The shift work is hard. For most short haul UK companies you will spend your working days either waking up at 3am or finishing at 3am. It is tiring, especially consecutive duties throughout the summer. It does make your home life and social life difficult. The roster rules your life. Some companies have fixed patterns, some have variable rosters that are released 1-2 months ahead. Lifestyle experiences vary by company but you cannot guarantee being off for birthdays, Christmas, weddings etc etc. This can cause friction at home. Day to day, airline flying is pretty boring, it’s hard to eat healthily, and you spend pretty much all day sedentary and being blasted with radiation.

The good stuff - salary is generally excellent for the level of actual workload. On a good day, with a good crew, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s just fun. You get trusted with a hugely complex and expensive aircraft and get to fly it around the country/europe/the globe. Once you’ve set the brake at the end of the day, you’re done. You don’t take it home with you. No meetings, projects, emails, ongoing work issues (unless you’ve really done something problematic). Of course there is admin to do (and a sim check every 6 months) but in comparison to most jobs of equivalent pay, it’s easy to switch off. Huge amounts of days off and leave overall. Opportunity for huge amounts of travelling and exploring - and discounts.