By cristian

 Airline pilots have a glamorous job, piloting large aircraft loaded with passengers all around the world. It takes a lot of training just to get licensed to fly these aircraft, let alone get hired by a major airline. Airlines have good and bad times and pilots are frequently laid off. Once a pilot builds some seniority and stability, the financial rewards can be great. Pilots have a tremendous amount of responsibility and must make critical decisions in seconds, as the US Airways crash on the Hudson River illustrates.

 The aircraft is typically operated by two pilots; one will be the captain who is the pilot in command, while the other will be the supporting first officer.  The pilots will usually take turns to fly the plane to avoid fatigue, with one operating the controls while the other speaks to air traffic control and completes the paperwork.  In some instances, such as long-haul flights, there may be three or four pilots on board so that the necessary breaks from flying can be taken.  The captain has the overall responsibility for the safe and efficient operation of the aircraft and the safety of crew and passengers.  The job of a pilot comes with heavy responsibility and personal commitment. Stringent training courses have to be passed followed, by recurrent training every six months in order to maintain the relevant licence required for the job.

 Pilots with more seniority pick out a regular flight schedule, called a line. Pilots holding a line live a more "ordinary" sort of life, in the sense that they know ahead of time when they'll be working. But even these pilots spend a lot of time away from their families, and they never know what delays they'll encounter. In the United States, a pilot's scheduled flight time should not exceed 8 hours in a row for domestic flights or 12 hours for international flights. In actuality, however, pilots may work for more than 16 hours straight, since flights are often delayed or extended.

 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 68,000 airline pilots, copilots and flight engineers were employed in the United States as of May They earned a mean annual salary of $118,070. The median salary, or halfway point, was $105,580 per year, and the median-earning 50 percent of airline pilots made between $81,910 and $140,650 per year

 For an airplane pilot, education takes many forms, including applied instruction, a high school diploma, an associate's or bachelor's degree, and specialized training. The Federal Aviation Administration also requires pilots to accumulate a lot of real-world knowledge in the form of flight-hours. Acquiring all this takes years -- how many depends on the kind of pilot a person becomes.

 The reason I chose to be a pilot because I want to fly planes and helicopters

 autics%29