Originally Posted by
Sholayo
Well,
Most of the stuff I read here is - I am absolutely sure - big exageration.
I do not believe that any pilot pretends among people that he is just bus driver. Unless for fun. I do not believe you have such low self-esteem, and you truly believe people thinks this is a crappy job.
To all those complaining - if being a pilot is such piece of BS, why don't you just work in other area and just fly for fun on weekends? If you love flying but you hate being airline pilot, this is best thing you can do. In a western world at least, someone with university degree, smart, bright, able to take quick decision, able to work under stress and time pressure will easily make ample to not just rent a plane on weekends and afternoons but even to own GA machine like C-172 or something.
"I say I'm in 'energy management' if I don't want the conversation to go anywhere. It's half true."
For my part it's nothing to do with pretending for fun or low-self esteem or that its a crappy job. I've been passionate about flying airliners for 20 years (and its a superb job) but therein lies the rub, I put a lot of time into aviation over the years and now I want some me time. I no longer want to discussable things related every second of the day so I avoid it if I can. As someone else said, fielding tedious questions such as 'what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you' is simply not something I want to start talking about in my free time. Besides, telling the truth is always disappointing...
'once I had a spurious system fault that self-cleared' or
'a computer once needed re-setting'. And they don't want to hear that i find flying through thunderstorms scary.
I think that joke 'how do you know if there is a pilot in the room - he'll tell you' only applies in real for the first 5 years or so of your career!