Stearmandriver
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2003
- Posts
- 249
Lear70 said:
This is really true... I went through what you could call a pilot mill. It wasn't one of the big ones, you'd never have heard of it if you weren't from this area, but it was a university flight program. And all we heard was that kind of stuff: "coming pilot shortage, pay your dues a little and you'll be set..." etc. The really scary thing to me, even then, was not that they'd paint such a ridiculously rosy picture all the time (I mean, it's marketing, they have to attract students), but instead HOW MANY students bought into it. It seemed like 98% of the people I went to school with were so focused on being airline pilots that they never even tried to see the big picture. Looking back at it, it'd almost be funny if it wasn't sad. Everyone had these specific goals: "I plan on being a UAL DEN 737 CA by the time I'm 40, widebody by 50. How 'bout you?" I felt like kind of a slacker for not having any career aspirations beyond "find a decent job, paying a salary I can comfortably support a small family on, based somewhere I'd like to live, with a decent schedule." (Not that that isn't shooting for the moon these days, but you get the idea.) As we progressed through school and got into the flight instructing stage, these people just fed off each other 'till the airlines were all they thought about. I, meanwhile, went off to instruct tailwheel and aerobatic students at a little farm airport, and probably delayed my career by a year or so, but I think I'm a little better adjusted for it. ;-) Sure was fun anyway.
But yeah, I'm real familiar with this "I'll do anything for a job" mentality. I've never understood it... I mean, great, we all like to fly so we decided to do it for a living. We would have to like it in order to put all the work into it that most of us have. But, hey, the same could be said for lawyers, right? Doctors? Architects? Engineers? These are all professions involving a lot of specialized training, and the only people that would be willing to subject themselves to it would be the people who enjoy it. But try asking a doctor to pay 10-20 grand for "hospital specific training" when he takes a new job - and, oh yeah, on the heels of that request be sure to tell him he'll start out making under 20 grand a year. Try that with a lawyer. An architect, or an engineer. You'd be laughed at every time. Or punched. I mean, these people are trained professionals and a request like that is downright insulting. But in aviation, there are plenty of people that think it sounds like a great idea! People that will get down and lick your shoes for giving them this marvelous opportunity! And they never seem to see that they're eroding the career they THOUGHT they were working for.
And yeah, I know some of the guys from the majors say exactly the same thing about me and my co-workers for flying the RJ's. I won't defend us too much because you're partially right... all I'll say is that, at my airline in particular, when we signed our last contract 5 years ago we were nothing but a turboprop commuter airline, so there was no hope of any real pay. They've since given us almost 300 jets, our route structure spans 3 countries coast to coast, and I'm beyond ashamed of the wages we're flying them for. That is going to change this year though... promise.
Anyway, there's a real long post with no clear purpose. Geez... to think that my second job is freelance writing. No wonder we're usually broke!
Joe
(done venting for a month or two!)
