Originally Posted by rickair7777

Not condescension, I would have stayed operational until the day I retired if I could have. They had to drag me kicking and screaming to staff and every minute of it was what you'd expect. But by the time I was done I realized that somebody has to do it, and you really want that somebody to have a deep operational background.

"Grownup" as in the fun is over and now it's a job.

It's disingenuous to complain that they should just let pilots fly... if they didn't need experienced pilot officers in major leadership positions, they'd do like the army and just use warrants. Army can do that because aviation is very much a sideshow in their world, they don't need or want stick monkeys driving their big picture.