Sky-diver
Thank you for your response to my comments.
Like you I have had an alternative career - six years professional training at university colleges, including many years of CPD training - all free and, until I commenced in practice on my own account, included professional membership fees, car, pension, healthcare and the like.
The first course I have had to pay for in over 30 years is a Masters degree, which I am now studying towards for both personal and professional reasons.
In contrast, like everyone else I know in commercial aviation, I have had to finance my own training from PPL to ATPL, but not type ratings. I would rather have had no job at all than pay for that. I don't mind being bonded and in fact have for the three commercial type ratings I have acquired.
The comparison is just so marked. Yes I appreciate that other professionals have expense with their training to a greater or lesser extent, but flying seems to be a profession/vocation without precendent with people committing themselves far more completely. The risks are greater from several points of view and the rewards uncertain, again from several perspectives.
I would not have missed flying my shiny jet, but I still find it difficult to reconcile this, somewhat selfish ambition, to the benefits achieved. My personal life has been a disaster due primarily to airline flying and as time goes by I wonder whether it really was all worth it in the end?
I would never try and dissuade anyone from pursuing their dream of becoming a pilot, but there are costs to be paid as a consequence - most of my colleagues and friends who have progressed furthest are unmarried with no children. Their whole lives committed to aviation. I was always keen on flying, but not at the expense of a 'balanced' life. Even during training I made sure the family had their benefits too, although in the end it proved all too much.
Low cost airlines boast of the profits they make and the cheap fares they are able to offer - this is due, in some part, to the fact that their pilots come cheap. Imagine the dint in profits caused by ab initio training of pilots? £100,000.00 per cadet (at least).
I accept that people move on and there is a risk with training costs - but that is always the case. For all those people (like myself) who have moved on from their initial training organisation there are many who have stayed and some who have come from other organisations who, in turn, had trained them.
Overall, I still maintain that there is an imbalance in aviation when compared to other professions and that, as pilots, we fuel the fire. Whether that is a personal issue, a regulatory matter, an insurance requirement or just employers taking advantage the fact remains - there is no mainsteam profession that compares with commercial flying when it comes to both commitment and cost of training compared with the prospects and risks of employment.
I am as highly qualified as I can be in my first profession and hold an ATPL in my second. I have taught in university colleges and worked as a flying instructor. These are my personal observations and I appreciate that others are entitled to theirs.
However, flying has cost me far more economically and personally than I could ever imagined. Whether in terms of cost/benefit analysis a flying career has been worthwhile the jury is out.
Pilots are a breed to themselves and no amount of debate will change their attitudes - and the airlines and aviation industry thrive on that fact.
KR
FOK