Dear Kristie,

My husband is looking at getting out of his current career and into aviation as a pilot. Do you know if he'll be gone all the time? I've heard horror stories about not being able to stay in routine with children and always being gone. Thanks!

Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding 'yes'. Our life basically runs around airline schedules and there isn't much we can do about it other than try to rearrange schedules to our liking prior to the beginning of the month.

Most pilot schedules are bid on a month to month basis. For example: Doug puts his bid selections in on the 15th of the month, gets his schedule on the 17th of the month and if there's any particular line of time that he doesn't like, he can *try* to trip trade or drop trips with other pilots. If the trip trades and/or trip drops fall through, then he's stuck with that trip. But techically, you'd have to get used to them being gone for certain lengths of time. This isn't like living the military style where military husbands are gone 6 months to a year at a time. It's more of the gone 4 days, home 3 day cycle. Someitmes, schedules obtained can be good where your pilot can get an entire week off...but sometimes the schedule can be really bad too and you won't see them for what seems like the entire month.

As for staying in routine when it comes to children...peruse the forums in the Raising Family section and you should find a lot of information on how that works.

This was a great question,

Thanks for writing! :)