Ewfflyer, given the tone that these threads take when PFT (or supposed PFT) becomes the subject, I feel I need to state that I have a real question and am not attempting to deride or insult anyone.

Here it goes: The point I seem to get from all the back-and-forth is that I should go CFI, "earn" 1500 or so hours and then go to a Regional and get paid the same crappy wages wages that a PFT would earn. I am new to this industry, but I don't see how I can jump straight into a well-paying seat. The wages are what they are. I can remember way back when you couldn't even get a job, let alone one that pays badly. I know guys from Eastern who striked (don't know if that is a word, but sounds better than "struck) themselves out of jobs and an airline. Then Pan Am, et al.

This has been going on for a long time, and it doesn't seem to make sense to me to spend more time in 172's, Seneca's and Baron's when I can spend it in a CRJ. Just like being a CFI, my $27K and the resulting low wages are a trade for jet experience and the companies are happy to make that exchange. I won't argue that a CFI learns his/her trade by teaching, but, in truth, it seems to me that the CFI's best advantage is that someone else pays for their hours. Again, I don't mean to insult. I almost went the CFI route and would be dishonest if I said that I didn't see it that way.

Rather than all this bickering, I would like a coherent argument - other than cut off the supply of pilots which would include CFI's, not just PFT's - that would show the path to higher salaries that pilots deserve.

I am fully aware that $21/hour is not a living wage, but I don't buy into the argument that PFT's are causing the problem. I could be wrong about this, but the sense I have is that a lot of pilots have never done anything else and, thusly, have no reference point upon which to measure the profession and its wages. The fact is, almost every profession, job or occupation, requires an employee to "start at the bottom and work his/her way up." That shouldn't be news to anyone, but that seems to be the case. I don't expect to jump into the job at $75k, but I think I should be able to earn my way up to it, and I can.

If safety is the issue, then lets stick to that. Maybe there is a point to all of that and maybe it is worth discussion, but to my knowledge, no JetU guys have ever been in a crash but plenty of well-trained CFI's have. There are many assumptions being made about PFT's, but no facts are ever presented. The two guys from PCL who drove their -200 into the ground were not from Jet U. The list of mistakes they made takes up a lot of paper, but they got into the cockpit of the CRJ the traditional way: CFI, Gulfstream, etc. There are more examples against the "traditional" way than there are for it. Time will tell though. I'm sure a lot of people are watching for the first Jet U crash. Hopefully those same people aren't "hoping" for it to prove their point.

At the end of the day, looking at PFT as a safety issue may be valid but I have yet to see a quantifiable argument to support it presented in these forums. Blaming them for low wages is not a reasonable argument. As best as I can tell, all those guys who hate the PFT's are accepting substandard pay, too. Like I said in my previous post; its their choice, they don't have to.