the 'profession' of commercial pilot has many similarities to that of the self-employed sub-contracting businessman.
I cant agree with this statement;
I cannot think of any small sub-contracting businessmen that are asked to:
- take responsibility for company assets worth >$35,000,000.
- take responsibility for >100 lives in an environment that evolution says we shouldn't be in.
- Make strategic decisions with company property that could cost the company thousands of dollars/pounds/euros.
- constantly be required to exhibit their fitness and ability to work.
- make sure they don't have a small incident at work that could fracture the confidence of the company's customers and/or investors.
If a plumber cocks up, your carpet gets wet. If a pilot cocks up people die. Pilots are
safety critical employees. If a doctor cocks up they only kill one person at a time and they are unlikely to be lying on the slab in the morgue next to their patient.
Despite all the soul searching and valid points generated by this and other threads about the rights and wrongs about buying type ratings, its not going to change anything. People have a passion for flying, at least I know I do. Airlines know this and are willing to make (ab)use of this fact. They know there are people like me out there who would sell their granny to fly. What they don't reckon on is people like my wife who keep reminding me of the realities of being able to pay the mortgage and feed the kids.
The financial equation of becoming a self sponsored airline pilot do not make sense, even without paying for a type rating. There is no handsome return on investment - in a business sense - for the financial input. If you want that, put the money into a building society account or get a good investment agent and you will safely return 7-10% per annum and you still have your investment capital. That makes financial sense.
Without type rated pilots airlines would own some very expensive kerosine burning garden sheds. As I have said before, self sponsored pilots have taken the initiative and risk on initial training. We have taken the burden of the first phase. That burden is a large one. Noone forced me to do it, but I took the risk and half way through the game the rules changed.
If airlines feel that the employees should also shoulder the burden of the type specific training then apply that rule to all departments in the airline. I think you would find many people leaving the IT department/accounting/HR/middle management if they were asked to pay for the training costs of their specialist knowledge.
Aviation is a weird and wacky world full of weird and wacky people, there are too many intangables in this business, flying on silvery wings and touching the face of God, that make it worth the heartache and misery of getting "over the wall". It just seems that the wall gets a wee bit higher everytime the industry hits rough spell.