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Who wanted to know about airline pilots and school?

By Amy of the Lakes - Posted on 16 November 2008

I cannot find that post any longer. Whoever you are, I shot of an email to my friend, Rob, who lives in the So. Cal foothills and is not only a pilot but a flight instructor. Not surprisingly, he's gone a lot and is not a very avid emailer at that, so he took a while to get back to me.

He's been a pilot for about 12 years.

Here's what he had to say:

Sorry it's taken me this long to get back to you. I rarely check my Yahoo email account.

Here's the answer to your question:

Up until about 25 years ago (or so), a good number of airline pilots held some sort of engineering or other physical science related degree. A good number of them had a lot of military flying experience as well. That's not the case now.

Today, there really isn't a "must have" degree for airline pilots. (I actually know a few who have never set foot in a college classroom.) Also different from previous decades, a smaller number of pilots are coming to the major airlines with military flying experience. Most major airline pilots today gain much of their experience flying for smaller regional airlines before heading to the major carriers.

There are universities that have flight-oriented degree programs. Over the years, UND-Grand Forks has been known to have some of the most in depth aviation programs in the world and would probably be my pick if I had a bottomless budget and had to do it all over again.

Other good schools that immediately come to mind include:

University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana

Purdue University

Florida Tech

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Hope this helps.

--Rob

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Submitted by cdthomas on Mon, 11/17/2008 - 12:27pm.

Thank you so much for asking your friend about his career. It's not for my NaPlWriMo play, but one for which I have to write other plays first, to finally tackle it well.

Could you ask him about airline pilots getting their feet wet with the regionals, and what degrees they had that were not aviation-related? I'm just wondering how far afield a pilot's academic life could be from the job, even if there were an intervening time in the military.

Also, I wonder how young pilots usually are when they start their career training, and whether a person in his mid-20s would be considered too old to start.

Lastly, typically how many years flying/working for airlines does a pilot need to become a co-pilot for a name-brand airline?

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Who wanted to know about airline pilots and school?

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