You're certainly not an idiot, a **** wit yes, but idiot? Far from it.

And anyway, when it comes down to it, the money you get is what your union fights for with the support of its members. Like Doctors, the AMA tightly controls surgeon numbers, the AMA is a union and its members don't carry on like pilots. So they will be paid more, because they don't carry on like pilots.

Yeah, nah.

There are power struggles and ego wars in the medical industry, too. But they are smart enough not to do it the way pilots do and there ain’t no way that the AMA has any control over who’s recognised as a surgeon.

Oakey-doak then, delete the tightly controlled bit and leave the bit about d!ckhead pilots :ok:

Just out of interest, how does one become a surgeon? Just find an RTO in the city and rock up on a Monday morning?

A few huge differences between being a pilot and the holder of a doctors qualifications. A pilot will inevitably work with a company that will have everyone standardised and doing the same thing, even across the industry the way you fly x aircraft is pretty standardised. Medical practice is a bunch of educated beings using the technique/method the individual thinks is best, not a set procedure, even in the same facility, very rarely would you be forced to comply with a technique/method pushed by the organisation you work for. Pilots will almost always work as an employee, with few contractors and very few self employed. Doctors can be employees, contractors, own their own practice and a myriad of other options. The big bucks is the doctors/surgeons that run their own practice/business, you still might earn big dollars running a major hospital department, but you will work your ass off doing it. Pilots have known work stresses, which you can sort of relieve yourself by some time off, destressing activities, exercise. Doctors see and hear things that can really change your mental state depending on the type of work, work in mental health or emergency wards and you need to have very tough skin.

Comparing the two jobs is comparing Apples and Orangutans.

PS I watched a plumber once stick a pick right through the brown pipe while digging and a spray of stinking brown sludge went right up into his face, up nostrils and in his mouth. They deserve whatever pay they can get, that's just way more than I could ever handle. The young bloke just shook his head, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and kept digging. It was a bit awkward when he went to shake hands after the job.

I'm still wondering how a doctor becomes a surgeon, like, do you just identify as a surgeon? Because it's not controlled or anything. I get the 15 year bizzo but one day you just say, stuff it, I'm working on hearts from today, stuff general practice, too many whingers.

Ryanair CEO salary back at pre-Covid levels; Pilot wages reduced until 2027 - The Brussells Times

Definitely NOT Surgeons :ugh:

You guys are delusional comparing pilots to doctors. Pilots need to be compared to other vocational careers such as
tradies/bus/train/ferry drivers.

Doctors are not unionised and their earning potential is does not have a roof if they run a successful business. However to get there, there is a requirement of getting a 99 ATAR and performing well at uni/internship to even be considered for a speciality program. Then there’s the additional unpaid research, exams, stress, dealing with death.

Pilots are simply out of touch comparing sitting in the cruise for 10 hours whinging about the EBA or the company to people who have to work 12 hour days constantly, dealing with people and their issues and risking being sued constantly.

Perhaps not, but the RACS most certainly does! It’s been suggested the various medical colleges restrict the number of training positions for surgeons and other specialties to ensure that supply is less than demand, thus bolstering their exorbitant pay packets.

Phew! Here I am thinking that just any doctor can rock up with a scalpel! A bit like just any CPL can rock up to an A320 apparently.

Exactly, imagine the same for pilots, a body that dictates the standards and requirements and decides who can enter the industry.

Like I said, we have a lot to learn from them.

