Realistic Career Advice for Pilots, with James Onieal

By John Zimmerman
Jul 29, 2025
0 Comments

Pilot's Discretion Podcast, episode 109

The job market for pilots has been through some wild swings lately, but aviation career coach (and former airline pilot) James Onieal says it’s neither as good nor as bad as you might think. He offers frank advice about the dangers of social media for aspiring pilots, explains why networking matters now more than ever, and discusses the differences between airline jobs and corporate jobs. In the Ready to Copy segment, James talks about the biggest career mistakes to avoid, what it’s like to flight check instrument approaches, and his favorite joke about cops.

Listen online:

Listen on your favorite app:

Quotes:

The myths of social media: “you're kind of being fed a narrative that you can make this large sum of money and have a lot of time off. And there are periods of your career where that will happen or might happen, but it's probably not going to be the entirety of your career.”
Why pilot pay isn’t the whole story: “Money can buy pleasure, but it cannot buy happiness.”
The current state of the job market: “for a lot of people, it feels like the music has stopped. It hasn't, but it has slowed dramatically.”
How to do networking the right way: “The difficulty when it comes to networking is a lot of folks pivot immediately into what can you do for me or what can I do for you.”
Why persistence is required: “A lot of this is being able to persist through the rejection when you can't see any light at the end of the tunnel, but somebody that's already gone through that tunnel knows the light's coming in a hundred more feet.”
How to make your resume stand out: “there's two types of content that you put on there. One is content that qualifies you. So that's certificates, ratings, flight times, but the other is content that differentiates you. And that's the bullets that go underneath each individual job.”
Thinking about quality of life when comparing jobs: “if you like new challenges and novelty and changing, you might find the airlines get pretty boring for you pretty quick.”
A common mistake for job applicants: “They think hiring is about the person with the highest flight time. It's not. It's who's the best overall fit as a person.”
Advice for fractional pilots: “You don't ever know who you're dealing with. And so if you treat people differently based on the status you have in your head, you're going to get it wrong.”
The key to a good flight school: “you can go anywhere to get flight training. It's very hard to go to a place where they will tailor the program to your learning style.”
What it’s like to fly instrument procedure flight checks: “it is juggling flaming swords while riding a unicycle on a basketball.”