I think it would be more like a thumb-wrestling match.

I'll give you one thing pilots and doctors have in common, and that's both have a tendency towards arrogance.

The routine surgery or flight should run like clockwork and not require a life-saving heroic intervention, but it's our skills as professionals that we fallback on if needed to save the day. Comparing job duties and responsibilities to compensation is an immature comparison.

If we were compensated based on the amount of lives we were responsible for then policemen, firefighters, and military personnel would be compensated ALOT more then all of us.

 

I think that most people bring up the question of pilots versus doctors because they feel defensive. We love flying and can not see ourselves doing anything else. Then, somebody comes along and denigrates our profession; or maybe after hearing a bunch of doom-and-gloom, we begin to second-guess ourselves and question the worth of flying for a living. In defense, we compare it to something like being a doctor, to show that both professions have their own complexities, similarities, etc. Relating flying to a career that is held in very high esteem almost universally can serve as a way of educating people who do not understand what we do of it's actual dangers and complexities, or of falsely boosting our own self-esteem.

Why do we feel the need to do this? Why can't we just accept each career for what it is and be happy about it? Comparing flying to a completely different career is neither fair to whomever you're talking with nor to yourself. Yes, both professionals hold many lives in their hands and have gone through extensive training, but that is about where the similarities end. Neither person will walk away from the encounter feeling better.

Both are great professions with their own, unique perks. We have breath-taking views and beautiful airplanes that provide endless hours of entertainment; doctors have the ability to interact directly and intimately with someone else's life. From a utilitarian standpoint , both are necessary for the economic globe to keep rotating.

I think that if people can be more content with what they have, and better understand and cope with the downside(s) of their careers, they would be much happier in any path they take. I take this quotation from one of my favorite movies - The Godfather II - "This is the business we've chosen." We know what comes with the territory, so we deal with it and take pride in our work. We don't feel the need to compare ourselves or make the job seem any more simple or complex than it really is. Then, we will be appreciating flying for what it truly is; not for what we want other people to think it is.

/rant . . . let the flaming begin

 

Most military personal have little or nothing to do with combat or saving lives. They make an indirect contribution by doing their support jobs. The military defends our liberty more than our lives.

Cops essentially never saves lives. They either prevent crime just by being there and doing their job, or investigate the crime after the fact.

Firefighters save lives, and most are VERY well compensated at least in my neck of the woods. They get a lot of time off too...

On any given day, an airline pilot's job performance saves more lives than any other profession. Reference CA 5191. No other profession can account for that much carnage, unless a strike-fighter pilot accidentally bombs a mosque on Friday night (that would actually be considered collateral damage, ie the cost of doing business).

 

I feel that the responsibility of a pilot flying sevral hundered people over a crowded city is not appreciated enough.

However, many jobs have lives in the balance. Multiple lives. In the example below, 114 dead, and 200 injured. All due to engineering/construction. Engineer and contractor failed to realize the implications of a design change.

Hyatt Regency walkway collapse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rather graphic ABC news coverage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDWdnvWrlKE

 

I cant think of any doctors who had to perform emergency surgery on someone while wearing an oxygen mask and goggles, trying to communicate with everyone in the room, while the building around them is burning to the ground and they have minutes to finish everything up safely before we all burn alive.

 

But Akro, how many times does a doctor have to make a split second decision to administer a drug or not? How to to stop someone from bleeding out? Yes their lives themselves might not be in the balance, but a patients life is just as important. Just saying it's not a direct comparison, but rather an examination of similar circumstances.

 

pilots tend to think there are 2 types of people in this world pilots and trash. -a doctor

 

That's a key factor. Doctors perform complicated tasks under pressure, but not the kind of pressure that comes from fearing for your own life.

That is the acid test in aviation. Not all pilots have been there either.

Medicine is a higher-level profession than aviation in terms of entry requirements, training, and complexity. But medical ability does not translate to the cockpit...doctors often die in airplanes because...

- They can afford high-performance equipment.
- They may be too busy to maintain the proper currency.
- High-performance equipment leads to riskier missions (XC, IMC, etc).
- Some doctors think their medical ability under pressure will translate to the cockpit...it does not unless they maintain currency (I don't mean FAR currency).

 

For some reason pilots like to try and compare themselves to Doctors. Someone wrote something once comparing flying an ILS with preforming brain surgery. The two are not related at all.

It takes six months and some King tapes to become a professional pilot. Even when trying to compare a professional pilot with a barber it is a stretch.

SkyHigh

 

A key point. When a doc messes up, worst case scenario, he loses his license. He doesn't lose the degree, so he can go teach, or be a consultant or whatever. In the cockpit, the threat of losing your own life in addition to those that are in your hands ups the ante just a notch. When poop hits the fan in a plane, the pilot is under WAY more pressure than the surgeon.

Let's not even get into the issue of medicals and recurrent training (which docs only have to complete every few years according to a friend who's an oncologist).

Docs are undoubtedly under immense pressure at times, just like a pilot, but when you deviate from normal ops, pilots have it worse.