What Captain Sullenberger Meant to Say (But Was Too Polite to Do So): A Guest Post - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com

This pretty much sums it up.

 

nice find !!

 

"captain steve" is getting torn up in the comments. People are absolutely steamed at the thought of paying more for tickets. I think most stopped reading near the beginning when he mentioned that tickets were too cheap and proceeded directly to the comments to rant.

Here are some good ones:

"Do we see McDonalds fry boys and mutual fund managers complaining that their pay is a function of people wanting cheaper food and financial advice?"

This is one about foreign carriers purchasing US airlines- "So I’ll ask - why would it be such a bad thing if an airline with a better reputation took over?"

"So what exactly are “welfare wages?”"

Here is my favorite......"The skills involved in flying an airplane are overrated. (My pilot friends would agree)"

All those just from the first page of comments. We really are in trouble if we think the public will back us when the time comes.

I keep finding good ones...

"i disagree with the implication that pilots have irreplaceable skill- i just saw on tv where the bad guys offed the pilot, and harrison ford jumped in and guided the plane to safety via verbal instructions (ok, ok, i know he actually is a pilot, but the concept still stands)"

"Also, why don’t airplanes have parachutes for all the passengers?"

"How about we just eliminate the pilots altogether? Technologically, there is no reason to have pilots aboard"

I had to stop after this ridiculousness......"What ‘Sully’ did was admirable. But what you all fail to comprehend is that he was just saving his own ass. That was the priority. All those in the rear were there for the ride. His experience allowed him to save himself along with the other souls on board.

Now, I believe that pilots are overpaid bus drivers…. Yes, they require medical (which it’s obvious that some have ‘paid off’ their Drs to have a ‘pass’ grade) and they require Random Alcohol and Drug testing, but then again, so do Flight Attendants and Aircraft Technicians. They require x amount of hours rest but so do the other two mentioned groups.

At one point a pilot’s salary was close to that of the President of the United States… how do you justify that? Since then, their salaries and that of their counterparts - the whole airline industry- have taken massive pay cuts. Now, a pilot is receiving what some may still consider a very good compensation for their skills."

 

Yeah, I was floored by the comments too. Apparently we need more spectacular fatal crashes to get the general public to pay attention and get interested. Wow.

 

Toward the end there are a few pilots trying to educate people. If you read, the people ranting aren't the pilots, it's Joe Sixpack who wants a cheap ticket. The pilots posting are actually being very professional.

 

I don’t understand our reluctance to pay well the professionals who protect our lives:

Firefighters
Military
Police
Pilots

These people require special training. They put the lives of others before their own. And, they risk their lives for us.
— Randall

....We need this guy to be heard in a larger forum ( tv...etc )

 

What Joe the public is missing here is that we spend almost 200 days a year away from home. What is that worth? All that time away from friends and family, working nights/weekends/holidays etc...After we have established a base pay for that then we should determine what we are worth flying the actual airplane, simulator etc...

There's a lot more to being a pilot then just flying an airplane.

 

how about you give me $20 for every decision that i make that has a direct impact on the safe outcome of the flight (on a fifty seater that is only 40cents a person)? a conservative figure for a 1.5hr flight would work out to be somewhere around $500. flying the plane is the easy part, its everything else that goes along with it (pax, f/a, gate agents, dispatch, fuelers, rampers, management) that makes it hard.

 

Sadly, even after reading this and the events of the last year, the general public still thinks we are overpaid, and they could care less. The comments posted here prove this beyond any shadow of a doubt

 

People want their cheap tickets. They've heard so many times flying is far safer than driving that they figure one crash every now and then is worth an inexpensive trip to Florida.