Well,

IMHO, what you are seeing is the frustration caused by people having those dreams, spending much time, money and effort to position themselves for them to find out that the industry has changed on a fundamental level - in essence, it's like being on a football team that uses the west coast offense, getting to the playoffs, only to have the NFL outlaw the forward pass for the rest of the season.

Nothing that hasn't been seen in the steel, telecommunications, textile, data processing, or auto industries. Times change, process get improved and business models evolve. Fact of life. Someday in the future, someone is going to come up with a transportation solution that is better than the way FedEx does it, and the current generation of folks in or striving for that job are going to be hurting. What happened to the great cruise liners of the 1920's and 30's?? What happened to those sailors? Look at how the RJ has changed things... see my post in another forum about how Virgin America could very well be the final nail for the majors.....

So, I would encourage (and I have in a couple of cases) wannabe's here to not see it as negativity, view it as what to expect - if you view the world as the glass if half empty, you aren't disappointed when it is more than 50% full. Dreams are great, I've gotten to fulfill mine by being a Naval Aviator. And now I'm moving on. But if the dream is based on flying the North Atlantic route for 30 hours over 10 days a month and pulling in $300k while shacking up with a hottie stew on the London layover, that isn't going to happen - and I think it's better to know that earlier than later. I hate to see somebody leverage themselves financially for a degree (say a cheap state school at $80k total), the airline prep program at All ATP's after that for $44k in order to fast track to a regional, only to find themselves making $25k a year - and they have to pay all that back and live on that salary. If this is what you want to do because you'll die if you don't get to fly that's fine. If you think you're going to get rich...good luck! If you do the math above, you can't get from point A to B, unless you get one of the 400 jobs a year that there are 10,000 other RJ guys/girls trying to get. Folks need to know that, and it's not advertised anywhere other than here...otherwise All ATP's, ERAU, etc. go out of business quick.

Flying's a great job...it's not that hard, you get paid to sit on your a$$ and their are moments of absolute beauty that are to die for - but the general perception of the pilot life is not real anymore.

Rant off.
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