Aviation Careers

The aviation education industry is huge, and there are many aviation careers that are a part of it. The most obvious is airplane pilot, but there are quite a few others, from flight attendant to baggage handler to air traffic controller.

Let’s look at a few of them:

Airplane pilot: Airplane pilot is one of the most highly skilled and highly trained of all aviation careers. However, pilots can learn on small planes before working their way up to larger ones, such as commuter planes and passenger liners. Many pilots are trained in the air force to fly helicopters, fighter jets, personnel transports, and any number of types of flying craft, and this experience provides excellent training for careers with commercial airlines after the pilots move on from the armed services.

Flight attendant: If your ambition isn’t to fly planes, or if for some reason (such as bad vision) you cannot fly planes, you can still spend your life in the air in the important role of flight attendant, taking care of passengers, helping out in emergencies, and serving meals. These are glamorous aviation careers that will allow you to see the world and get paid for doing so.

Aerospace worker or technicians: Aerospace workers and technicians design and build planes. If you want to be an engineer and have a facility for mathematics, this could be one of the aviation careers that you’re looking for. You can design the planes of tomorrow and help to build the planes of today.

Airport manager: You may have no interest in spending your aviation career in the air—some people are afraid of flying, after all—but you can still be part of the aviation field working in management at some of the busiest, most exciting places on earth, airports.

Air traffic controller: Make no mistake about it. Air traffic control is one of the most stressful aviation careers there is. But, if you crave excitement and want a job where you’ll have to make split-second decisions guiding planes through the air and believe that you can keep your head at moments when others would be tempted to panic, air traffic control could be your perfect aviation career.

Astronaut: OK, not many people in the aerospace industry will ever get to be astronauts, and not all astronauts are really in the aerospace industry per se. (Many are mission specialists who perform in-flight experiments, while others do the important job of flying spacecraft such as NASA’s space shuttle.) But, can you imagine aviation careers any more exciting than spending your life riding on a spaceship?