Sorreee. Did the civilian pilot thang. Still do! Only I like owning the airplanes...as you could see from the other posts, big guy!
Nope. Actually, I went into the space industry eyes wide open, Beeg Man! It's a blast, as they say.
Say, by the way. When you guys are flying Ilyushin designed airplanes because Condit and Stonecipher need to save money, who ya gonna call when the tail rips off? Maybe...a Russian engineer? You do know that's what's going on right now, right?...and once the Boeing execs let their buddies like Gangrene over at U.S. Airways know about all the cheap engineers, won't ICAO English speaking Furrin pilots be not far behind? Boy, Y'all got some work cut out for ya. I mean, scope clauses are gonna seem passe once they start talking about submarining you with Out'O'Work Eastern block pilots.
Just pullin' your tail there Ramjet. And being easy to bait, you swallowed.
Listen. Not hundreds - but tens of my friends fly for all the different carriers. In my engineering classes, 30% went on to Air Force and Navy UPT (and they were the C students. Gotta love them ROTC Nazi's; keep the curve low. Make life easy for me). Some were bright, a lot were not. Some worked hard, flew their asses off (like me. I flew all the time, and loved every minute of it). Some only went as far as they could - and ended up further! Good for them.
Here's the gig: I made a conscious choice to go into the R&D side of aviation. I could have stayed; hell, even then a guy with glasses could get on with SkyWest, or even any number of 121 Supplementals or even others. Half the guys I know who fly for America West started out teaching in 152's in Tucson; they got hired because they were around when that carrier was ramping up. But I had something else in mind: spaceflight. At what other point in history could someone get involved with that? I've been all over the world doing space launches, flown zero-g research missions, and as far as engineering, I make a lot more than most. All in all, it's been really wild! If we didn't have NASA in the way, we'd be flying comml space missions daily these days...but history has a way of getting in the way. Oh Well.
Am I green with envy over you guys? Hah. That's hilarious. Hey - you keep telling me how hard it all is; why would I be jealous? I mean, sounds terrible, being gone all the time! Isn't that the war cry?
What I said before I'll say again: the two jerks who got on a plane with a blood alcohol of 0.091 had no goddamn business doing that. There ain't NO excuse for that, not ONE. I run a general aviation business and I won't stand for it in ANY of my pilots. People can joke about it, pretend about it, but in the end - even if you're just a $30K a year Brasilia Captain, you got no right to think you can do it, just because "our life is hard". Wrong. Bzzzt.
As far as why do pilots make what they do? That's a good discussion, especially when you consider that it defies the market: they're called unions. And the history of yours - and the way they forced the decoupling of manufacturing from operation in 1935 - is fascinating. You guys are the beneficiaries of some of the original socialists - which is why it cracks me up to hear you talk about me "voting for the Democrats". I've never figured out why you vote Republican - I guess it's just the military thing. Other than that, you're the most successful protectionists ever to operate in the U.S. Not exactly Free Market Conservatives, huh?
I'm sorry, but this is just too easy. Provoking jerks like you into slobbering insults is really too much fun. If you have to work this hard at convincing everyone you're worth so much, maybe there's something to that...and when you let a coupla bozo's act the way these two did (9 mos after the big event? what were they thinking?!), you got a serious sales job to do.
But I have faith! Hey, put on that uniform! (it's a good prop). Snap on that wheel hat! Get in front of them cameras and tell the wide eyed why you need that big money to "attract the best". The best drinkers, I guess.