Mushrooms: If being an airline pilot were one of the ten most dangerous jobs, then why does our life insurance cost no more than that for a college professor?
Many laymen confuse airline flying with military combat aviation, or even bush flying. They often get the impression that a pilot is a pilot. The general media somtimes lumps accidents among the general aviation population, with that of professional pilots, in order to mislead laymen into jumping to false conclusions.
When an engine fails, you do what you are trained to do in simulators. This training takes place at least once a year. In over 14,000 hours of flying, I've been in c0ckp1ts only twice when we shut down an Allison engine do to oil quantity lights in a military transport. The one actual engine failure happened before the jet had rolled more than thirty feet: the high-pressure fuel pump had failed. This was my first in at least 11,000 civilian flying hours. At a higher speed on the runway we abort the takeoff, and if in the air (after V1 speed), we fly the plane and methodically bring it back to a landing, maybe at a nearby different airport which has a longer runway.
To explain everything in a few words can be misleading. Many pilots who have European layovers are very tired the whole time they are there-they stay up most of the night, ride quite a distance to a hotel (i.e. London to Brighton, or Frankfurt to Mainz) and take just a nap before they stumble around canals and bateau mouches, with only 24 hours there. This is a complex subject, as you might realize. If in Asia for a while, it can take three days for the body to feel normal when back home. These reasons are primarily why I chose to never fly international-often working my tail off on short domestic flights (legs). Many questions can be answered, but will be out of context regarding various situations. The worst place to learn about aviation is through the mass media-only one newspaper aviation writer, among all of those whose articles I've ever read, had a private pilot license. The internet can also be misleading or contain garbage.