JohnBurke

You've prattled on about this before; you did no due diligence, made no effort, and apparently swallowed whatever you were told and heard what you wanted to hear.

Colleges have a product to sell. You do not seek out information about a new car from the dealer. You seek it from a source that doesn't have a vested conflict of interest in selling you the product. You didn't do that. You blame your failure to properly research your career on others, just as you blame your failure at a career on the industry.

There has never been a pilot shortage. We don't have one now. If you swallowed the load of garbage that Kit Darby peddled under Air, Inc, too bad for you.

I was working during the time you describe, as were many others who have called you out on your inaccuracies and lies before, and I've yet to see you tell the truth. Perhaps you really were that deluded that you believe what you say, but I don't think so. Don't blame lack of airline pilot central on your failure to learn the business. You've said before that you expected to leave school and be living like a king within a year. Utterly ridiculous. You've long expressed a sense of entitlement within the industry, and you blame the industry for failing to lay riches on your doorstep.

You can blame yourself for failure to put in the effort to succeed. Many others have done it. Tens of thousands. Why not you?

Aviation is an industry, and a multi-faceted one. You pay to drone around in your single engine Cessna 150. I get paid if I climb into a single engine airplane, and I get paid very well. Dead end? Hardly.

You did no research; the results of your gross blindness and failure to comprehend either speak incredibly poorly of you, or you just didn't try. Listening to ra-ra speeches by salesmen is not due diligence. I began flying while in high school and began flying commercially upon graduation. I had zero illusions and the industry was quite clear. If anything, it's far easier today than it was back then, and many curtain climbers who finished flight training and fell into a professional cockpit have no realistic sense of what was long required to make the career go.

You came on my radar when you began describing flying in the firefighting industry. Your statements were ridiculously inaccurate and wrong; exactly the opposite in almost every case. It's a business I know very, very well, and one you clearly do not and did not. It was evident from the get-go that you were lying about your experience and background, and at the time I called you out on it. You quickly moved on to something else, as you didn't know the material. We can discuss every other facet of what you claim to have done tit for tat; flown the back country and the bush. Whatever. Seaplanes. Airlines. I've done it, too. The dismal experiences you claim at every step of your career as it spiraled down the drain are not typical, but they do paint a very clear picture of you and the effort you put in. Like most things in life, you get back out of the industry what you put in.

The title of the thread is a clear assessment of your agenda here. You claim to be showing the way to others, yet you've never done it, and as we'll see in a moment, you've nothing to show. The thread of the title is about crushing dreams. Don't follow your passion, you cry. How it must pain you to see so many others living your dream. You could be doing it too, had you not quit.

Again, you cannot speak but to tell a lie, though you are right that your work is obsolete. It was outdated and pointless from the outset, because your "work" is a lie.

People are not "showing up" to flight school? Hardly.

People not "showing up," of course, would equate to an impending pilot shortage, and supply and demand would indicate a corresponding elevation in pilot pay and incentive concurrent with reduction in supply, which belies the point you think you're making.

There's no question that you failed in your career. You did abandon it, after all. You didn't abandon a success, did you?

Which aspect of my career ought I fully acknowledge? The successful raising of a family on my aviation earnings? My six figure salary? My satisfaction with my job? The travel I've been afforded? The experiences that I wouldn't trade for anything? The co-workers with whom I've been honored to do this job, and the aircraft I've been fortunate to fly? Should I fully acknowledge the satisfaction of illuminating a target in the dark in Iraq, or should I acknowledge the pleasure of breaking out at minimums at gross weight on a blustery winter day, needles crossed, runway where it should be, before going to a good hotel for the night? Perhaps I should fully acknowledge the deep satisfaction and pleasure I take from smoke in the cockpit, the smell of fresh pine or sage as I fly down a canyon and get paid very well to do it, or the satisfaction of finishing a day knowing I've done something to contribute? Which of these aspects am I not fully acknowledging? Shall we expand on them at length in order to meet your demands for disclosure?

Which of these aspects can you describe in detail based on current, personal experience in your successful aviation career? None? Not really a successful career for you, was it? Again, you failed the career and the industry. The industry in all its facets is still here, active, working. Just without you. It isn't suffering for you absence, either. The airlines are doing fine without you. Firefighting is doing fine without you. Bush flying goes on without you. Instruction goes on, cargo flying, corporate aviation, etc, all without you, and not because the industry is dying or failing, but because you quit, and the industry didn't skip a beat or take note. This big catastrophe you describe isn't in the industry. Its in you.

Oh, yes, I know. You've tried to float this lie here many times, asserting that nobody can live for less than one hundred thirty thousand dollars a year. I've presented all the numbers necessary to shoot that down in flames, and you have been shot down in flames. It's interesting that most of the population lives well below those numbers.

Do you make that amount? One can't live on less, you've told us many times. I know a lot of people who do. In fact, you go on to quote numbers for mail carriers that are careers making half of what you say is necessary. You can't even keep your own lies straight. We needn't validate your lies by further discussion on that.

Wait a moment. You just told us that you're here to lead the way, to show us the alternative. If you were let down by aviation, and couldn't live like a king, and you're trying to lead us away to an alternative, a better life, don't you have that life to hold up as a shining example? You mean you're struggling to live, and yet your are the poster child for those who would leave the industry to follow?

You claimed that you entered the industry to live like a king. That was your standard. Now you claim that you're not trying to live like a king. Your're just trying to live. You've lowered your standard appreciably. Leaving aviation, your standard has been lowered from living like a king to barely surviving, and you come to us with this, touting the desirability to follow? Surely you've got something better than this. You offer the alternative, remember?

What is this alternative that you offer? Show it.