Oh yeah. It's almost as if....it's a great story, written by an airline pilot groupie.:eek:

I was terrified. Still am sometimes. A healthy degree of terror is a good thing, brother.

However let me qualify the assumption: the regional was a western New York based company and none in the fleet had an autopilot. Half of it was unpressurized. No such thing as a flight director, either. Dude, that's combat. I flew a thousand both years. Prior to that, I had a couple of thousand of agricultural, banner tow and glider yanking. Some Beech 18 time. A little flight instruction for good measure. In fact, though the youngest in my class I was easily in the top 10 percent for raw experience. Certainly more than the fighter pilots. Passed up classes at Alaska and American to fly at the family Alma Mater. The old man had 250 hours and no multi engine rating when he went into the right seat of a DC-3. I know a guy who went into a B-26 with 175 hours as an aircraft commander, flew 193 combat missions in North Africa and lived to tell me about it. He said he was scared for half of it then just considered himself dead and it was almost tolerable.

I sound defensive. Sorry.

I get pretty scared when I spill my coffee. Fighter pilots don't have to deal with that, those wimps. Dang it, I just got these pants dry cleaned!:D

Hired at 23, 4,000+ hrs, with hand flown, no FD, unpressurized, combat time. That was typical resume stuff back then except few called it combat time.
And a four year degree? Busy little beaver.

What a great post and thread. I agree partially with the OP. I too feel somewhat stifled by the airline seniority system. Especially at the larger company I am now, I feel I make no difference on the lives of our fellow crew members and passengers. I'm just a cog in the machine. I could perform to the best of my ability and receive no career bumps because of it. I also feel a little disheartened to realize that someone just like me is waiting on the list to fly my trip should I not do it. Our pay is artificially high because of strong arm union tactics, not because we are actually a highly compensated profession like medical or IT professionals.

Most people use this as a job to pay bills, their bills growing steadily as income increases. Instead I use the job and money from it to create a sustainable life I can keep living should the job go away. With the pay at the major level one can acquire significant assets in a fairly short period of time, what would take an average American a lifetime to do. All of the issues from years past stemmed from people who didn't plan for the worst when the times were good.

Right! How else could one come up with words like "aerodrome" and "whilst"? ;)

Is it really that important to be the only special snowflake that could fly that trip? If I can't fly it, the person who will replace me is also a competent, qualified, well trained pilot. So what if we're all merely numbers to our companies? We just want that number to be going down quickly, as people retire. I'm special to my family and dogs, and that is what matters.

I am grateful every day I get to do this job, "whilst" flying between "aerodromes".:rolleyes: I make a crapload of money doing it, and I don't care whatsoever that it's not because of my awesome flying skills, but because of union negotiations. Times are good now. Enjoy them "whilst" you can.:D

The pay and benefits are artificially low when you are furloughed.

Dude, that's some tough flying, but it is most certainly not combat. It's not even combat in quotes.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So what's this greener pasture you graze in? I'd like to start my plan B