Plenty of young adults and teenagers consider an aviation job for their future careers. This is due to the great features that the pilot job offers.
Being a Pilot is a Great Career
Every job has its pros and cons. However, a pilot job is worth the hard work. This is due to the many, exciting events that take place throughout your career.
From the beautiful sceneries you glance at constantly to the amount of new people from different cultures that you encounter, and last but not least, the high salary of the job.
Is Being a Pilot Stressful?
Now to answer the most important question of this article: “is it stressful to have an avaiation job?” The simple answer is no, the flying profession offers many benefits that other professions would not get you. This eliminates plenty of stressful events from happening in your life.
Perhaps one thing pilots tend to think is a little stressful is the idea of flying an entire plane full of many other people. This can be stressful if you think about it negatively, however, your only problem at this point is not trusting in your abilities and aircraft enough.
Along with your experience, which you’ll acquire after getting plenty of licenses such as: private pilot license (PPL) and commercial pilot license (CPL), you need to trust in your aircraft.
This means that you need to realize that a lot of what a pilot used to do back in the day is all automated nowadays. This ensures the plane’s safety and gives you enough time to relax and enjoy your flight.
Another thing is that the flight profession is often unpredictable. Which is why being a pilot is perfect for those who wish to challenge day-to-day routine and instead are looking for a career which is constantly changing and improving.
Most importantly, both takeoff and landing require the most energy when flying an aircraft. Otherwise, it’s smooth sailing. The only things you need to do in between is to watch the monitors and make sure that the autopilot is on track.
When it comes to health awareness, pilots are required to go through medical certification every couple of years. This also includes mental health.
Many airlines are starting to implment peer-support programs. This is because airlines have started to feel a sense of responsiblity when it comes to the pilots’ mental and physical health.
The aviation industry might be one of the few that actively learns from past mistakes and works to correct them.
How Do Pilots Take Care of Their Health?
It’s common knowledge that pilot jobs need you to be healthy: both mentally and phsyically. Which is why pilots have developed many ways to take care of themselves throughout the years.
Planning Ahead for Sleep and Food
Since a pilot’s job is unpredictable in nature, pilots tend to schedule their tasks as much as possible. No matter how small a task can be, such as eating their meals, getting enough sleep or simply just relaxing. Scheduling is key for pilots.
This way, pilots know that they’re prioritizing their own health above all else, no matter how busy they get.
Eating as Healthy as Possible
Even if you’re just having a meal on the go, you need to make it at least a little bit on the healthier side. It’s a well-known fact that pilots are busy, however, you should never be too busy to eat healthy food.
Some of the shorter flights don’t include meals in them, in this case, some pilots just grab the easiest snack such as pretzels or peanuts. But in order for you to excel as a pilot, you need to take better care of your meals.
When you’re grabbing food before your flight, try to go for things like salads or fruits. Such foods are healthy, can be carried around with no hassle, and are still delicious even when eaten cold.
Avoid Any External Stress
In order to avoid accumulating stress from your aviation job and day-to-day life alike, you can try to go out of your way to avoid things and activities that stress you out.
An easy example of this is looking through your phone before you go to bed. This is due to multiple reasons; perhaps the most important reason for this is the possibility of coming across sad or infuriating news before you go to sleep.
You could also find unopened emails worrisome before going to bed. Lastly, you could get anxious or restless simply from the light emitted from your phone. It could also make your eyes dry, which would result in stress the next morning.
Being Organized
Being well-organized also helps you avoid stress as it helps you avoid common mistakes. For example: packing your bag in the same way you always pack it helps you find your belongings more easily, therefore, avoiding unnecessary stress and wasting time.
Relaxing and Exercising
After getting your pilot job, you’ll find yourself in plenty of unkown countries and cities. This is your que to enjoy yourself and explore new places! If you’re in a safe part of the city, make sure you spend some time walking around and enjoying the scenery from the ground.
Walking is great when you don’t want to stress yourself more by working out. This is because walking, for as little as thirty minutes, reduces the risk of developing high blood pressure.
Having such routine to take care of your mind and body isn’t selfish, it’s simply making sure that you’re capable of taking care of your aircraft and of those who are depending on you.
How Do Pilots Overcome Stress?
From an outsider’s prespective, you might think that having an aviation job is stressful and taxing. This is because you don’t know the tips and tricks that pilots develop in order to make their jobs tremendously easier.
Taking Care of Their Bodies
Every job needs physical strength, whether you’re saving people from burning buildings or you’re sitting at a desk for eight hours straight. Regardless, you need to take care of yourself physically.
Aviation jobs are no exception to this rule. This is because pilots travel all around the world regularly. Visiting new places is a wonderful experience that is not available to many. However, you need to take care of your body and exercise a lot in order to be able to fully enjoy your traveling.
Decisiveness
Meeting challenges as a pilot is part of the fun. It’s one of the reasons why aviation jobs are thrilling and exciting. For the majority of your time during your job, you’re going to need to make quick decisions midair.
Usually, such decisions aren’t fatal and making the wrong decision won’t be the cause of a serious accident. However, as a pilot, you need to practice decisiveness in order to make the trip as safe and relaxing as possible.
Flexibility
When it comes to the flying profession, flexibility is a key point in having a stress-free career. This is mainly due to the consant changes in schedule and the need to always be prepared for whatever comes your way, like cancellations or re-scheduling of certian flights.
Sometimes you might have your vacation extended, or your hours increased. This could be a bit overwhelming if you’re stuck to an inflexible routine.
As you probably already know, aviation jobs don’t have a lot of routine, so you need to roll with the punches in order to ensure yourself a happy, relaxing career.
Is Being a Pilot a Good Option?
Every career in the world has positive and negative aspects. Here, we’re going to go more in depth as to why the flying profession is a great career path for you!
The High Salary
It’s no secret that being a pilot is a well-paying job. This is due to multiple reasons such as the high demand for new pilot, getting a pay increase as you gain more experience as well as being paid by the hour.
As a pilot you’re guaranteed to have a high salary, not to mention other benefits. For example, you get health insurance.
The Adventure
Many people dream of getting a job as a pilot in order to enjoy the adventure. For pilots, every day is a new, thrilling experience in the cockpit. Starting the engines and gazing upon the beautiful sunset is a feeling you’ll never forget.
Travelling The World
Your job is to transfer passengers from one point to another, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy travelling yourself. Being a pilot will allow you to travel from one country to another freely and without stress. And even if you don’t have any flights, pilots are allowed easy access to cheaper tickets all the time!
So, to sum up the past few paraghraps: no, a pilot’s job is not at all stressful, especially if you learn how to make the best of it without worrying or overworking yourself.
