'Commercial flying is a professional position of responsibility that requires a huge financial and personal commitment to enter into,'
As a question without an argument attached to it, why should a newly qualified pilot have any greater expectation in life than the poor soul who has worked his way through university and then comes out with a BA after four years and a few tens of thousands of dollars down the drain?
I sometimes think that the greatest legacy the older pilots living today could leave for the generations of starry eyed boy wonders to come is to trash aviation to such a destructive extent that in twenty years time there will be no pilots coming through training. That at least might ensure that some grand child of a pilot living today would have a better chance of finding a job controlling the computer of whatever passes for an aircraft in those days in the future.