infiniti757

You sir have earned my respect. You forgot to mention what happens when you get laid off in the middle of a lull in pilot hiring. Or what happens to your family when you tell then you have pick up and move because you have to chase another job. No one ever told me about any of the travails I would go through to get to where I am today. I made the decision to start flying very young and decided to make it a career while still in high school. My guidance counselor forgot to mention what it actually took to become a pilot. College knocked a bit of reality about the field into me but it wasnt until my first flight instructing job out of college that the reality hit me. I was making the princely sum of $8 dollars an hour instead of the usual $7 because i had a multi engine instructors license. This after 4 years at the best aviation school in the country. This muight be a little harder than everyone thinks. I remember being thankful that the flight school had so many cookouts because it kept me from starving. I look back at all the times that I as a hard working colloege educated person who lived as frugally as I could had to call home to mom and dad so I could pay the rent or put gas in my car.

September 11th bankrupted the flight school where I was. I can tell you that it was not easy to find a job as a pilot after that. But I found one a mere 4 states away from where I had been living for 7 years. Flight instructed some more. Started losing hope because it looked like I might be an instructor forever.

Then I got that magical first part 135 job. I was now flying cargo. I found out why pilots need medicals. Between the lack of sleep, the food in the "wheel of death" and flying a piston single through weather I wouldn't walk a dog in, I was amazingly surprised when my blood pressure hadn't shot through the roof. My pay increased to a point where I could stop deferring my student loans, but only because I took a run that had killed the previous pilot. The federal government in all it's wisdom saw fit to make check clearing an electronic process. Lo and behold my check charter company started laying off pilots. I became a line item that got cut off of someone's budget.

So here I am instructing again during the day and working in flight ops for an air cargo airline at night. But at least some commuter airlines are starting to hire, and got knows I have got some experience at this point.
But I digress, I have been rambling. For all the pilots out there that have made it to the big leagues, keep fighting the good fight and don't let anyone take away what you have rightfully earned. Any struggle you win today will be that much less of a fight when I finally reach that stage of my career.

Thank you for your post. I sometime lose perspective of the importance of what we do. I think I will share it with everyone at work that says that pilots don't work hard and get paid too much.