BoilerUP
Citation style...
- Joined
- Nov 11, 2003
- Posts
- 5,311
Pilots are more like doctors or lawyers than many would like to admit.
You don't have to necessarily be "smart" to be any of the three, but you do need deep pockets to afford the schooling/training to become any of the three. And if you can't hack it in any of the three professions, you either wash out or end up a bottom feeder, without access to the best jobs.
You need good rote memorization and deductive reasoning skills in each field; you also need a good understanding of what you *don't* know (pilots can lack this in my experience) with the knowledge of how to fill in those gaps in your experience/knowledge.
Arguably, individual pilots have greater liability for their actions, both in terms of dollars and lives, than individual doctors or lawyers do.
All three professions have continuing education - in medicine & law they are required for certification, in aviation you have recurrent checkrides and operate in one of the most unforgiving, dynamic environments on earth.
There's also plenty of differences, more than some would like to admit.
Barriers to entry into the legal & medical field are higher. You have to pass graduate school to be a doctor or lawyer, plus pass one or more certification tests; in aviation you have to pass checkrides (which we all know can be $kewed) to obtain certificates but there isn't a higher education requirement for the end certification (ATP).
And the big one IMO:
Flying is many people's hobby; very few people practice law or medicine as a hobby.
That's to say nothing of other professions like engineering, architecture, accounting, etc.
Let's not sell ourselves short as pilots, but let's also not let our egos draw false comparisons...
You don't have to necessarily be "smart" to be any of the three, but you do need deep pockets to afford the schooling/training to become any of the three. And if you can't hack it in any of the three professions, you either wash out or end up a bottom feeder, without access to the best jobs.
You need good rote memorization and deductive reasoning skills in each field; you also need a good understanding of what you *don't* know (pilots can lack this in my experience) with the knowledge of how to fill in those gaps in your experience/knowledge.
Arguably, individual pilots have greater liability for their actions, both in terms of dollars and lives, than individual doctors or lawyers do.
All three professions have continuing education - in medicine & law they are required for certification, in aviation you have recurrent checkrides and operate in one of the most unforgiving, dynamic environments on earth.
There's also plenty of differences, more than some would like to admit.
Barriers to entry into the legal & medical field are higher. You have to pass graduate school to be a doctor or lawyer, plus pass one or more certification tests; in aviation you have to pass checkrides (which we all know can be $kewed) to obtain certificates but there isn't a higher education requirement for the end certification (ATP).
And the big one IMO:
Flying is many people's hobby; very few people practice law or medicine as a hobby.
That's to say nothing of other professions like engineering, architecture, accounting, etc.
Let's not sell ourselves short as pilots, but let's also not let our egos draw false comparisons...
