I will say. Just over 3 years in now - the novelty has worn off. You damn well earn your money, and then some.
The unsocial hours, the pressure, the niff naff and paperwork, the rude - my god you wouldn't believe the rudeness - passengers, the boring bits, the crap food/air/seat/radiation/hotel, the incompetence of management (how to ground a fleet in one easy step
).
Total pain in the £rse.
Not commuting in the rush hour, the direct responsibility, the broad picture, the grateful interested passengers, the fun bits, the banter/view/hotel bar, the pleasure of working with professionals.
Fantastic.
Swings and roundabouts.
It strikes me that these days nobody has a good word to say about their profession/working life.
The job of airline pilots has certainly gone way down in the last 20yrs. But then I think everybody says they same in comparable jobs.
I think an awful lot of airline pilots would prefer to be running their own company, doing something in the City for a ton of cash or just check out of stressville and run the best Lobster bar on the beach.
I suspect this may be because to become an airline pilot you generally have to have set, at some time, some pretty lofty goals for yourself. You therefore define yourself as being ambitious, confident of success and hard working.
This being the case the - own company/City/Lobster bar - were all actually attainable options if only we'd picked them. Hence Pilots tend to have slightly lower expressed satisfaction levels than other professions (they've been moaning about declining conditions since the Spitfires were retired, dammit!).
Don't be afraid to go for it. The jobs are there over the coming decades. They can never take the view away and at the end of the day - unionisation will always mean that we will earn a livable wage if nothing more.
Cheers
WWW
ps People seeking to invest or operate the Wakiki Beach Lobster Shack Corporation should send details to Weasley Towers,...