Too right, 8N.
There is great romance to be had in flying, so long as it doesn't blind us to the realities. There is nothing so magic as the gift of flight, yet nothing so dangerous should vigilence not be paid in full.
Dick Scobee was correct when he said it's a crime to be paid for something we love so much. Two days later he died doing just that, and paid a much higher price. Let's not forget that the costs of flying are paid in many forms. Some in service, some in devotion, some in the dues to a union, some in years of starvation working toward that goal that never comes.
Too often we see the goal in the left seat of a large airplane, forgetting that each position has the same value...the private pilot enjoying his or her ride, to the flight instructor passing on vital knowledge and understanding.
Our knowledge, skills, and indeed our livlihoods are perishible. These vanish without notice, fail from short terms of disuse, and are indeed fragile. Enjoy it while it lasts. May it be a very long time, but prepared for it to be of much shorter duration, because that is the nature of aviation.
I won't apologise for my comments: they are what they are.
We all choose different paths. May each flourish in the path he or she has chosen, then expand to share it with others. We are all beggars. Of the massive population of the earth, we have been provided this great opportunity to fly, so very few of us. We need be humbled and grateful, and nothing more. It's our obligation, our heritage, and our legacy.
It's much more than a job, but a job none the less. Beyond that, it is a duty, a gift with which we have been entrusted, and our sacred obligation to honor that gift. There is no unity, though there should be. There is no brotherhood. Only a bunch of people who once started out wanting the same thing. Flight. A short transitory act of limited duration, which vanishes upon completion without a trace of evidence. An ink stain in a logbook. History in action. No glory, no pride, but only us doing what we love.
That love is clouded and broken by management, by unions, by regulation and time. It is obscured and swallowed up in careers, dying by degrees in the mire of seniority issues and clauses, bound by scope and by seat.
No, the romance isn't dead, but certainly swallowed up in reality. More power to the masses as they move forward, but never forget where we have come from, where we have been. Idealism in this industry is best left to the works of St. Exup, Gann, and Bach. For the rest of us, there is a job to do. That's all.
