I so badly did not want to give Magpie the satisfaction of a reply to such obvious flamebait but I just couldn't resist.
Comparing an airline pilot to a doctor? Right. Give me a break guys.
Yes, I think there are several similarities between doctors and airline pilots. Doctors graduate from college, go to 4 yr's of medical school, and then enter a residency of varying lengths before they are eligible to begin really reaping the rewards of their profession. Military pilots graduate college, go to a year of pilot training (longer I hear for Navy), and then on to advanced training for varying lengths of time. Then, constant training and upgrades on the line before their 8-yr military commitment is up and they can seek civilian employment. Civilian pilots have a tough road to hoe though I am not nearly as familiar with that process.
A friend of mine that I graduated from high school with finished his residency last year in Portland, and finally just became board-certified as an oncologist in Seattle. That whole process took him nine years after graduating from college. Similarly, I am just now finishing up my commitment to the AF, a process which has taken just under ten years from college graduation until now.
Another similarity is that a LOT of high-quality people are drawn to become doctors and a LOT of high-quality people are drawn to become pilots by the large salary down the road. Not everyone...but a lot of them. What drew my friend through that whole process was partly the money and the same thing is partly what has drawn me to try to become an airline pilot.
For every flying airline pilot there are 5 other pilots waiting to do the same job.
In addition to what StopNTSing said on this statement, I would also say that I doubt there would be five people lined up for every job if there was no possibility they would ever earn more than $60 or $70K as an airline pilot and the people that were lined up for that kind of money would not be near the caliber of person (on average) as the folks who fly for the major airlines today. Right now, there are a lot of people lined up for those jobs because we all still think there will be a recovery and wages will return to some kind of satisfactory level. I can virtually guarantee you that if all of us out there knew we would never have a chance to make some pretty decent money as an airline pilot, that a lot of people currently pursuing airline careers would abandon the chase. A lot of folks right now would keep trying because of the time and effort they have already sunk into the process. Very few new high quality people would be drawn to the field. Of course, some people, the ones who truly love to fly, would hang in there no matter what.
I'm not sure what everybody's spending habits are, but 80 or 90 K's a year would be a liveable wage in all but most areas.
That's really kind of irrelevant. I could probably live for about $15K a year if I had to and so could you or anyone else here. The issue to me is what kind of salary is going to draw high-quality people to become airline pilots.
Difficult job? My 10 year old nephew has enough coordination from playing x-box that he could fly modern transports.
To begin with, I think most people would agree that on average, being an airline pilot is an easy job...when everything is going well. Like I said in my previous post, that's not what airline pilots are paid for. Also, your ten-yr old nephew probably actually has enough manual dexterity in his hands and fingers to perform brain surgery. That doesn't mean anything really. He doesn't have the experience, background, maturity, judgement, knowledge, etc to be either an airline pilot or a brain surgeon. I wouldn't want him operating on my mother or flying my sister around in a big jet. Would you?
Feel you deserve it because you have "paid your dues"?
If you read my post here, and I think most of us would agree, no one "deserves" to be paid more than the market will bear. I think if the market understood the dangers posed by underpaying airline pilots, it would demand higher wages for pilots. It took only three terrorist incidents to scare a good chunk of the flying public away from the airlines and directly impact their bottom lines. How many pilot-error-type accidents that resulted from low-paid pilots committing incompetence or baffoonery would it take to make a similar impact and remove public confidence in the skill of airline pilots?
United was not created to give pilots jobs, it was created to be profitable.
That's a pearl. Who gave you the idea that UAL might have been created to give pilots jobs?
Best of luck to you Magpie.
