I think this has been said before.. Please don't insult Doctors or Lawyers or even nurses by trying to compare the career of Pilot with them.
Why do people hold lawyers in such artificially high esteem on this website. Doctors fine! Lawyers? Not so tough
Doctors train for 6 years including a degree, Lawyers train for at least 5, including a degree
You can go from a graduation (any degree) to qualified lawyer in about 3.5 years. And two years of that is spend on a law conversion course, which to be quite frank isn't that hard.
Pilots, in general, need 2 A levels and 62 weeks of training, to qualify to hold the licence you require to "practice" your chose profession.
I'd suggest thats a false comparison. You are comparing the bare minimum required to do the piloting job (you don't even need A-levels by the way) with a standard law study/career path. As I mentioned above, you can do a law conversion in two years, ATPL study takes one year, neither are particularly challenging for an intelligent individual. The lawyer then needs 18 months of practical experience and training before they actually qualify as a lawyer. The pilot requires 1500 hrs of flying experience before they qualify for an ATPL.
I know quite a few lawyers and both they and I are quite comfortable with comparisons between our professions. We earn similar amounts, we both rate our jobs as similarly satisfying/tedious, they think I have a greater level of responsibility on a day to day basis. The prime difference in employment terms is that lawyers operate in what is essentially a closed shop industry which protects their careers, whereas pilots operate in a fairly free market which allows the race to the bottom to establish itself.
By the way, whilst we're on the subject of comparisons, an anaethetist I know told me that when he started his specialist training his professor told the assembled class that being an anaethetist was very much like being an airline pilot, and it's pilots who are presently teaching CRM to surgeons in order to improve operating theatre practice. You may find there is rather more in common between the professions than you imagine.
Now, perhaps we can get back to the cabin crew theme of the thread in time for the big meeting to kick off at 11. I'm sure a live feed will be available from the usual sources.
