svcta
"Kids these days"-AAflyer
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2004
- Posts
- 1,767
To use your own words: Endangers the public. I would assert that there are many more and easier ways to endanger passengers and people on the ground alike as a pilot than many many other lines of work. In fact, there are ever-present pressures to do that very thing all around every one of us. The critical nature of airplane operation in that sense doesn't really lend itself a great deal to a quiet group of elders handing down remediation. It is generally governed by the understanding that if you step out of line the feds will one day get you. In fact, listen to the way you stated the only alternative: "rat me out to the feds". Would you have said "rat me out to the state BAR"?
The practice of medicine or even that of being an attorney has existed for centuries(one certainly even longer than the other). Medicine, as a popular example in this discussion has existed across continents and governments of all kinds. How old is the AMA? A quick google says 1847. Now how old is the entire vocation of aviating? The technology itself is only a shade over 100 years old.....people didn't begin doing it with any volume for decades yet. And then the NACA was developed and the FAA from that. I mean, nobody even knew who the FAA was for a long dam time. But the young and rapidly growing industry needed some sort of oversight and the government found their way in to doing that very thing....sort of squashing the need and potential effectiveness of a professional organization with a very fluid and new set of operating parameters.
And, it is worth mentioning, that ALPA does, in fact, have a Professional Standards department. When a member crosses someone's invisible line they often get turned over to pro standards.
Pilots are a funny breed. Even the airline pilot group remains a territorial and generally independently thinking group of people. We are taught from day one to follow a set of rules while always maintaining the ability to think and make decisions for ourselves or with our crews..often times against outside pressures and influences. It is an industry of working people that would be pretty hard to talk in to joining one across-the-board union or professional group. The fact that it doesn't exist might more readily point out yet another difference that we may discuss versus most other groups of people(in general). Maybe AOPA or EAA should take more of a regulatory role with its member group, but I doubt it would be good for business. And how many attorneys or doctors would join the AMA or BAR Ass'n if they didn't have to? More than one, I would guess.
