Royhudd, I am indeed refering to wannabe pilots who have not yet done the big jump.
But even if you' re an active airline pilot, try to find a way to spend a day with mechanics on line maintenance. You will learn to appreciate their job more.
They probably save more lives than pilots do but they don' t get any credit for it because they generally do it before it puts lives at risk.
They easily get all the blame when something mechanical goes wrong though.
Ok, their life is not normally exposed to immediate danger but when an aircraft that they serviced is involved in a major incident or accident, they start thinking whether they could have done something wrong that may have caused the incident.
Until the investigation proves otherwise, they spend countless sleepless nights.
I don' t feel like stopping my pilot training was a big loss to me. I have discovered new dimensions to aviation that I had previously ignored and underestimated. I am considering dropping professional flying aspirations for these new challenges.
My passion for aviation makes it so that I don' t care where I go for as long as I am inside that airport fence doing something that matters.
If and when I badly feel the need to fly, I can catch a jumpseat or rent a local Cessna and lift myself to flight level 100, practice forced landings or shoot ILS approaches.