i mean you can fly until age 65 airline um and then really any age corporate until you don't feel you can do it or you have a medical problem or something so um absolutely you got plenty of time i mean i'm 43 how are you sean i'm 45. yeah for so i mean you know no absolutely it's not uh of course we've completed our training and everything and we're marketable at this point but you know within you know a few years you can get uh marketable to employer even quicker if you use some of the methods in our course and you're in a great area for it i i really uh yeah i couldn't encourage you enough to do it i mean you you won't you know it's it's been a dream of yours you've thought about it you've you've paid your dues at your other job and uh yeah i think that's really exciting you know i've flown with lots of corporate guys you know a very common thing is uh airline pilots will retire and at age 65 and then still enjoy flying so much they'll get a corporate job so i've flown with lots of those guys i've flown with a lot of uh second career guys too um that are you know in their 40s or 50s and they were an accountant or an engineer i know one guy one engineer i used to fly with he said uh uh uh we we were we actually we landed i think up in columbus somewhere or something and uh we had a problem with the brake system and the plane was grounded and he was on the phone and we were working with maintenance and i'm like oh man this sucks and he goes you know mike he goes uh uh a bad day of flying is better than a uh the best day at the office so he was saying that's your butt yeah yeah yeah so uh yeah fun with a lot of those guys so uh i had uh uh just in my last type rating i was uh my sim partner i was paired with was a uh former insurance agent insurance business in in um mississippi and then just said hey i'm getting out and jumping in so um you won't be alone certainly at all uh have you shot phone with those guys absolutely yeah second career guys yeah absolutely and i think one of the other questions we're going to i'm going to read here next is a second career guy this is very popular in our industry yeah and uh you're gonna run into more more colleagues out there as you get going that are doing the same thing yeah yeah so uh 40s you know to answer that question is is not too late remember at the airlines the mandatory retirement right now is 65. so even if you don't get to the airlines to you know 48 or something you know you still got you still got plenty of time um and and if you keep it going you could get there by you know 45.

but to answer your question before we move on to the next one of your direct questions here is finish in my private 2022 however i am not sure how aggressively i should attack my commercial so the commercial pilot's license requires 250 hours total time and that is required to get your cfi your certificate flight instructor certificate that allows you to teach people how to fly this is the traditional rung and the ladder of becoming a pilot you get this cfi rating certificate and you're allowed to teach people how to fly and that's the transition from always paying to fly to getting paid to fly and you're putting hours in your logbook and i've said over and over through the years i never really learned about aviation or how to fly until i had to teach somebody yeah yes you know you drive over the airport every day thinking oh my god did i tell that kid right am i saying the right that you know you don't want to look like an idiot so you're gonna you get in the books and you make sure that you're telling people correctly but how aggressively should i attack my commercial as aggressively as possible this is your ticket to getting that time in that five years okay so every day when you get off work you can have you can control your schedule and and have students lined up for you when you get done doing what you're doing you drive over the airport you take you know take a couple students up build time get in your logbook there's a the airport right next to my house uh there's a uh young woman over there who's a flight instructor she just went and bought a cessna 150. she found a cessna 150 on the cheap and uh when she's not training students she's just up buzzing around in this cessna 150 burning you know whatever it is seven gallons an hour or something that little motor burns uh putting time in that log book um yeah no this this is a hack to get that flight time uh so yes get to that 250 hours as soon as possible attack that commercial however you know as soon as you get that private stay in the air as much as possible get your 250 hours when you get close to your 250 hours i would schedule look into one of these find an accelerated training program somewhere in the country you can take a couple days vacation to and go out and get your commercial rating the commercial certificate can be completed in three days if you have your written done you got the the required time and i think there's a long cross country in there with several stops and whatever you you meet some certain prerequisites and whatever these companies are that offer these programs will let you know what they want before you show up then these three days are basically finishing up anything uh that you didn't do and check ride prep that's all it is you'll show up and three days later you'll have your commercial certificate and then you can get that cfi knocked out so and it doesn't have to be uh flight instructing you could you know there's other jobs out there now if you're trying to do something right next to your house that is uh you know a schedule you can control around your other work the cfi thing's probably the best way to go yeah yeah that yeah that you could do that on nights and weekends because you know when you're training people to fly a lot of those people have full-time jobs and they work nine to five so they wanna fly you know after work or on the weekends uh and you'll have so much fun doing it you'll you know really enjoy it so yeah and and uh cfi is a good um set up fun with several uh cfis that you know we're retired guys that just don't want to pay for flying they want to get paid to fly um and they like small airplanes and and that's just what they do and those are some of the best teachers so um yeah there's just a lot of a lot of opportunity in the industry right now and uh i just don't think age is going to be a big factor for you especially now no yeah and we're going to uh we can touch on that in this next one here this one's from william or will it looks like he goes by okay hey great podcast wish i had found it sooner i am pushing 40 and have just started flight training i am i too old to chase an airline job or should i just shoot for corporate jobs and then before we get that he immediately well maybe a day later or something sent back or sent another email saying all right so he's got another question here i'm about 12 hours into my flying career and i love it and honestly look forward to my next lesson with enthusiasm i haven't had in years yes i'm pushing 40. but is this just something brand new and exciting or am i on to something just to further explain about 15 months ago i made a pact with myself to do new things that i haven't done before and let go of such as play hockey and go and do things like play hockey again also uh search for what what i what life means to me basically i found aviation and can't stop thinking about it but it's hard it's it's a hard road when you're 39 have kids a mortgage and all that other stuff thanks guys appreciate all you do and giving me the advice i need in one place okay awesome all right so this is um i i love that whole you know he's trying new things uh you know trying to let go and do things just whatever you know interests him play hockey and all that kind of stuff you know this is uh you know i'm 45.

