Okay.....what?

I was married to a Pilot. He worked 4 days away, and was home for three. His job, as he told me, consisted of 'having to be awake for the first 10 minutes of a flight, and the last 10 minutes." I've heard run downs of the jokes they play on each other, other crews, and the like....it sounded like they have the auto pilot on most of the time

Now compare that to my job....I'd be gone 4 days, maybe five...heck, I've been away from home for as long as three weeks at a stretch....but unlike him, when working, I'm working that whole 10-14 hour day, and there's physical labor thrown in.....and a very good chance of accidental death or dismemberment....

I did get paid more than him.....but when it came to taxes...all the write-offs a pilot can get are amazing.....

Living wage my butt, now the tiny commuter airlines...they get paid sht.....but acording to my ex-hubby that's the dues people who go through the pilot-mill schools have to put up with.....people (like my ex) who are lucky enough to have the $$ to pay for the flight time, can get the hours they need, better training, and in more varied equipment than a pilot-mill graduate.....and can get on with a larger regional or a major in a much shorter period of time.....(if they're not, there's something wrong with their skills)

They put the shtty time in at the beginning of the carrer to get the wages further down the road. And it's usually not that long of a road......So yeah, maybe the days of $300,000-yr captains are gone....but still, pilots will still make alot of money.....(just not right out of pilot-school, heck, WHO makes alot of money right out of school????)

Hemlock3630:

Okay.....what?

I was married to a Pilot. He worked 4 days away, and was home for three. His job, as he told me, consisted of 'having to be awake for the first 10 minutes of a flight, and the last 10 minutes." I've heard run downs of the jokes they play on each other, other crews, and the like....it sounded like they have the auto pilot on most of the time

Now compare that to my job....I'd be gone 4 days, maybe five...heck, I've been away from home for as long as three weeks at a stretch....but unlike him, when working, I'm working that whole 10-14 hour day, and there's physical labor thrown in.....and a very good chance of accidental death or dismemberment....

I did get paid more than him.....but when it came to taxes...all the write-offs a pilot can get are amazing.....

Living wage my butt, now the tiny commuter airlines...they get paid sht.....but acording to my ex-hubby that's the dues people who go through the pilot-mill schools have to put up with.....people (like my ex) who are lucky enough to have the $$ to pay for the flight time, can get the hours they need, better training, and in more varied equipment than a pilot-mill graduate.....and can get on with a larger regional or a major in a much shorter period of time.....(if they're not, there's something wrong with their skills)

They put the shtty time in at the beginning of the carrer to get the wages further down the road. And it's usually not that long of a road......So yeah, maybe the days of $300,000-yr captains are gone....but still, pilots will still make alot of money.....(just not right out of pilot-school, heck, WHO makes alot of money right out of school????)

Then why don't you become a pilot? Pilots love to brag...I flew with several in the Air Force and I know the job of flying is a little more than Auto Pilot (I flew in the E-3A a derivitive of the 707 airliner). It might seem easy for a carreer pilot but not everyone can do the job in fact very few can do it. It is actually quite demanding.

I want the guy or gal keeping my plane in the air until bringing it into gentle contact with the runway to be well paid and well rested. Thank you very much.

Hemlock, when did your husband work? The days of pilots making big paychecks are long gone. Despite new technology, the job remains just as difficult and requires even more sacrifice than it used it.

Pilots are at work at the airport for 12-14 hours a day and they only get paid for the time the engines are running. They're on call at odd hours, away from their families from 15-20 days a month, and living out of a hotel or crew house.

It's true that the takeoff and landing are the most difficult parts of a flight and that the transit CAN BE uneventful, but that's not always the case. The pilot has to make decisions regarding weather, fuel, and crew-rest time while also being saddled with the well being of an increasingly angry flying public. Even the pilots of the smallest commercial jets are entrusted with dozens of lives and millions of dollars worth of equipment every day.

There is currently an oversupply of pilots that is driving wages down. It's looked at as an easy and fun job. The reality is far from that, but pilots are far too willing to put up with crappy conditions to move up the ladder that no longer exists. The huge problem now is that safety is being compromised.

Ex-Military pilots, the people with the skill and decision making ability you want in the cockpit, aren't even looking at the airlines as a follow-on career in many cases because it's just too much of a pain to get established and they can make more in other fields without being separated from their families. The highly coveted commercial pilot jobs these days are the ones that involve flying cargo for the big shippers. So at least the laptop you ordered from Japan will be safely delivered.

