Grafter,
CEO of the Cockpit is always close to the truth, and well worth posting a link to. I'd like to cut and paste the whole thing, but to save bandwidth I'll just paste my favourite line;
"Airline travel is a valuable product and, as a group, airline managements are not only destroying the quality of it by these stupid ticket prices, they are destroying its future."
OBK!
We like nothing better than to show off to someone who is easily impressed, and as a general rule what we tell flight deck visitors is gobbledy-gook to everyone except wannabes. On the ground you are welcome to visit the flight deck. Looking wistfully throught the door on the way on or off the aircraft seems to work well for small children, but you may prefer to take the more sophisticated way of actually asking.
Shame small children aren't allowed to visit these days. I was just starting to get the hang of talking to them.