Mm. Your point seems to triangulate around the notion that we need top calibre individuals with backgrounds as Doctors lawyers/degrees/ what have in this job and we should feel damn lucky to have you calling by and popping in at the top. Otherwise you'll leave the industry unless you can command the top buck and it'll probably all go to rats tails with the lesser trained numpties and sure there'd be the obligatory smoking hole wouldn't there?
I'm afraid to say you don't need the degree, doctor, lawyer level of calibre. You need the calibre as you say to do well in the training and succeed in flying. Being good at this job is unique in itself. Yes, having a good academic background is all well and good but it's a tiny bit. A lot of the skills are unquantifiable by means of saying what you have achieved in academia or what job you did before. I've flown with sterling individuals who were things like builders and plumbers prior to flying. They just had that alround solidness and psychology that made a day at the office a pleasure, and should the crap hit the fan they were a sound partner in crime.
This is not the mechanism that facilitates you coming in to command the top pay at a major via CTC. That is not at all why the cadets exist in these jobs. It is only temporary that these short cut routes lead to some top salaries. The top salaries are a hang up from the days when it was a challenge to attract and retain people with the correct experience. Cadets cost money to train back then. Then some bright spark realised you can push the burden onto the trainee. Now in the future years to come watch what happens to the top salary that you think you command.
The pay will not be continue to be held high because of some idea that were it to lower they'd be left with untrainable dunderheads who don't have a degree. Feel delusional if you want that you joined the industry straight at the top because you're a top calibre bod who's sword of Damocles over the industry is you could leave for fantastic pay elsewhere because you're so gifted a cadet. It is solely because you are cheaper. Yes, you have to go through some tests and exams etc. So do experienced Pilots applying to those airlines. The extra checks are only because said trainee has never set foot in an aircraft. Big deal.
I have a very far from romantic view of aviation after 20 years in I feel as unromantic about this vocation as you can get. At no point have said I think people should be happy to work for peanuts. In fact I have also said this is all about dollars and cents not for the love of the job. But I simply do not agree that because you have a great academic background, a high brow first career or special skills to pass the CTC/BA tests is why you can come straight to the top and command the top salaries. That is fiction not the truth of the matter. The irony is that it probably won't affect you but this delusion will be the undoing of these top salaries. Well, as you say you don't care as you'll leave and do something else and good luck to you.
Last edited by Cliff Secord; 11th Mar 2014 at 12:12.