What are the requirements to become a Commercial Airline Pilot?

How do i become a pilot?

• I want to become a commercial airline pilot and i need to know what the requirements are for schooling. Also how many years of experience do i need to have before i could become ...show more

• Answer:

  Requirements...In the USA you need to be a healthy citizen with no criminal history or drug abuse history. And of course you need money. A LOT of money. About 35,000 dollars over the course of 2 or 3 years, so you'd better get a job and some scholarships. Then you'll be able to fly a smaller aircraft. You can contract an airline company to train you in what's called a "Type Rating" which will allow you to fly a specific heavy aircraft, but they won't even consider you if you don't have 4 years of college and thousands of hours of flight time (which would take ten years). Or you can pay for it yourself which would be useless because no airline company would hire a captain with only a few hundred hours of experience. Well to start off you only need to be healthy, you need 20/20 farsight and 20/40 near/intermediate vision, you need to be balanced/coordinated (they test you by making you walk straight), you need to be able to hear, read, write and understand english. They'll test your conversational skills/hearing ability by talking to you at a regular voice in a quiet room. You need to have a healthy enough heart and you can't have any serious mental or medical disorders (bi-polar disease, severe diabetes). And of course you have to be clean of any kind of drug abuse for the last two years, they'll test you. And by "THEY" I mean the Aviation Medical Examiner. Before you start flying you have to find one and he'll examine you for 60-100 dollars. He'll issue you a student pilot license. You get your private pilot's license, then your IFR rating (you can fly in bad weather), then your Commercial Pilot's license (you can get paid for flying), then your multi engine's license (you can fly aircraft with multiple engines). It's all half hands on training and half textbook stuff and written tests.