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they still only work 75 hours a month (max)

Most airlines have 80 hour max in month FLYING time. To get that you have to WORK 240-300 hours a month. There is an 85 hour limit which is an FAA limit for Part 121 (major airlines). Remember, those are FLYING hours. An airline pilot works an average of 3.5 hours for every hour flying. I know, I am an airline pilot and I also have a company that prepares statistics for pilot schedules.

An average airline pilot during his career will miss 90% of all Christmases. 90% of all his/her children's birthdays, 90 of all their anniversaries. They will be medically poked every 6 months, with their job on the line. Every 6 months they will spend 4 hours of hell in a simulator with their job on the line. He/she will be away from their homes and family for 17-20 days and nights every month.

Being airline pilot is great. It also has its down sides. One of them is reading about idiots who make the rest of us look bad. Another one is reading every two-bit know-it all who spouts off about how great it must be to be an overpaid airline pilot. My question to those is why they are not trying to be airline pilots. After all, anyone can do it...

Now that was easy...I knew when I put that up there, some guy would jump in and tell me all about the ancillary time it takes to get them 80 (oh, please, 75 is real common) hours a month.

Hey, sport, just a little jibe. I'm an Aeronautical Engineer who worked his way through engineering school as a boring ol' fright instructor. Mostly prop time, some jet, and a LOT of friends still flying the line (all the guys I used to fly with!). Like, at America West (where my wife worked for 10 years). And a few at Delta (including the first guy I ever hired as a pilot); and at United (ex-mil, ex-civ, across the board); and American, ad nauseum. Me? Bad eyes, sweetie. 20/400, even. Maybe nowadays they hire that, but they didn't 20 years ago.

I've had to listen to every one of those guys bore me with their crying about how hard their lives are, and every one of them tell me how underpaid they are.

Hey, know what? If you're holding a 737 line out of SLC that only does lovely little day routes that take you out of the house, oh, a coupla nights a week, so what? Like I said, it's a good life. Anytime you'd like, I'll trade places with ya! You can come fly the satellites that I fly (3 weeks vaca a year, when we can fit it in), or design the jet engines that I used to design (note the ugly yellow buildings on the north side of Sky Harbor, and imagine yourself there for 30 years or so, maxing out at $70,000 / yr even if you had a PhD...well, a few do better).

Please. I've flown with guys who never saw the inside of university and get nauseous thinking about algebra, much less real aerodynamics. Are they capable, and worth a decent salary? You bet. It's a skill, and experience counts. But worth what? Well, whatever their union can get for them. Those of us who put in the time to learn how to design and build airplanes and their propulsion systems just never did have much of a union.

By the way, whaddya say we let foreign carriers have interstate rights? Us guys in the manufacturing companies have to compete with foreign aircraft manufacturers. Why not y'all? I mean, there's a real chance to compete openly. After all, it's hard work, right?

And one more thing. I own a 310 that flys for a living. If one of the guys who flys that thing for me shows up with even a hint of a hangover, he's gonna be one dead puppy.

There isn't ANY excuse for showing up with even a 0.03 blood alcohol limit, much less 0.091 like the two clowns in Miami, and I don't give a damn how bad a CEO Bill Franke was. There just isn't any excuse!

My comment to Marine Inspector stands: there are 1000 guys waiting in line for that job, and you know it. Those pilots have a good living - even though we all know HP has some of the worst management - but it's still a good job. They sure as hell have no excuse making life hard for their fellow pilots at HP who will now have to bear the brunt of the jokes and sneering like the idiots at Northwest brought on their peers.

An average airline pilot during his career will miss 90% of all Christmases. 90% of all his/her children's birthdays, 90 of all their anniversaries. They will be medically poked every 6 months, with their job on the line. Every 6 months they will spend 4 hours of hell in a simulator with their job on the line. He/she will be away from their homes and family for 17-20 days and nights every month.

That don't sound like a lot of fun. Why not just buy a nice ultra light for about $10,000, fly it when and where you want to, and leave all the BS, whiny passengers and stress behind? I have a pilot friend that did exactly that. He just didn't want to put up with all the garbage that goes along with it. He says life is to short for all the supervisors, egos and regulations.