Flying is fun but is flying airliners even flying? Not really, one landing a day, AP only flying. Flying a 172 requires more decision making skills than an airliner, at least you have to calculate the pattern altitude.

 

I fly a 1949 Cessna 170A on the weekends. That's fun flying. Airliner flying is pretty boring in comparison. Certainly not enough fun to justify crappy pay. Few if any are taking a regional job because its fun, it is because it is viewed - rightly or not - as a prerequisite for a job at the majors.

 

Exactly, as long as we love our job, and have a passion for what we do, we will always be poor. It's about time we all showed how miserable we are and how much we hate those stupidheads in management. Sounds like a solid plan

Sorry brah, not buying it. If anything, pilots who love their work and have dedicated their lives to this profession are the ones making headway toward improving pay and schedules for everyone. A strong, dedicated, professional group of pilots will always have more bargaining power than a group of weak, selfish, miserable pilots. Not JMHO, it's a basic principle of negotiations

Edit: I get what you're saying about not selling out...but now that you're a part of this industry (you've already sold out), what positive steps are you taking on a daily basis to improve our profession?

2nd Edit: It made me happy to see my ex-QX brothers stand up against mgmt's proposed TA. What a joke, you guys deserve better! Keep showing GJ & Co. that you guys EARN your pay on a daily basis, and a COLA on your pay each year is not too much to ask

 

Not for nothing, but you know there's no limitation on how much you can hand fly. Just saying...

And I always hear this whole, "well flying is fun but airline flying isn't 'real' flying" argument. Okay, well, great. If you know of somewhere I can go get paid to mess around in a Piper Cub, go do some steep turns and touch and goes for kicks and giggles, sign me up. And don't say instructing, because it's not the same and you know it. Airlines pay crap everywhere to start out with. Well I've got bills to pay and flying airplanes is one of the best marketable skills I have. There are a lot of fun things I wish I could do instead but I can't get paid to just have fun.

And I'm going to respectfully disagree that flying a 172 requires more decision making skills than a transport category aircraft. More hand flying skills, perhaps, depending on how much you use the automation, but there are WAY more decisions to be made in an airline cockpit than whether or not I've got my carb heat on. Unless of course you're deviating your 172 around weather going 250kts with 10 minutes of extra fuel and a guy in the back with chest pains.

 

Give it a while and see how much you and the pilots you fly with use the AP. Give it 3 months and make me a list of the decisions you make as an airline First Officer (and deciding to do your walk around now or later doesn't count as a decision, neither does deciding between coke or 7 up). Then go rent a 172, plan a flight from San Diego to Sacramento, fly it and then make a list of all the decisions you had to make. Your GA list will be 5 times as long. Airline flying is cake, pure and simple. How can being in an airliner with 10 minutes of extra gas and a sick passenger be harder than being in a 172 and how is speed relevant? You can't have a low fuel situation with a sick passenger in a 172? At least in an airliner I know how much gas I have, in a 172 I am always just guessing while looking at gas gauges that are constantly changing. In an airline there are two engines, at least 3 crew members, all of ATC and all of dispatch at your disposal. You are not only drastically over exaggerating airline flying you are also over glorifying it.

 

Hey jayray, let me guess: you sit in the right seat?

To put it another way: if you think it's that easy, you're not paying attention.

I guess their is a third option. You ARE a captain, just not a very conscientious one.

 

Yeah, I sit in the right seat. I'm not paying attention? To what? I am pretty good at paying attention to not only the conversation with the person next to me but also monitoring ATC at the same time. Is that what you are referring to? Let me guess, you sit in the right seat and you think you have difficult decisions to make? I'll admit that difficult decisions may need to be made but they are rare. A private pilot might not realize it and might not be good at it, but the decisions they make are just as difficult as the decisions you make and they are faced with more decisions throughout a flight than a typical airline flight. Tell me the decisions you had to make on your last flight - don't over embellish and reach back 5 years ago to when you lost an engine and had to divert to your second alternate. Did you pick your runway? Your route? Your departure? Your alternate? Your pattern entry? Did you do your W&B? Did you calculate your fuel burn? How many minutes of the flight did you actually fly the airplane? All I am saying is airline flying is as far away from flying an airplane as you can get without sitting in some office flying a drone.

 

I guess if you plan on being a career FO, Jay, then sure. I wouldn't say I don't get to make decisions. I make decisions all the time. It's just when the captain disagrees, his decision wins. A good FO advocates. Unless your captains are talking you through each and every thing you do on your legs, you probably make plenty of decisions too. Apparently without realizing. I'm not saying I don't use the autopilot plenty (just hand flew my leg of a LIT turn, albeit not by choice), I'm just saying I don't gripe about how I never get to hand fly and the automation makes it so easy. No one forces you to use the autopilot. And you really missed my point. I'll bet you're right, a solo cross country in a 172 might force me to make and rely on more of my own decisions absent any other guidance. Last I checked, there aren't many jobs like that around. If you'd rather go fly single pilot night cargo then be my guest because you make it seem like the Saab isn't challenging you much and you think it to be a waste of your time.

 

That's it... Keep talking about how easy it is and how a monkey can do it. Boy that just really grinds my gears. Why should they pay us anything if we keep spreading that kind of rhetoric? We might have been over glorifying it twenty years ago but no one is today, that's for sure. What glorification?

If it's so easy to operate a modern airliner then what, do you suppose, is all of the education, flight school, hours, certificates, ratings, types, and time building for? I don't know about you but I could have bought a house. You can operate a 172 with less than 40 hours.

Form the right seat, I've exercised CRM and offered plenty of input concerning maintenance items, fuel burn, flight planning, W&B, weather conditions, deviations, in flight abnormals, and in flight emergencies. Not only that but I have to make decisions about how to approach those issues with the PIC. If all you think you're doing over there is turning the packs on and off then you should probably reevaluate what you've chosen to do for a profession. You can call me a-lot of things but don't call me glorified. ...If only that were the case.

 

Dude, jay...in case you're confused, you're on an Airline Pilot Forum...it's safe to assume we all know how much the autopilot is used, and that sometimes it gets boring. You don't need to educate anyone here about the differences between flying 121 vs. a 172. It's also safe to assume the majority of us were CFI's at some point in our careers, and we're all aware of just how easy it is to put together a VFR or IFR flight plan. In fact, I'm willing to bet most of us could do it under 2 minutes flat...if not on the roll. Don't even try to make it sound like planning a flight is hard, especially in a piston-single aircraft

You must be the luckiest airline pilot alive. I've been in a few sticky situations as a result of mistakes made by the very people that you assume are doing their job correctly (dispatchers, mechanics, ATC, GSA's, schedulers, etc.). They are human, just like us, and are bound to make mistakes just as we do sometimes. I guess it just makes your job easier to simply assume they did it right.