They are part of the professional club in which the professional never makes mistake. It is only the hobby pilots who screw up so the CAA's go after the hobby pilots and make an example of how the CAA's are protecting all the airliners from the menace of the infringer. The ATPL will get his knuckles tapped and allowed to continue to earn his 6 figure salary.
Not really its the fact that most of us have a general before we get to the plane preflight checklist hard wired into us now.
There are certain things that we always do before every flight. In general our feel for the WX is pretty good. Some of the ATPL pilots out there would give the met office a run for there money with TAF's especially at home base.
Then there is the fact when your already flying 20-25 hours a week you really don't have to push the limits. There is always something better to do if the wx is crap or the aircraft not quite right. If you don't fly you always day one of your roster to look forward to. In fact with some the flying is only an excuse to tinker and maintain the aircraft. And you can say the wife is ugly but any nasty comments about the cub and your looking at a fight behind the hangar.
Then there is capacity and self briefing and all the little things we do which arn't formally listed anywhere like loading up the next freq by listening to the ones in front. We know whats going to happen next so the RT is never a suprise. Things coming out of the blue like an aircraft calling a mayday isn't common but something which has happened before.
We make mistakes all the time, well I do anyway but we are in the habit to check and check again. And when we do make one and its not caught there isn't confusion we know what we have to do because usually its not the first time we have seen it. Mind you we also have quite good sixth sense of when something isn't quite right either.
Even then some don't click and then the company gets a bill for 8k euro from the french for an interception.
And taking Flybe as an example Skippers are on 60-80k and FO's 20-40k thats for working up to 12 hour days with the occassional on over that starting at 4am and finishing past 12 at night (Different shifts I might add). Then 12 hours rest then back in the seat again.
I suspect the vast majority of ATPL's don't have a current SEP and the ones that do the vast majority of them renew by test because they don't make the hours requirement. Maintaining a FI usually involves loosing money on it and is only done because we enjoy instructing.