Equality
Somewhere in the news in the past week or so I'm sure I've seen pilots equated with tube/train drivers and a couple of other-what used to be termed-blue collar industry workers. This may have even been a government survey for CPI/RPI I really can't remember, but the point was made that so far as skill sets go we're lumped in with blue collar nowadays.
Of course after half an hour of searching I can't find it now.
Perhaps we have (in part) only ourselves to blame in the way that we describe what we do, making it all look too easy-"sequential button pushing ol' boy". No wonder the public perceive that "It's all au'oma'ic". (There is no T in modern English). Not like in times past when the crew on an Oz trip were away from mother-both real and the ops dept-for three to four weeks and really on their own. The general public don't see the training, the periodic checks (is there a tube driver's pointy end simulator anywhere?), the medicals, so they merely assume...
Perception is everything.
S
He of the 100 posts-check it out!!