Ah, another pompous, over rated employee of the disaster unions of our airlines. Please go out of business. Foreign airlines will replace you quickly, with better service and better attitudes. Your smugness indicates that you feel you are irreplaceable, guess what your not.
The cost of aircrew salaries are negligible to the industry; the biggest expenses are capital, fuel and maintenance. I can guarantee that if every pilot and hostie started working for free tomorrow the net effect on the fare you pay would be less than five bucks.
You may think airline pilots are a bunch of overpaid glamour boys who do nothing but push buttons but do you have any clue why they make such attractive salaries? Supply and demand, FRiend, because getting qualified for the job takes so much time and money that most can't afford to keep doing it. My first instructor washed out because his wife had a baby and he realized that five years making less than minimum wage was no way to support a family. That's right, less than minimum wage. The instructor who took me to my licence in 1999 is now running overnight cargo in light twins for $500 a week. To get to this stage she has probably spent at least 30 grand on training. Copilots on turboprops make less than $30k and most of them have close to a decade of training and more than a thousand hours in the air. Would you work like that for what they're offered? The career path of a professional pilot who's lucky is a few years of grinding poverty, a few years barely keeping afloat and then maybe- just maybe- a shot at the majors with a salary high enough to leave a little bit to set aside for retirement after paying off the two ex-wives who ditched you because you were never home and they got tired of living in the worst part of town. If you're REALLY lucky and you don't get grounded for medical reasons you might be able to set enough aside for the day that the FAA congratulates you for becoming too old to fly, tells your boss to dump you and wishes you a happy retirement.
So why do they do it? I sure don't know. I love flying but there is no way I could do what they do long enough to make a good living at it.
The next time you want to suggest that pilots are pompous or overpaid, ask yourself how much your life is worth. If you honestly believe that saving five dollars is worth the prospect of spending several hours six miles above the planet inside hundreds of tonnes of metal wrapped in kerosene controlled by a guy who's exhausted because he just came from his other job moonlighting on a loading dock, then do us all a favour and stay on the ground.