Originally Posted by
mooney
I'll never forget the day I was flying with a new hire FO and talking about his training. Flight attendant listening in over our shoulders. FO says something like "those were the hardest 3 weeks of my life." FA then perks up and says "I should have stayed in school 1 week longer to be a pilot." And she was dead serious.
We both lost whatever drinks we had in our mouths at the time...
When I was still at AirTran my captain and I heard a similar story from our lead flight attendant - her roommate (another FA) was dating one of our pilots and they both went through their respective new-hire training at about the same time. She said it was very unfair pilots made that much more and pointed out that her friend's boyfriend (the pilot) was in training only a few weeks longer than her FA buddy...
When the captain tried to explain that a new-hire pilot has already been a pilot for a while at his/her previous airline, etc, etc. she interrupted by saying it all boiled down to pilots being rich to begin with because if she had the money she'd have gone to a flight school too!
I replied by saying my entire flight training was paid with the help of student loans and was still paying them off but she just rolled her eyes and walked away - we could tell she did not believe us...
By the way, she was venting to us because the previous crew had the audacity of buying their own food without asking the FAs if they wanted anything... I'd always ask our FAs if they wanted me to to get them some delicious fast food but I got a feeling this particular FA expected the previous crew to actually pay for her food since "they made so much more..."
This was the only time I ran into someone like that while at AT - other crews were top-notch...