Nah, if you can crash a van safely then it's all good for promotion!
You just have to stick around for long enough. A lot of the guys either don't want the porter, or leave before they get the seniority.
The porter life really is a lifestyle! Different contracts and much better money to the van drivers.
To all the old pilots who flew before us and pioneered the paths through those mountains... we thank you immensely!
We fly those exact paths that you once flew, we follow the safe altitudes that you once flew, and we read the aerodrome bible thats been passed down year after year with the escape routes and payload figures.
Except now its all programmed into a G1000 and we just have to follow the magenta line. Leave that at your own peril. Sometimes it stays on autopilot, following the vertical path in right until flaps go down.
Of course we learn the area that we are in so we know all the valleys etc etc, but when the weather craps out, we now have a safe way out... in Garmin we trust.