It seems I aroused some souls...
Just wanted to make a counter point by stating what European flying can offer if you are in the right company, and I define "the right company" not with the money earned. Money was always fair, not huge, but not little either, just fair.
Originally Posted by
AIMINGHIGH123
So you barely scratched the surface then.
I have spent 5 years blasting around Europe and 99 times out of 100 it’s pretty easy.
The thought of flying around Europe for 30+ more years would be soul destroying.
Don't know what you meant by scratching the surface, and what you consider easy or not.
Well, I enjoy dealing with the daily mishaps, challenges and opportunities of optimization in shorthaul ops.
I try to coordinate my turnaround so I can get offblock 3 min earlier. I enjoy asking for a visual and cutoff 5 min of flight time. I enjoy calling ops control to switch aircraft for some good reason when ops control had a bad chaotic day and lost oversight. I enjoy calling the ramp agent on the company frequency and organise a quick transfer in his little van to a passengers connecting flight, if it is the pasengers last chance to reach destination on that day and we are behind schedule. I like to go into the italian terminal during turnaround and buy cornetti con crema for the whole crew. I calculate a takeoff performance full length and another for the intersection when sensible and when I see on taxiout that the intersection gives me an immediate departure I will let the controller know that we can accept the intersection.
I could go on and on and on with such examples, some might find that "astronaut" or "smmuggy" but I just enjoy making a difference, it gives me satisfaction and helps my company to continue to pay a fair salary.
If you don't enjoy that, may be you became a pilot for the wrong motives? Piloting is not heroic anymore, neither extremely well paid, but you are a manager of an expensive machine in a very complex environment. If you don't enjoy that, well, don't know then. Sounds sad to me. And I don't mean to offend anyone here.