Mythology and rumors. Having an entry ATAR of 99% combined with a massive demand for medical professionals across the board, combined with it requiring people that want to be doctors and willing to endure the mess, long hours, dealing with real people problems and the long and difficult study requirements means there will always be a shortage of doctors. Regardless of how many we train there is also a massive intake of overseas qualified doctors to fill gaps, as we all would have encountered across the board. Pilots can be trained from a much larger pool of the community, however there is a limiting factor of how many actually want to be pilots for a career, it's a lot less of the population than say 40 years ago. If you want a better comparison then the local shipping industry is closer, the maritime union does actually control the amount of skippers that are trained and you have to be recommended to be admitted to the training. That being said there is not a huge amount of jobs within Australia on ships that wholly have to comply with Australian crew requirements, international shipping is a dogs breakfast of conditions and crews. Experienced ships masters are in high demand and paid very well, you might make serious money just being contracted to ferry a ship over a few weeks that a pilot makes in a year. A mate is an experienced captain, tried to retire at 50 with millions in the bank, kept getting calls for one last trip and couldn't refuse the six figure numbers they kept throwing for a few weeks sailing because no one else could do it. Him and the wife now spend up to six months of the year in the south of France aboard their own largish boat pottering around sampling the good life.

I’m sure we would all agree that high academic achievement is something that’s essential for a career in medicine. Nevertheless, the very high ATAR requirements are set by the universities in response to demand for the limited number of places funded by the Federal Government; they are not a requirement for the job per se and there is hardly a shortage of applicants. A person with an ATAR of 99 or higher does not necessarily make a better doctor than someone with an ATAR of 95. The notion that only those who achieve an ATAR of 99 or higher are capable of passing the course and becoming good doctors is elitist nonsense.

The funniest part is you lot think surgeons only make $500k haha. Pulling seven figures by mid 30s isn't unusal once moving into private practice.

Is this like the SO on over $200k a year, or the A330 trainer on $500k a year.... you know, the ones we all hear of but never meet.

No doubt one or more have, but to imply its the norm? I've never met a mid 30s surgeon earning over $1m a year myself. I could be sheltered, or it could be the exception rather than the norm.

Chase it hard and you'll go well over that

I have no interest in chasing anything or working hard myself.

I just hope to one day met the man / the myth / the legend. Everyone has a mate thats done it (except for me it seems), but nobody I speak to has actually made these salaries themselves.

43inches has hit the nail on the head.

The undeniable reality is that automation has already removed the need for pilots who operate between city pairs which allow the autopilot to remain on until 200AGL. OK, not next week but not that far in the future. Checkout the USAF UAV fleet. You can be sure airline managers and aircraft and avionics manufacturers have long been doing so.

The cost savings resulting in the removal of pilots is enormous and not just in salaries. If you were an airline manager, you’d be working to implement this as soon as possible. Pilots in certain specific areas of aviation will be extinct, it’s only a matter of time. Coincidentally, those areas are also the ones where pilots are paid the most.

I remember the halcyon days of FEs…. They too thought they were indispensable.

5 years ago, I had a go playing with a $2000 Mavic drone, the amazing automation and capabilities in this toy certainly opened my eyes. I assume the new models are even more capable. There’s your clue.

Pilotless airliners are still a few decades away, but I do expect to see Co-pilot/FOs starting to be replaced by AI by the end of this decade. It might be just FOs with far reduced duties or expanded single pilot smaller aircraft as the technology moves in, but it's certainly already being developed into the latest new cockpit designs. Question then begs as to where the single pilot gets their experience and mentoring from.

You blokes are dreaming. Good luck getting the travelling public onboard with that idea.

There is a metaphoric technological meteor hurtling towards the airline pilot community, which will effectively wipe it out. Just like the dinosaurs.
The pursuit of the god almighty dollar will eventually sway public opinion towards accepting a pilotless aircraft; albeit, maybe, with a ground based pilot monitoring on-board systems just like happens now with military drones.

You mean the ones operated by a crew of two on the ground? Pilot and weapons specialist.

This old chestnut. When trains are driverless EVERYWHERE and container ships operate autonomously and driverless cars are able to operate safely, THEN you may see pilotless aircraft.

