So what has happend to flight experience commensurate with age? When airlines start hiring "pilots" in the midst of their midlife crises, then you know they have hit rock bottom. Scraping the bottom of the barrel. This is what the US regional airlines do, sometimes with disaterous results. The Gulfstream Airlines programme in South Florida comes to mind with magazine commercials depicting the zero-to-hero making his transformation from construction worker to airline "pilot". Face it gentlemen, the days of this being a special career are decidedly over..