Originally Posted by
JDFlyer
My two cents . . . just one more thing to think about.
Which do you think you would prefer - flying people? Or flying boxes?
For some pilots the choice is obvious - boxes. For others like myself the choice is also obvious - people.
As frustrating as passengers can be sometimes, as high maintenance, as needy, as childish and frustrating that people are many times - hands down I would rather fly people. Personally, I get much more satisfaction out of my professional work day interacting with our customers, our gate agents, etc. Yes, a few are a pain, but most are grateful, thankful, entertaining, funny people.
For example, as the holidays are just now over, would you rather fly somebodies mother or father, brother or sister, son or daughter to grandma's house for the holidays? Or would you rather fly their Amazon web order to and from a sorting facility?
I've done both. I worked for a legacy airline and Fedex. I thought I wanted to be in the people hauling business, until I actually did it. Dealing with the flight attendants and passengers is just a pain. I'm not saying there wasn't some worthwhile times, but in the end, I just enjoy don't dealing with airport security and all of the hassles that the passenger terminal entails.
I do this work for the pay and benefits. I don't do it for the love of flying or fun. If they would pay me to sit at home, I'd gladly accept it. With the lowered salaries of passenger carriers, Fedex and UPS are now in the lead in this area. That said, United and Delta were seeing $300/hour about 10 years ago. We still don't come close to that. If you don't chase the money (and it can be difficult to do), you can usually make 70 hours in 11-12 days. We have a very large widebody fleet, so it usually doesn't take that long to make it to the right seat. Of course this is not always the case, we have had almost no no movement in the past 4 years or so.
I will just say that this is, by far, the best job I have had in the industry.