Another article lamenting the "good old days" that never actually existed. I started flying in 1983. Competitive minimums at commuter airlines like Air Wisconsin or Britt were around 3500 hours to get into an ATP or F-27, not a jet. Most of todays regional airline capatains would still be tooling around in a Navajo, Metroliner, or B-99 and not even see the inside of an airport terminal for several years to come. An RJ has better avionics and systems than a 747 did 20 years ago. You have much more information and reliable systems available to complete your flight safely than ever before. Pilots got paid more but there was also labor unrest, mergers, and bankruptcies all before deregulation. What happened to Mohawk, Northeast, or Empire. They went bankrupt before deregulation. This has always been a volitile business and the romantic view of airline pilot life is no more real than the life of Navy pilots depicted in Top Gun. Reality for airline pilots in the 70's and 80's at the hour level of most of the people on this board was shooting an NDB approach in a snowstorm with no auotpilot in a Twin Otter. Not flying a coupled approach in a jet realtime weather information. Spare the romantic dreams of what you thought being a pilot was going to be like, because it never was like that.
