hindsight2020

I wish you well on your personal outcome, but the industry is NOT known for stable employment, competitive pay and "amicable" work rules, so your assertion is disingenuous. Ergo, people who willfully enter the working conditions as known to the median pilot are doing so for the non-economic valuation of getting paid in sunrises and sunsets. In that regard, it IS a hobby job.

Most of the mil dudes I know who are stuck at the regionals only do so because they got the retirement check coming every month and can afford to "spend their time" playing airline pilot. They don't even blink at the assertion. They are no less toxic to the stability of your said "profession" as the starry eyed wonder kid that slept through economics 101 and plunked down six figure debt for the "privilege" of a perma-sub-median-individual income hobby-job. For the rest of us with the required qualifications and a grounded understanding of the aforementioned maslow's hierarchy of needs, we take our skillset home and do something else with our time. Like the other poster alluded to, so that our kids don't have to eat ramen noodles just so I can get my pilot jollies off inside of banking hours.

But that recognition is as much of a pipedream as the re-regulation bit. People will continue to line up to get paid with an emotion and there's nothing you can do at an individual level to stifle that impetus. Cabotage will put an end to it though, at least as it pertains to the american labor pool, just like the cruise ships. Even regional guys and the retirement check crowd will not take a liking to this job when it's flown with a flag of convenience on the side of that aluminum can. There's no indication from my observations of the behavior of the FAA that they'll be able to 180 the airline lobby. So then, where is this job protectionism gonna come from? You, my "vocational peers"? Yeah right. Buffalo was a waste of innocent human lives, and even that fades quickly in our collective attention deficit disorder. I cringe at the idea of working for an organization where people have to die needlessly so that my peers can wake the hell up and recognize there's a social cost to doing things 'just because it sounds fun'.