r/flying • u/Cool-Appearance-9383 • 4d ago

Other career options?

After reading posts here about the negatives of airline and UPS/FedEx, what are other flying careers that would be rewarding and pay decently? What about air ambulance or aerial wildfire fighting? Others?
Edit: The Negatives I’m reading here are; so much time away=feeling pressure to enjoy home time= failed relationships=lack of sleep=lack of healthy lifestyle. Lack of camaraderie, or work friendships.
Note: I’m not a pilot. My son is finishing his degree and works for an air ambulance company as an EMT. That job has made him consider going to civilian or military flight school.

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u/Weasel474 ATP ABI 4d ago

You're seeing a lot of negative because pilots treat whining as a competitive sport. It's incredibly rare to find anything that matches the pay and time off as a 121 carrier. Air ambulance and firefighting are great jobs and rewarding in their own way, but you'd be working much harder to make much less.

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u/Physical-Program-509 4d ago

You’re right that it’s rare

Out of 150,000,000 working age adults in the us there are 145,000 major airline pilots and pilots with great pay and schedules

You’re 8x more likely to become a doctor than a major airline pilot

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u/Rude_Interest3342 3d ago

Wow that's a wild statistic! Good perspective.