A bit touchy
It's life of max duty hours, minimum flying hours, kicking around crew rooms in the dead of night and trying to sleep in a noisy daytime hotel room. Year after year.
So here's the obvious questions to be considered at 350 hours per year:
How long to get an ATPL unfrozen for, let's say a 500 hour guy joining?
How long to get the minimum command hours?
How long to get the 4000 hours I've got on the 757 - surely the minimum to think you'll get a fast track command elsewhere?
If permanent nights aren't for you how do you compete with the 800 hour a year guys looking to move on to VS/BA Etc from the low costs?
Meanwhile what's happened to your peers who qualified at the same time as you? Try repeating the calculations at an amiable and genteel 750 hours per years.
Simply doesn't add up as a commercial proposition compared to other paths into the industry. That's all - it's the tyranny of the numbers and the bottom line for those with loans to pay off and a desire to put their money into a home or toys.
Mobility of labour, death of decent pensions and modern management methods means our career is now a race to the left seat by any means possible. There's no other way to clear the loans neither of us faced 30+ years ago and move on to assure our future through any variant of savings and assets.
My first jet job paid a basic annual salary 2.3 times greater than the total cost of my licence, IR and accommodation. Those looking for a job now are facing a different and probably deeply inverted ratio.
There's nothing personal there - just facts.
Rob