Hi Digitalis,
The point I was trying (apparently not very clearly) to make is that if a surgeon is operating on a sick patient and he screws up, his patient can die, if the pilots are presented with a sick aeroplane at zero notice (engine fire etc) and screw up, its 100s of lives at a time. Different contexts I grant you, but the same levels of responsibility.
We have enough pressure from beancounters trying to devalue our jobs without doing it for them.