Flying an airplane is fun. Getting paid to do it is even better. For some people, it’s the perfect job: an office that travels, a view that’s constantly changing and challenges that are exhilarating. It has been said that a pilot’s job is hours of boredom punctuated with seconds of sheer terror. This is perhaps hyperbole, but sometimes not all that far from the truth.

A person who takes a multimillion dollar machine, casually flies it off the ground and then safely returns it, fascinates people. They wonder what it’s like to be responsible for hundreds of lives or goods worth millions. When passengers peek inside a cockpit, they are amazed. They stare at the multitude of dials and ask incredulously, “Do you really know what they all do?”

Pilots are the focal point and end operator in a huge team of highly trained professionals. They are the movie stars of the air transportation show, because they are the most visible people to the public, while most of the other team members remain “behind the scenes.” But movie stars rarely die or cause others to die because of an on-the-job mistake. All pilots run that risk. Piloting is a serious business.

In this article, we will tell you what you must go through to become an airline pilot. We will also explain an airline pilot’s day-to-day life and the many possible courses of his or her career. As we will see, this job is not for everybody, but it is a uniquely thrilling and fascinating profession.

Myths, Stereotypes and Reality

The longtime stereotype of airline pilots is that they are male, fearless, perfectly fit, good at math, trained in the military, blessed with perfect vision, all paid like super senior 747 captains (regardless of what they really fly) and only at work three days every other month.

In the 1950s, some of these notions were accurate. The average professional pilot was a white man with a military background who didn’t wear glasses (at least when he was hired). With a little career luck, he became a senior pilot flying the largest planes and, as such, made the big bucks.

Today, women and minorities are in all positions within the aviation job spectrum, roughly half of professional pilots never flew in the military, and, as long as his or her vision is correctable to 20/20, a pilot can have glasses the thickness of Coke bottle bottoms. Work commitments vary greatly between airlines, but being away from home roughly half of the month is a good average. While not every pilot has the body and health of an aerobics instructor, all must be fit enough to pass a medical exam at regular intervals.

Only a relative few senior 747 captains at major airlines make legendary 747 captain’s pay (upwards of $250,000 a year). At the low end of the pay scale, some pilots for small airlines make little enough to qualify for food stamps. Most salaries are somewhere in between. It all depends on your position, aircraft, airline size and time at that airline.