Pilots today are often accused of having a sense of entitlement. Critics claim that they seem to have an unbalanced expectation that soon after training they would earn a good living and start out flying their hearts desire.

I can not see as how that is a bad thing. Shouldn't we all have a sense of entitlement? It takes a big cash and life investment to become a professional pilot. Should we all not set high expectations for our careers and hold the industry to it?

I went to college in the late 1980's. Times were good then for pilots. Airlines were hiring. Classmates who had graduated just a year or two prior would commonly return to campus with their TWA, Braniff or Pan Am uniform in a garment bag folder over their forearm. After a quick change in a closet the uniformed pilot would then be escorted into the nearest class interrupting the lecture in progress so that the valiant young airline hero could share tales of his airline life and explain why he went with the hard top corvette instead of the convertible.

We all expected to get hired at a major airline within a few years of graduation. No one suggested that we would be received by the industry any differently. Had we known what our generation of pilots faced I am sure that those speeches would have been given to empty classrooms.

I can empathize with pilots who were sitting in class a few years ago while recent graduates immediately went on to the regional of their choice. Now graduation the latest generation of pilots are dealing with the shock of a very different reception. In their backlash they are labeled as having an "entitlement" attitude and why shouldn't they? Aviation is not a religion it is an investment.

Skyhigh

 

Love it or leave it.

It is not an investment. It is not even a career as much as it is a lottery, and it has always been so.

Oh, and I think what you saw in your classes is what is called "marketing".

 

People need to know that stuff. The information is not getting through.

Skyhigh

 

I consider all my education, time, and money spent trying to become an airline pilot an "INVESTMENT" Needless to say my "INVESTMENT" needs to start producing some dividends. Over ten years in this industry and I am still sliding backwards.

Its no different than a Doctor or a Lawyer in terms of time spent in school and doing intern work and should become a decent career.

 

Only lawyers proofread

 

Zing!! You beat me to it.

 

There are less airplanes that need to be flown than there are disputes to resolve (lawyer) or broken bodies to fix (doctor). Plus, there is an attraction to flying that the other professions don't have that lures people in. Compared to many professions, commercial flying is actually fairly easy to enter.

Furthermore, being a pilot is not the same as being a doctor or a lawyer or even an engineer. With the funding problem resolved, one could go from zero to commercial pilot, CFI, II, MEI and several hundred hours logged within a single year. Med school and law school, by comparison, take significantly longer and a much greater investment.

Furthermore, the very students who are trying to build flying experience turn into the teachers in many cases. Compare that precedent to that of university professors which are mostly required to hold doctorate degrees and have worked in industry for years. You can find a CFI for a dime a dozen now days with a simple Google search. Its tougher to find a path into a profession that governs its own entrants/standards whether it be through the Bar, AICPA, or AMA.

Just because one pursues his/her dream to fly, which satisfies a deep personal purpose in many cases and is generally a fun pursuit, as opposed to sitting in a college classroom listening to a law lecture, and comes out with a license doesn't mean one is entitled to anything.

Professional aviation is great to those who make it. They may call it luck, perseverance, or sheer skill - or whatever label is attached to it. However, the supply exceeds demand right now, and the regionals were touted as a stepping stone, luring in those who were trying to time build, and turned out not to be. Now we've got a group of pilots in the regionals who are upset at the status quo and the streets are filled with furloughees longing for a recall despite their complaints.

 

I, for one, think something more like this is needed in Professional Aviation.

 

There's a movement right now to do just that - the acronym for it is ATP.

 

The FAA ATP is far from the same level as passing the bar exam. If we could get on the same level as the other ICAO nations ATPL requirements then we might have something to start with.