mike you just said you're 43. you know one could label this as the the midlife crisis yeah even if that is true the cool thing about that is you can have as many of them as you want [Laughter] well well i can tell you this i like that question and uh um you know i've been doing this i don't know since i was 18 i guess and i'm 43 and uh yeah i still enjoy flying i mean look at we're doing this stuff in our spare time and not getting paid and uh trying to help people get into it and i still enjoy going to work i mean yeah it's still a job sometimes you know you might have something going on and that you'd rather be doing than going to work but once you're there uh you know there's there's really no better career for it and uh so yeah i had a guy tell me one time i said how did you get into flying this guy flying a hawker and he said well uh one night my wife or one year for christmas my wife bought me an introductory flight um uh at the local airport to learn to fly and he said uh he said uh i kind of wish you would have bought me crack cocaine because it would have been cheaper and less addictive right right but uh yeah i think yeah seriousness uh will i mean no it's uh yeah it's here to stay what you're feeling is real and as somebody who was a flight instructor and mike was a flight instructor too yeah with uh 1300 over 1300 hours of dual giving to students i have seen that look on people's faces before and it is a real thing it's something that happens to a lot of us when you get in that airplane and you experience what a joy and and exhilaration of flying this machine through the air that no it's a it's the real deal man it's it's the thing your high school guidance counselor you know you know if if everybody knew what this was like there the place would be overrun with pilots you know there wouldn't be enough jobs for everybody wanting to do this consider yourself lucky you figured it out is what i'm saying yeah yeah you're right because it never gets old you know i think it is too so there's so many choices of things to do i got teenagers now and you you know they'll get into something whether it's like playing guitar or whatever and then they're they're they're into it for a month and then they're on to something else but i i don't think that flying's really like that um at least it wasn't for me and you know the majority actually i can say this when i was a flight instructor the majority of students that started and then didn't quit the majority of students that dropped out were all for financial reasons you hardly ever had a student that was enjoying what they were doing and then they just got bored with it and quit it was always a financial problem or maybe in some cases a medical problem that's rare but that happened yeah i think the staff that i read um when we were putting together the pro pop playbook the actual program we sell right somewhere in there i and i'm paraphrasing now i don't remember exactly but i had it in front of me when we were recording that session but it was like 80 of students that start their private pilot's license quit eighty percent quit and then the reason uh it was like 97 percent the reason that they quit was money right yeah i believe that yeah so it's not cheap i mean that is that is kind of the rub of the situat of the whole process it's it's not cheap you know though everything's like that if you ever anybody that's been to a big college you know where i went at the university of cincinnati uh uh at the beginning of the year there's no parking and there's so many people there and the campus is packed and then you know and and you know if you look at the numbers of people that actually make it all the way through four years and graduate it's it's just there's a lot of attrition you know and it's like that anywhere but sure i think you know college just a lot of people don't like what they're doing and they drop out or whatever at least in aviation it's all financial that's it you know right yeah for the most part yeah and it makes sense it's expensive i mean something that's just that's this awesome you know it it's expensive like same thing if you want to eat healthy if you want to eat good food right that's good for your body that crap's expensive but if you want to eat like an idiot you can you know buy a cheeseburger for under a dollar somewhere yeah yep that's right um so anyway uh so back to you know the core question here the original one that he sent you know being 40 years old am i too old to set my sights on the airlines or should i focus on corporate so the the short answer is no you're not too old and if it were me if i were you i would i guess my advice is i would just focus on the airlines that's going to be your easiest entry especially with this pilot shortage they're they're not going to care if you're 50 years old you could get in on a regional airline they're going to take you and once you get to that if if the age doesn't get you know my i i've made a couple predictions since we started this whole side gig mike you know um that uh that have come true so my next prediction is the faa will be forced to raise the mandatory retirement age of 121 airline pilots right now it's currently 65 my prediction yeah it was 60. they've already done this once now it's 65.

