I never said they were. But they are a better alternative to those of us who value time at home for the price of getting paid penauts anyways. To get paid peanuts AND be gone from home like the business traveler that makes 3 times as much is just retarded. It all comes down to personal value of time. My time at home is worth much more than getting paid in ILSs and takeoffs.

If I'm going to be gone from home I want a monetary premium. Pilot scales are frankly uncompetitive across the board. As such I take my skillset home and do something else. If everybody was so content with their "TAFB-monetary compensation" ratio we wouldn't have this board now would we? The aforementioned accountant may hate his job, and he may not even get a 2 hour lunch, but at least he ain't working for free because he accepts an emotion as currency and compensation.

And an office? Brother, military aviation is a whiplash-inducing merry go round juggle between an old outdated steam gauge cockpit and an office. I spend 80% of my week stuck in an office doing what every other paper pusher does at the bank. Even going to do my primary duty is sometimes frowned upon by the "office managers". But you know what, they pay you cash in that office job, which is more than I can say for the 8 leg a day "out of sight, out of mind" reality of the pauper regional life with the discontent wife and kid waiting for the promised big ticket out of the lower middle class for the expense of a college education.