Originally Posted by AYLflyer

There's a difference between comparing your income to the average household and keeping perspective on life around you.

I want to be the highest paid professional I can be, but that doesn't mean I can't have a good perspective on my life/career compared to the average citizen. The whole "We're not the average citizen" line is bull****. You're one medical bust away from just being an 'average citizen'.

So many guys in this profession are disconnected from reality when it comes to pay/benefits. I watch all my friends who aren't in avitaion work their butts off to maybe someday clear $60-$80k/yr and get 3-4% retirement contributions from their companies if they're lucky.

Perspective. You can be grateful for what you have and what you earn while not selling yourself short. We can still fight hard for what we deserve to be paid as a professional aviator and still have some humility in knowing that the very people we haul back and forth may work 2,3,4,5x harder than us and will and never see the earnings potential we see as pro pilots.

Originally Posted by Southerner

But people on here don't want perspective. They want to inflate their egos, and feel "special."

Originally Posted by surreal1221

It is the internet. And, this is, APC. And well, even at JetBlue we have some guys who cant stop themselves from drooling over themselves and peacocking their whole lives.

Originally Posted by Brickhut

Years and years. Years and years?! Damn son, how many extra sim sessions did you need?! I just did some finger math and came to the sum of 14 months of my life have been spent in actual training. But that's only with PPL, INST, COMM, ATP, 5 types, countless recurrents/ PC's/PT's, ground school, CBT's, etc... But years and years? At the absolute minimum that implies 4 years. WOW! I mean...wow. I'd figuratively give both testicles to fly with you. AND, you "know how to fly 121"?!

I just wanna say congrats to all the B6 folks on the passing of your TA. You folks deserved it! And for the 99.87% of you that have to fly with the 5 guys that took the time to educate me on how much harder their job is-how much more skill they truly possessed than Juan the drywaller (and were fu%&ing serious about it), good luck I guess.

Originally Posted by Mattio

The years spent instructing or flying 135 while adding ratings are like a graduate degree in my eyes. When I started out, most or all the majors required a 4-year degree. So you have a 4-year degree, all the flight training, building hours, regional then majors for the majority of folks. Military guys definitely earned their keep too. It was competitive and even your college grades mattered to the airlines not too far back. There's a reason beyond economics that there's a shortage of pilots right now and that goes beyond the requirements of getting to this point and includes the requirements of staying at this point. I'm getting the feeling that you're not even in aviation, Brickhut and just came on here to demean people.

Originally Posted by jtrain609

You wouldn't think that if you actually had a graduate degree.