The Military is the best route to take in becoming an Airline Pilot. Agree or Not ?

There is some truth to this and in the USA about 60% of airline pilots are ex-military. However, it is extremely hard to become a military aviator and the commitment is 10 years AFTER graduating 4 years of college and 2 years of flight training. If you don't make it to or through military flight training, you are still committed to 4 years of service. This still has advantages though.

Really doesn't matter, but if you want to go Air Force; it's two words, no hyphen and they are both capitalized.

I recommend to go for Air Force Reserve, then airlines - as the best solution - The reason is financial, who can afford about $100,000 training and education...? Besides, the Air Force gets you the best training there is - Admittedly, nowadays, 10 years of active duty is required - In my days (the 1960s) it was 5 years and could be made more flexible - I consider that I owe my airline career to the Air Force - No doubts that I was selected by Pan Am because I was a KC-135 pilot - Pan Am training was easy, a KC-135 is a 707... I had 1,000 hrs on these - In the new hire class (26 pilots) most were Air Force, a few were Navy/Marines - There were 4 "civilians" - 1 failed initial training as 727 F/E - Had problems with systems study, did not even go for sim training - Another failed a year later, for upgrade as 727 F/O - Had no jet experience - Edit 1- Rob G - Maybe you are right, not everyone wants to be in the military or military pilot - I did not enjoy T-37 and T-38 training... too much "fighter pilot ace" ambiance - However, once in the Tanker Squadron, all was great, crews and missions - Extended TDY in Okinawa, Thailand, Philippines was like DOD paid vacations - If you can't survive in a tanker squadron, neither could you with an airline - Edit 2- Diamond-Pilot - Your recommendations for ERAU or UND are the worse there are for civilians - Degree and pilot certificates for nearly $170,000 = no thanks - What in hell do you do with an aviation degree when you get furloughed...? You can do degree and CPL for $80,000 in other colleges and flight schools - And this can be a usable degree... not a piece of paper for framing on the wall - .

My two cents are in alignment with most of the others here...the military is of course the cheapest route. And by far the most difficult to even get into. As for quality of training...the military may or may not be better than civilian training. Some instructors are good, others aren't so good. In the civilian sector, you have a much greater chance of starting out with an instructor who is still wet behind the ears and may have developed bad habits. Your IP in the military is going to have a lot more flying experience under his belt. On the other hand, some civilian instructors are excellent...our school had predominantly ex-military instructors and only hired the best junior instructors. I do NOT agree with Diamond....most people don't have $100,000 per credit to spend at ERAU. Ben Dere, I think the number of civilian working pilots at the airlines has outpaced the number of military pilots now...last I heard it was 40% military, 60% civilian...not sure if that's still correct.

Absolutely... The taxpayers pay for your training Do some research on out of pocket costs. That should make the decision for you. Good Luck

REALITY CHECK TIME: Your chances of becoming a pilot in ANY branch of the US Military are less than 1 in 10,000. You don't just wake up one morning, walk into a local recruiting office and sign up for free training. You start in High School, where you work to get good grades and a well rounded education in order to be accepted to a US military academy or a really good college. Then, you work your butt off even harder for the next four years to become one of the top students in your college class, and after four years and earning a Bachelor's degree, you may be lucky enough to become one of the handful of students from around the country who are selected for military pilot training. IF you get this far, you can expect another two years of intensive training before you are fully qualified to fly military airplanes, and another 8-10 years of service commitment to pay the Government back for the cost of your training. If your goal in life is to become an airline pilot and you think the military is just a cheap way to accomplish that goal, then you are sadly mistaken. The military doesn't want you.

It doesn't really matter. These days, less than half of the younger airline pilot generation have a military background. While military pilots might disagree with me here, you can become just as good a pilot via the civilian route. The important point is do you actually want to be in the military or not? The answer to that question is what really determines whether or not military of the best route to take. Keep in mind that not every wanna be military pilot actually becomes a military pilot. There's a very real chance that you'll spend your entire military career without ever touching an airplane.

You have three choices. 1. Military (cheapest) 2. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical university 3. University of North Dakota. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND: Go to erau.edu and watch the video titled "fly"