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Old 27th Apr 2010, 06:14
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Der absolute Hammer
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
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'Very strange piece of dangerous jungle down there'
as Auntie Amelia might have said!

But that was in the old days of aviation, before it became a life style choice but when there were fliers around. Altogether a better word for what sums up some in our own minds perhaps.

Now a days, becoming a pilot is like buying a commission in the military in the eighteen hundreds or even the last century. It is just the same, the amount of money you have decides how far up in the commissioned ranks you can start yourself off. Let's say that an A320 rating makes you a Colonel and so work on down to a B737 which commissions in at a Lieutenancy? Then you get the new officers who decide how they are going to run their campaigns. Those could be called the P2F officers. Those guys buy their cavalry seats as the equivalent of an aide de camp. The experience might come with time but it is not necessarily earned. It comes in a candy wrapper with Ben Franklin on the paper.
So today, is flying a profession? Well, were the men who bought commissions in the old European armies professional soldiers? If you answer yes to that question, then who are the monkeys out there?
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