Originally Posted by
+TSRA
I'm not so sure I agree, although I know what you're trying to get at.
People wishing to become airline pilots do have to make sacrifices that are not necessarily required in other industries, this is true (although it is not true that aviation is the exclusive placeholder in this regard). However, to achieve the dream at all costs doing "whatever it takes" is what has driven our WACONS down as pilots do everything and anything to get the seat.
This is why I alluded earlier that we can no longer consider ourselves as a professional group. Too many of our comrades have chosen to undercut everyone else. They forgave any professional integrity by choosing to work under ever decreasing working conditions. At some point, every other professional group has said "no, WE ARE worth more than that so I won't take this job" and let a position hang in the wind until the WACONS were improved.
Not so for pilots. Many of our brethren have said "to hell with everyone else; If I don't take this, someone else will. I AM worth these conditions."
This is not entirely true, there are many fields in which the T&Cs have significantly degraded over the years.
Well, not to the point that they end up paying to work, but the typical design office engineer's purchasing power was divided by two over 50 years.