(I'm a 10 years Navy Pilot with lots of friends in the business)

Just because something changes from what it once doesn't mean it is now worse! That is just the way things work... things do change - they have to, they can't stay the same forever. Aren't people kind of enamoured with the word, "change," now anyway?

There's no such thing as "a living wage" - you can live off anything, it just depends on how much you want to compromise. Everyone has to compromise because no one can have everything in the world that they want. Do people realize that we aren't entitled to everything we want? Life's tough, but if there's something you want, go out there and get it. Otherwise... just deal. For the record, I make $17,000 a year, and I have nothing to complain about (and I am much happier that way!)

The airline market will take care of itself just fine. I wholeheartedly believe that. If we have too many pilots, the wages will be driven down by competition, and then fewer people will want to be pilots. Then the wages will stabilize at a point at which there will be enough pilots. People complain about teachers' salaries, but I don't know why... they obviously want to work as teachers or else they would do something else. Something tells me they really like teaching kids and having summers off. I know most teachers are not in the private sector (i.e. private school) but I'm pretty sure if we ran too low on teachers the pay would be raised to attract them. The important thing about the system we have is not that it has no problems - that's not true. You will always find problems. However, it is still the best system we have, because it works on incentives and drives and human will.

I mostly agree with you, but pilots who aren't making enough to live near the airports they're flying out of and as a result show up to work tired are a safety risk. If a teacher messes up, nobody dies. If a pilot messes up, alot of people die and the economy is impacted due to public fears of flying.

We lived in Houston, near the airport, he had a 15 minute drive to work. I had a 55 minute drive to work.

And big deal, so they don't paid for time they aren't flying....I also don't get paid for my job if I'm not actively travelling for my job.....so that three hour layover at the airport for connecting flights? I've gotta suck it up and either 1) do some work on my laptop or 2) do nothing and not get paid for it.

And big deal about them killing people. My ex-hubby liked to use that line all the time, "If I screw up in my job I could kill 75 people." my response "In my line of work, if I screw up I could kill thousands of people and cause millions of dollars of damage, or I could make thousands of people sick."

Heck, I've caused water supply to be lost to half of a town 25,000 people in size.....

And being tired is a safety risk in almost any job...we have a 16 hour day limit for our work. If we drive to a site, and work and then drive back and it's going to be more than 16 hours, we are mandated to stay overnight wherever we are. If flying to a jobsite and then driving to get there, we have to cut our days short at 16 hours......before they put that in place I've worked 32 hour stretches as RCRA hazardous waste facilities.

Hemlock3630:

We lived in Houston, near the airport, he had a 15 minute drive to work. I had a 55 minute drive to work.

And big deal, so they don't paid for time they aren't flying....I also don't get paid for my job if I'm not actively travelling for my job.....so that three hour layover at the airport for connecting flights? I've gotta suck it up and either 1) do some work on my laptop or 2) do nothing and not get paid for it.

And big deal about them killing people. My ex-hubby liked to use that line all the time, "If I screw up in my job I could kill 75 people." my response "In my line of work, if I screw up I could kill thousands of people and cause millions of dollars of damage, or I could make thousands of people sick."

Heck, I've caused water supply to be lost to half of a town 25,000 people in size.....

And being tired is a safety risk in almost any job...we have a 16 hour day limit for our work. If we drive to a site, and work and then drive back and it's going to be more than 16 hours, we are mandated to stay overnight wherever we are. If flying to a jobsite and then driving to get there, we have to cut our days short at 16 hours......before they put that in place I've worked 32 hour stretches as RCRA hazardous waste facilities.

Well I have no idea what you do for a living that gives you so much responsibility for so little pay.......If I were you I would find soemthing that made me happier.

That's exactly why I'll never be a commercial pilot. I don't want the responsibility for the pay. Despite whatever your job is Hemlock, you're not controlling a 150,000lb piece of metal moving at hundreds of miles an hour. A mistake flying a plane happens much faster than a mistake doing just about anything else, therefor the rest threshold has to be much higher than in a normal job. The military imposes very strict crew rest standards even in a war zone and is extremely reluctant to waive them. The airline industry says they do, but they do it with the full knowledge that their employees cannot get the rest they need flying out of certain airports with the pay they get.