Ever thought about doing something spectacular as a career? Being a commercial pilot is not as hard as you might think, and the demand for pilots due to the growth of regional airlines and corporate aviation travel is making this a great opportunity. The demand for aviation college flight instructors is about to improve, too.{sidebar id=1}

Until I visited my local airport and just started hanging around, I never knew that this was something I could do someday. Even more important was that by working at something that was fun, I actually enjoyed studying and looked forward to every flight lesson. Sure there were times when I wanted to give up, but it was just too much fun taking flying lessons to actually stop my aviation training.

To me there is something really special about learning to fly, and being a student pilot was the most special time of my life. I was looking for a new mountain to climb and something that would make me feel good about my life, and I found it in aviation training. So much so that instead of going to an airline career as a pilot, my goal was to be a flight instructor and help other people change their lives.

When I first thought about a career in aviation,the price really scared me away. However, with the student loans available and the fact that flying lessons were just so much fun, it all started to make sense.

In order to look into the idea of being a commercial pilot there are some things you will need to research. Pilot Journey offers a free online presentation to help get you going. It’s called Flight Training - Life Changing and it is a 30-minute “learning to fly” presentation that will help you succeed. You can get this by subscribing free to Flight Training Success, the e-newsletter of successful flight training. When you get your welcome e-mail, you will get a link to watch the presentation.

So what’s the first step? Let's learn some terms.

Student Pilot: A pilot who is learning how to fly. At this stage in your aviation training, you fly with a flight instructor until you are skilled enough to fly on your own, usually in 15-20 hours. After about 65 hours, you become a Private Pilot.

Private Pilot: This means that you can fly with passengers and go places. The great thing about being a private pilot is that “the world will become a smaller place,” as my first flight instructor told me. To become a Private Pilot it will cost anywhere from $4,500 to $9,000. When you watch Flight Training - Life Changing you will see why the cost is so varied and how to keep flight training cost lower. Private pilots cannot fly in all types of weather; they can fly only as long as they can stay out of the clouds and when visibility is greater than 3 miles. And since that sometimes is not the case, the next step is instrument rating.

Instrument Rating: The instrument rating will allow you to fly in the clouds and when visibility is not that good. This training will cost about $4,000 to $5,000. After you get this rating you will need to fly around some for practice and get some flight experience so you can prepare for the Commercial Pilot certificate. It takes 190 or 250 hours of fight time to qualify for the Commercial Pilot certificate, but you can share the cost of flying with others to help lower your cost.

Commercial Pilot: Different schools do this a couple of different ways, so this takes some work to figure out the best way for you. When I got ready for the Commercial Pilot certificate, I flew on my own and with friends until I had about 230 hours. Then I worked with a flight instructor for about 20 hours to complete my Commercial Pilot aviation training. The other way to do this is to work with a formal flight school and build the required hours in a structured program while you work on the certificate. The cost for this training and all the flight hours needed to quality for the Commercial Pilot certificate can run from $10,000 to $15,000. Again, there are just so many ways to get the Commercial Pilot certificate, it is hard to price this.

Let’s say you are a commercial pilot, so now what? Do you start making the big bucks? The issue now becomes flight experience and insurance companies. In order to actually get a job as a commercial pilot, you will need between 500 and 2,000 hours of flight time. Why the huge spread? Well it depends on the aviation training program and how early you knew what your aviation goals were. If you study at an aviation school or flight school that is airline focused from the start, you might get a commercial pilot position faster. This depends on many factors, so your best choice is to check out the aviation schools section here on Pilot Journey and ask for some information from a few schools.

Since it takes hundreds of hours of flight experience to land that first job, many pilots will become a flight instructor and teach others how to fly.

Flight Instructor: The advantages of being a flight instructor are many. First you get to share the magic of flight training with others and watch them progress in their aviation training. Second, now that you are a commercial pilot, you get paid to fly! Flight instructors sometimes do not make a great deal of money, as with any teaching profession; however I liked it so much I just never stopped. I love teaching others to learn to fly and helping them change their lives. Now you know where the title for the online presentation came from ... because flight training is life changing. To get your flight instructor certificate it will cost about $5,000, and most of this time is at ground school, working with your flight instructor where you get to pretend they are the student pilot. The flight instructor certificate was my favorite.

Most people will teach flying for 1 to 2 years while they do additional flight training and build the required experience. As a pilot you will hear the phrase that a “good pilot is always learning,” and that really is the case. At times it will seem like all you do is take flight instruction. This brings us to the next big and fun flight training experience, the multi-engine rating.

Multi-Engine: To qualify for a commercial pilot job, you will need a Multi-Engine rating because most paid commercial pilot positions are flying airplanes with 2 or more engines. The multi-engine rating will cost from $2,000 to $4,000 and will make you feel like a student pilot all over again! In fact, every time I took flying lessons I felt like a student pilot.

Well that about wraps up this quick overview of being a commercial pilot. It will take some time and study, but it will be life-changing, even if you decide to become a private pilot and fly your friends around or just use this for business. Flight training changed my life and even though I never became an airline pilot, I did teach many students who are airline pilots and enjoying great airline careers. Speaking of airline careers, how much can you make as a commercial pilot?

Commercial pilots start at about $18,000 a year then rapidly rise to $60,000 and then up to $100,000. This depends on many factors because there are many variables on the road to being an airline pilot. In fact, I tell people at my Learn to Fly seminars that the hardest part of learning to fly is trying to figure out how the process works!

Pilot Journey is in the process of putting together a couple more free flight training online presentations. In the meantime, subscribe to the free e-newsletter Flight Training Success. You can sign up using the form to the right, and when you do you will get free private access to the Pilot Journey forums. The aviation forums here on Pilot Journey are designed to allow our visitors to interact with other pilots.

For a quick glance at the summer ’05 edition of Pilot Journey, you can watch this online presentation http://pilotjourney.com/pj - the first 3 minutes is the best; the rest is for aviation marketing companies.

If you have more questions, I would love to talk with you in the forums. I started the aviation forums because my e-mail box was overflowing, so asking your questions in the aviation forums is best. If your question is private in nature, then you can send me a private message inside the forums.

In the meantime, visit the aviation schools section here on Pilot Journey; for a complete list of flight schools you also can visit a Web site called Be a Pilot. This is a great source of information and we highly support their efforts.

The sky is calling, and it’s for you.