Understand where you are coming from, sikeano, but some people change. I am sure all flyers have had that passion you speak of, but it doesn't surpass all. We are all different, some change, passions fade. Others are kindled.
Today is the first day after my ATPL theory exams expired.
Why didn't I take it further? It wasn't really the cost, nor the time. I just wanted to retain my freedom I think. I was slightly scared I might spend good money and at best, just sell my existing freedoms down the river, but that wasn't the real reason.
I used to tell anyone that would listen that being a pilot was to experience real freedom. I once told an old school acquaintance he was crazy to let his PPL lapse while he built a career and family doing other things. Now I have a different perspective.
My young son wants to be a pilot and is clever and rounded well enough to be very good one, but that means he'll have lots of other career choices too.
His Dad will fly tomorrow (in the back again) but just isn't bothered about controlling the machine anymore. The windows in the back are big enough to spark my imagination. I understand a great deal of the science of it, I can even teach my son ad astra, but not per ardua! Don't get me wrong, I am not tired of flying - I just don't need to prove my ability to make it happen to myself anymore.
When I first started working I remember I looked at a job with a big oil company and decided "Woah...nice salary, but you'll be selling your life there, matey! Stuck in a desert logging a drill hole". So I got a 9-5 career and a normal home-life which eventually bored me to tears (both!)
I am still in two minds as to whether I was daft or not to have let the exams lapse...even at my age and with no sign yet of a popping of the low cost aviation balloon I could probably have made good money flying somewhere based in the UK and padded out a nice comfy role, but from what I have seen first hand, and what I have read here on PPRuNe, I don't think I made the wrong choice, certainly for yours truly anyway. So go ahead, take the space in the queue ahead...
Besides, although I have renewed Class I a number of times, and look much fitter than average, I simply don't believe I am best fitted to deal with some emergencies. My ears and eyesight have aged, my brain is still quicker than average but no longer as quick as I think a commander of airliner's should be. Flying high in a stressful commercial enviroment is not going to improve my fitness either!
So I am quite surprised to see references to age limits being increased and medical renewal requirements relaxed as they are.
That's handy for people who want to fly, but it surely doesn't help maintain any standard.
I'm much like RoyHudd I think...got started late in aviation, even been known to voice my frustrations in the same unguarded tones sometimes! I'm definitely not the right type to enjoy working for unscrupulous beancounters and their lawyers. I've upset a few in my time with my straight-talking.
I am also pretty sure that I might not see eye to eye with some ex-lorrydrivers and ex-Essex motor dealers turned PP who are probably exquisitely laundered senior captains by now. I'm not saying they can't do the job as well as most. But you don't have to actually like everybody, do you?
So instead, I've relaxed a bit and will enjoy the freedoms I've already got rather than trading them for a few tens of thou and locking myself into a tight space for eight hours a day - besides, at 50 next year, I can start thinking about how to manipulate what's left of the few tens of thou in the pension funds that built up in the good old days that ended with the last century!
My only regret is that I can't advise my son truly on what's good and what's bad about becoming a PP. I guess I can always point him here (after I have stopped posting and skewing it, of course!)
Cheers to you, baywatcher! You actually did it all!