Ah, this ground has been raked over so many times, it almost seems pointless to do it again. We'll have the same old arguments - Pros and Cons. Nothing in life is perfect, but I've been in this business for 35 years and actually had a good career (started as a cadet in a national carrier in europe) and I can say with 100% certainty that it isn't the job it was 30 years ago, and it is turning to
faster year by year.
Beelezebub, you seem to be happy. Good for you. Some are lucky and find a certain niche that suits them. You should realise you are one of the few. The vast majority of the pilots I meet are unhappy - either with their pay and conditions, or with the fact that they've lived their lives moving around like gypsies, with a home-life being a vague aspiration they never manage to attain. Most of these folk carry on because they don't know what else to do.
As to my 'losers and idiots' characterisation - I stand over it 100%. It's a boring and repetitive job. It requires NO imagination or invention. No entrepreneurial skill. Little social interaction. The perfect pilot nowadays is a cookie cutter pilot. One who can absolutely and consistently do the very same thing again and again in exactly the same manner. The less variation or divergence from the rote the better. The perfect pilot moves his hands in the same pattern every day. He says the same words - with minor (mandated) variations, every day. He switches the same switches in the same order, he punches in the same data, in the same rote way.
Microscopic obsessiveness with inane detail is a virtue. Rigidity is a badge of honour. The perfect pilot will happily spend his own days off researching the manuals and doing company exams on the company 'training' portal - and getting paid nothing for it.
The perfect pilot doesn't mind if its 3AM on Christmas morning and he's ferrying a pallet of rubber
out of Hong Kong (in the immortal words) - no, this is his dream job, and he can be just as damned good at it at 3AM on Xmas Day as any other day of the year.
Is that you?
Is that not IDIOTIC???
Is that something to aspire to??