intheknow,
I've been a pilot for 3 years and been on the fleet for about a year. It takes approximately 2 1/2 years from the day you start give and take to finish your training. About 2 years after you start you join a fleet where you start flying around to other countries and work as part of a normal commercial flight but you are still undergoing training, sort of like OJT. When you finish your training it takes approximately another 8 years to become a captain. There is a general misconception that only captains fly the plane, let me clarify. Both pilots are required to operate the plane, one as a pilot flying and the other as the supporting pilot. Captain has the right to decide to let you fly the plane if he so chooses to. In other words your roles are interchangable. i.e. the person landing the plane may or may not be the captain himself. Wrt your other question. Chopping rate is around 10%.
aquarius. Thank you...i just wish my peanuts were the gold plated kind.
supercurious. Its a bit hard to compare pay. As I mentioned before, military pilots start at 18, commercial at 26. Means that a military pilot has been working for 8 years before a commercial pilot even starts getting his peanuts. Don't forget commercial pilots still have to serve 2 1/2 years NS whereas military pilots if they had joined at 18 go thru training as part of NS. Just imagine if you starting working 8 years after everyone else has started. Not so straightforward right?
Going back to wifetobe's 1st question, my wife can answer that better than I can. When I was training away in Australia,what my wife did was work, go to the gym, go for pedi and mani, go for massages, sleep, play computer games, eat sleep blah blah blah. I would usually call her once a day from our dorm at night and she came to visit me twice. Back in singapore and as a member of the fleet. I'm usually off around 2-3 days a week, work the other days including weekends and public holidays at all times of the day and night. Some months I'm gone for around a week but I get a few days off in a row when I get back. What my wife does is pretty much the same as before but we get to go out to watch movies, have dinner and all the normal couple stuff. It is a compromise but most important is communciation...like my wife now arranges her work schedule and other appts on days when I'm not around and on days I'm around we can go and do couple things. She never fails to pick me up from the airport as long as it's a reasonable time outside of her work hours. You both have to do your part as with any other relationship.
People from other fleets have different operating patterns, they could be gone for 2 weeks in a row and be off for a complete week so I can't comment there. My own roster changes from month to month so it's never the same.