that was years ago they raised it um my prediction is they're going to shoot for 70 they're going to shoot for 70 but um it might end up for some reason i have 67 and a half in my brain like just like the the tax laws on draw and retirement i think it's gonna be something like that yeah anyway it's gonna my prediction is gonna get raised so i wouldn't even worry about it the thing with going corporate is you can always come back to that you know right after you you know 65 70 years old whatever it ends up uh you retire from the airlines you can always go do corporate right but that airlines has the airlines have will have the easiest buried barrier to entry for you if you go into this thinking i want to be a corporate pilot corporate corporate pilot you may have a tough time you know being green off the streets with you know a commercial pilot's license and a cfi certificate uh getting on with any kind of a quality corporate i'm not saying you couldn't go that route but i think you're gonna your odds are gonna be better of building time getting experience getting type ratings experiencing jets you're gonna have an easier barrier of entry and uh progression just go on the airlines and if you get in there you fly for the airlines for five years and you say i hate this uh you can always go corporate and now you have some experience in your backpack of you know hey i've got this type rating i flew whatever i mean that's my advice yeah yeah and i i would agree with all of that um i i would say probably uh the way if this current juncture what you said about entering into the corporate world a very low time you could have some obstacles but i think as uh this massive airline hiring rolls into the industry and they suck out all the corporate pilots like like just like a vacuum cleaner um it's gonna be much much easier to get uh high-paying corporate jobs and quickly too so uh really just like we always say it's it's it's the greatest time ever to jump in and uh don't let age deter you really at any age to be honest with you um you're gonna be able to find something in it the whole thing's fun anyway you know right yeah yeah we have one more i said four but it was actually from three people i guess so uh the fourth email is uh from bruce let me make sure okay yeah this is the guy here we go this is the guy who uh wants to come back he was all right here we go mike and sean if you do not want to use this on your podcast i understand but would like a reply back okay well turns out bruce we are using it ran across your podcast on youtube great and timely information appreciate what you're doing my story is a bit different as i am a bit older than you guys i graduated from a great university with a great flight program still is back in 1988 with a bachelor's of science in aviation education when i graduated with this great degree and went out looking for a job the airlines and regional airlines were furloughing and not hiring uh for quite some time this continued for a while and in that day to be marketable you needed 12 to 1500 hours total time and an atp would be even better as life goes on and i need to pay some student loans back i take a job working for a great corporation whose manufa who manufactures construction equipment in the next 10 years i will work this job where i am traveling non-stop and do some instructing on the side when i'm home to build time life happens i got married took a different job and i was not traveling all the time we start having a family and i do some instructing on the side but it's still it's still tough to get uh all the required time to get noticed and at this point in life i did not want to be away from family so i did not pursue flying as a career other than instructing on the side of course the pay was a lot less back then after the culligan era crash a lot of things changed with requirements uh such as and the ratp was developed now years later as a fan with a family of five with uh one just out of college one halfway through college one in high school i look back and always wonder oh man how many times we heard this story mike i have a private instrument commercial multi-engine instrument and a cfi okay i am 57 years old with a second class medical in pretty good shape and only uh and only on one okay only on one med one medication with 1360 total and 120 multi-engine given the pilot shortage would a regional or someone like airshare even be interested in this old man all right bruce dude he's locked and loaded man i know viewers would like to be in his spot man i know i know that's what i was thinking bruce we got people listening to this right now uh just like the guy i just read he's got 12 hours under his belt and you're sitting here with 1300 hours 120 multi and you know your car and you're you're still yeah no yeah you're fine now the 50 you're fine man yeah dude so he's 57 years old right right yeah this one's exciting kudos to him for uh staying current because we we get these type of emails and these stories but it's like hey i went i started doing all my training i was flying in the 80s and then i just never did it ever again or i got my license and then i bought a plane and then i ran out of money and sold everything and now this guy actually stayed up on it while working and kept current it was still teaching he's got no gaps in his resume you know uh he's consistently you know current still teaching i mean he's ready to go man he just needs my advice to him is to uh uh just just get dialed in here at the local airport start putting out contacts and start uh start putting out resumes but yeah he needs to uh go ahead yeah i mean he could do that if he wanted to i'm sure he could probably find i don't know he doesn't say where he lives but yeah i mean he could probably put out some feelers around where he lives and end up with a corporate gig of some kind pretty quickly if but i guarantee you'd get hired by a regional now one of the questions i'm you know reading through this i think one of the questions he has is concerning the atp he doesn't say he has the atp right although he came through every well he never had the okay so here's how the atp works now uh bruce how it would work for you if you wanted to go to the airlines or to