None and Airbubba have also contributed with many excellent points.
Many Captains with US major airlines finished their last several years on the annual salary of a long-haul truck driver, after major pay cuts: the most senior 737, MD-80, F-100 Captains with the pay of a US major airline B-737 or MD-80 First Officer. And this is still much more than the most senior ATR-42, ERJ, CRJ or Avro Captains' salaries, on the larger propjets (turboprops), or turbofans with 50-69 seats. This is not to say that truck drivers don't have many acquired skills, however only the ignorant or the envious with an axe to grind (including many of the media's hacks and wannabe's) choose to put the two occupations into one category.
These thousands of career pilots with several US majors flew for thirty or more years until the maximum age of sixty (if they passed their medical exams each six months), and their airlines were either raped by corporate sharks (many cases of this in the 80's, early 90's) and/or entered, possibly barely avoided bankruptcy. Never mind the 9/11 panic and recession.
A former FO buddy (who flew 744 and 777s years ago for Cathay Pacific) here just had his career suddenly terminated, due to a type of heart arrhythmia. Had his first required EKG at age 35. Another guy slipped on a puddle by a coke machine in the pilot lounge and the migraine headaches ended his career-age 51 or so. Not much retirement pay for him.
Another buddy here only got his medical re-instated after several years by "our friends" FAA because somehow the NTSB took notice of S's case and overruled the FAA! Part of his initial problem was due to the report of a very arrogant Cardiologist (he has a "God-Complex": common for many doctors here in the US) in this town, who also grounded a FEDEX pilot merely for telling him about how to better do an EKG!! The FAA bitterly resents being overruled for their random, arbitrary use of unlimited, arrogant authority, having hidden many despicable and cowardly acts in the paper-filled wastelands and cyberspace of their huge, cavernous bureaucracy. It can be like the monster Grendel-but there is no Beowulf who can decisively smite it. Don't believe this? Just read up on Bob Hoover's grounding. He was the only famous guy to suffer through this. Many of the fallen will never be read about. Anyway, other Part 121 pilots were NEVER grounded for my buddy's condition (heart murmor in Latin- i.e. in vino est veritas, or whatever...)! Only TWO airline pilots in twenty years have had their denial/revocation of a First Class medical overruled by the NTSB! Why not more?
