Frantic
My replies to your original post were not meant as sniping remarks, just someone elses opinion of the industry. Your post read like it was full of sour grapes, intended or not.
I agreed a couple of times that a career in aviation is not for everyone and certainly not for the feint hearted. Again, your original post read like you had made this risk riddled investment without having your eyes fully open and without really deciding that it was 100% what you wanted to do.
I will repeat a quote from your original post which will answer why I told you about my lifestyle
I really can't understand why people are willing to sacrifice their marrige, families, homes etc in order to pursue a career which has such a poor lifestyle.
Perhaps you can now see that your statement is a complete generalisation. Sure, I agree that plenty of marriages have failed, homes have been broken and in some cases lifestyles are not the best, but that is not the case with the majority and plenty of other careers have just as much stress and the associated problems. If you prefer the 9-5 in the City then that is fine, no-one is knocking that, but you made a statement about just how bad a 'pilots' lifestyle is on a pilot bulletin board and are now complaining because a pilot has contradicted your view!
I could not agree more about your comments regarding 'just go for it!' because you are right, just going for it is not enough. You really must want it. More than any other career. Because if you don't want it enough you will be extremely lucky to find a job, especially in the current market. There are too many hurdles in this business for anything less than 100%....and a bit of that 'burning desire!'
I am still interested to hear which airline took you on as an F/O and then wasn't going to pay you for a year as I am genuinely baffled by that one.
I stand by my statement that no airline promotes
purely on seniority, that I can do as much hand flying as I want and that I don't find it as boring and repetitive as you seem to think it must be.
So if I caused you offence Frantic I apologise, it was not meant to be offensive, merely to show another another point of view about the pilot lifestyle and airline flying which was somewhat different to the generalised view you displayed of it.
PP