Originally Posted by MacMan

I have to take issue with your facile argument that underpaid pilots equal incompetent pilots.
“Unthinkable missteps by incompetent pilots resulting in massive loss of life and substantial hull losses”, you say.....”inexcusable errors that should have never happened.” Pretty dramatic prose. Let’s see, 35 years ago, when the industry was regulated and, according to your post, pilots were making twice as much in real dollars as we are today, 3 Eastern pilots flew a perfectly good L-1011 into the Everglades. Oops! That's kind of unthinkable. A few years later another stalwart of the industry, United, lost a DC-8 near PDX when it ran out of fuel short of the runway. I’d say that’s pretty inexcusable.
It’s pretty easy to sit on the sidelines and lob epithets at pilots who screw up so badly...that's why they're accidents. Are they incompetent because they're underpaid. You're no where near proving that proposition with those anectodal facts. ...I think you can look back at history and see that it's never just one thing. There but for the grace of....you know the rest, buddy.