become a captain at a corporate gig or 135k gig or some kind you would need to go and enroll in a class called the c atp which is it's basically it's it's the class you need to take in order to take your atp written it preps you for the written there's a the rules have completely changed on the atv and i may be telling you something you already know bruce but uh the rules have completely changed on acquiring an atp uh than they used to be when you first started flying and and when mike and i got our atps it was it was just a normal part of your career progression like getting your instrument rating or your commercial when you had the time you went and got your atp like any other certificate now it's different there's even there's even some mandatory sim time uh involved and there's there's companies out there that will do this it's between three and six grand probably we got one here in town sporties i think sporties is five thousand dollars to get you through it and and uh i believe that includes preparation for the written test and then that you get the c atp certificate which allows you to take your atp check ride however there's a lot of regionals out there if you bump that time up so you got 1360 right now i would say at about 14. 50 or 1425 guarantee the first app the first application you fill out for a regional airline online um and they've streamlined a lot of these processes this can be done in one afternoon fill out an application for one of these regionals one that's close to you or has a domicile close to you i guarantee you're gonna get an interview and unless you go in there wearing like a a clown suit and a rubber nose you're gonna get hired and uh [Laughter] and they will pay for the catp and that is a way to go also to avoid this cost um i'm pretty sure all of them pay for it now they include it as part of your training uh there might be a couple outliers that that haven't jumped on board yet with that but the real you know the other question is 57 years too old to chase this down no because just like we got done telling on you know telling the last guy uh you know the airlines are going to be your quickest route to getting jet time to getting the real experience that a corporate a corporate operator that you would actually want to work at you know like a fortune 500 company or something right there that's going to give you the experience to you know have them look at you um you know so you spend a few years at the regional or you know maybe maybe even a couple years at the regional then you get on with one of these discount carriers that are flying this big new equipment you know like an allegiant or the you know the frontier spirit merger mike and i were just talking we got a couple buddies over at spirit right these guys love that company as a pilot's perspective um and i'm not fully spun up on it but mike weren't you just saying that i mean they yeah yeah they they love working there uh they think there's a lot of opportunity a lot of growth um they're they're excited about the merger um so frontier and spirit together um it's in it's gonna increase the amount of bases so basically if you're flying for spirit and you now can live where eventually once it all shakes out where frontier has a base um in their network it's going to make them i think i i don't know top five uh six largest airlines something like that so yeah yeah they they are they're very positive uh about all that and the growth potential in that market the discount domestic flying is just i mean it's going like crazy yeah people love that stuff and the ability to go you're going direct to the popular destinations you know yeah and you know i should just i realized i've been saying something incorrectly i probably said it like four times too right it's not c atp i'm mixing the r atp oh it's ctp is what that's called uh that course that's required for your atp now uh yeah that's right so um and most of the airlines are paying for that yeah but uh 57 no not too old uh not at 57 and current with all his ratings yeah 57 occurred it's not like yeah that's the other main thing you gotta think about you're not like saying you're 57 and i just took my first flight lesson you're 57 and ready to send out an application uh in the next i mean if you turn up the heat on your flight instruction time remember you need that 1500 hours to go to the airlines but uh yeah and then there's a perception thing you know he's kind of asking this in a manner am i too old and you know you get that and i i i know you hear that concerns with older people looking for jobs in other fields like oh they don't want to hire older people well actually i would say flying is one of those jobs like if you just look at perception wise people like to see older guys oh yeah i've had passengers before yeah i like to see gray hair in the cockpit i'm like well what you don't know there a fella is this guy just retired from insert any company and just became a pilot yeah i'm 18 times more experienced than he is you know at 22 right yep they think the older guys are right yeah it's a common misconception there's an old saying there's old pilots and there's bold pilots but there's no old bold pilots yeah that's another good one that is true absolutely great but these are i'm glad we did this one because i'm sure there's a lot of people concerned about this that are uh thinking about jumping in yeah no it's a it's a great question okay guys and then one other tidbit here you know at whatever age you're at um and everybody's different everybody viewing that's older is going to be watching this podcast and they're going to say well how does this apply to me and should i do it and then you're doing math on this you're saying should i maybe you're not retiring maybe you're thinking of quitting your your regular job um and then go uh starting into flying or maybe you know and you're wondering how lucrative will be well well guys all this stuff's available online if you're going to go to the airline route what sean and i think are in agreement that that may be the fastest and quickest way in this in this climate um just google these airlines pay scales they're all on there yeah so you can what is that airlinepilotcentral. com uh climb to 350.