Originally Posted by
tnkrdrvr
Ive run into this mentality a few times. If you regard your job as a paid adventure and not as a sacrifice to provide an income for your household, it makes sense. However, at some point you will want to focus on life away from work and then UPS or some other non-ACMI makes more sense.
This is very accurate. The Atlas lifestyle is often misunderstood. For many of us the money was “enough” while the QOL made it all worth it. There were several niches, e.g. ANC, MIA, Training Center, etc that offered a lot of advantages. The variety of flying to include VIP, sports teams, military to include passenger appeals to some as well.
A curious phenomena occurs in that I see ex Atlas (and admittedly there are thousands) still making FB posts highlighting their flying at Atlas. More then a few have stated that it was the best flying they ever did, but as mentioned do not regret the financial advantage of moving on.