There are about 450 NBA players, 1700ish NFL players, and up to about 1200 ish Major League Baseball players. There are over 40,000 airline pilots flying for the legacy carriers, plus the LCC's and ULCC's. There are many more people that want to be pro athletes than there are wanting to be airline pilots. Just from the numbers, the comparison isn't close.

damn right. that is stupid to ask. there is no reason to apologize for making your family the priority with the very little time off you get.

It a lot to do with the arrogance of pilots that think they are on par with heart surgeons and professional athletes. I agree with you.

And those who call working at a Major the "major leagues," I think it has to do more with fulfilling their own shortcomings rather than being accurate.

Just because a 5 year old wants to stop in and see the flight deck every once in a while doesn't mean that 50,000 will attend to watch you brief an ILS and put it into the box.

I agree. But they can't legally ask if you're married or if you have kids. I commend those who truly do volunteer their time. It would matter to me if I was doing the hiring, but I'm not.

Standard question applies;

Assume that BOTH pilots are nice enough people in the F2F, would you take? The one that's got PIC, and an LCA. Or the FO that with no PIC time but volunteers? Again, both nice people, humble, seem like they'd be easy to get along with for 4 days, etc.

Okay, I can argue either way on this but I'll take up the "there are more similarities between the two than not."

First, yes our networking and job fair stuff kind of stinks in a way, to say that's absent in a pro athletes ascent to the professional league would be incorrect. I know this from up close personal experience with a MLB pitcher who was exceptional in HS but because of our coach he left with no scholarship and had to walk on to ODU. He ended up playing 5 years in the majors for PHL, SFO and BOS.
Second, it's about luck. True in aviation, true in sports where you are at the mercy of freak injuries and good or bad coaches. A friend of mine at Auburn was recruited and played well as a WR, new staff came in and he had a coach that wouldn't play a white WR. Payback because he wasn't played as a black WR. He never played again. Coach was let go after we graduated. Bad luck and really no NFL chance after that. Getting hired at a major can be about timing too.

Third, the 10,000-hour practice rule applies to sports, musicians and major airline pilots.

Fourth, you're assuming a person can be either a pilot or a professional athlete, but that's not correct. A 5'4" F-16 pilot turned MD-88 airline pilot was not born with the physical size to play NBA or MLB or NFL. He could practice for 10,000 hours and it'd matter not, he will never be Lebron James. Lebron James no matter how much he wants to be, will never be an F-16 pilot turned McDonnell Douglas field test pilot. But both can potentially be the best at what they do and neither is easy. Although said pilot might make a basket before King James successfully lands the MD-88 (which is hard for most pilots).

Fifth, you make more money as an airline pilot. :D There are 12,750 professional athletes with an average salary of $75,760/year. It's the #1 dream job of kids. #2 is airline pilots and according to the BLS, the 66,270 airline pilots, copilots and flight engineers in the U.S. earn about $128,760 a year, while the top 10% make more than $187,000, on average. You make that money longer too, NFL is 3.5 years, NBA 4-6 years if you take into account taller players stay longest, MLB 5.6 years. Airline? Seemingly, grumbling here, they have no problem flying to 65. BTW thanks to NFL hazing, from what I've heard from insiders, the new league minimum salary guys get drained by the dudes making millions.

Sixth, you can suck and still be an airline pilot. Now of the 1760 NFL players, I'd venture to guess millions of NFL fans would like to dump 3/4 of them.

That's my scatter shot devils advocate on that.

Take them both, we have a pilot shortage coming.

http://www.4smileys.com/smileys/musi...set_smiley.gif

Again, depends. Reasonable/rational people can disagree......

The hiring as of late is nothing short of awesome. A sign that the "dark decade" is FINALLY drawing to a close. But the hiring numbers have BARELY scratched the surface.

It's NOT like the airlines have burned through the pool of highly qualified as well as great people and are now scratching their head saying "well, that sucks, lets go through the lesser qual'd ones but have all sort of outside the job stuff that shows how good they are......."

truly special people can argue both sides. im thinking of a rebuttal to everything i just wrote.

but youre right no they havent done that yet. but they can get there faster than you think. Delta started hiring in 2007 and were forced to accept delinquints a year later, ask me how i know.

I like it!!!!!

And yep, they probably can drain that pool pretty quickly. However, reading the DAL threads, UAL threads, etc. May not happen as quickly as we thought this year. But like the other guy said, he's not doing the hiring, I'm NOT, and I'm pretty sure you're not either. So it just makes it standard interwebz discussion hy-perr-bo-lee, I'm just sayin........