I think you are getting out of touch with the travelling public, they don't see any need for two pilots if the leading cause of aircraft accidents are 'pilot error'. If automation and pilots don't coexist I don't think it's the automation that will get the flick seeing as it's already well proven to reduce the accident rate be relieving pilot stress and distractions. Good ole Bezos and his Blue Origin also ran vs Virgin Galactic particularly on the point of being pilotless, why waste payload on stuff you just don't need, and frankly costs more to be there.... There is no doubt aircraft pilot days are numbered, its just a matter of how long. Cars are already self driving and will be more so in the near future, road vehicles being far harder to remove the driver than aircraft as there is a more chaotic setting. The general public won't bat an eyelid if its cheaper and more reliable, especially if a 'shortage' of human crew is what causes all their inconvenience when they want to travel at peak times.

PS most of the accidents with self driving cars are not the car driving itself, usually when the owner is self driving and blames the car for the incident, as its the only option other than look stupider.

Big driver of automated vehicles is mine sites, as drivers cost them huge amounts, so lots of RnD constantly being poured into that area.

Freight trains have been able to reduce driver numbers over the years, more for multiple head consists. That was a big reason Pilbara drivers got a big payrise, but also in trade off for dropping from 3 or so drivers per consist to a single driver. Large ship crews have diminished significantly in the last 30 years due automation. New freighters need less than 20 crew to operate, and that includes cooks and stewards.

And that gets back to the point that actual fully automated airliners are a while away, but the days of the Co-Pilot are numbered, with HAL most likely appearing as your FO in a new large jet cockpit near you in the next 10 years.

There is a massive psychological difference between operating a USAF UAV designed for 'Destruction of Things' versus having joe-public onboard a UAV Airliner operated by a Stanford MPL with zero Skin-In-The-Game, operating from a sweltering shipping container in a country with the worst labour laws. Oh wait, nobody anticipates that this will be the then next cost destruction frontier for airline CEO's.

The Boeing 777X (an Old Bird with New bolt-ons), was launched in November 2013 and will only be delivered in 2025 - Clean sheet designs are not in fashion for CEO's seeking short term KPI bonuses.

The unintended consequence of this would be the final decimation of the profession, even for airline management, as few (if any) would embark on a 20 000 hour career built on solitude in an aluminium tube for extended hours on end...Neurotic Pilots will become an everyday occurrence.

We have already lost one crew member to automation. We will loose another in the cruise segment sometime over the next decade. Takeoff and landing will have two until I’m dead and dust. Airliners have a 20 -30 year cycle. That’s a lot of coin to phase out the next type ahead of this timeline.

Beginning to operate a long haul flight with only 2 pilots… watch this space. FANS with only one pilot in the cruise rotating every 3 or 4 hours…. 10 years. Max

Single or no pilot airliners don't actually solve any problems though they only create new ones. You are taking one of the safest modes of transport ever known and making it less safe. Unless you can deliver the same or better hull loss with autonomous systems you aren't achieving anything and run the risk of destroying an entire industry.

Exactly - just like the dinosaurs, we will become extinct. In the same way that good voice communications killed off the morse-key wielding radio operator, and inertial navigation systems killed off the sextant wielding navigator, and autothrottle etc the flight engineer, today's UAV technology will soon be safe enough to remove the pilot from the cockpit. Those who embrace this technology could be re-cycled to ground-based control jobs, because it will still require careful monitoring for weather events, malfunctions etc. Hopefully such jobs will reward experience with decent salaries. But the money won't be anything like it was in the golden years gone by, because there will be spotty-faced geeks aspiring to play these ultimate video games.
Managements - as we know - always play pilots off against cheaper options. Instead of denying it will ever happen, the smart thing for today's pilots to do will be to lobby for very strict experience criteria so that today's 20 year old pilots end up as 45 year olds controlling UAVs.
As for public acceptance, if I am still alive to see it (and having met a few sub-standard pilots in my time), I would love to be the poster boy passenger on the first pilot-less flight, but fear I am not photogenic enough.

Fortunately for airline pilots the reliable comms required for UAVs with passengers isn’t anywhere near good enough - not even close. It’s a large problem to solve, and won’t be solved anytime soon.
The failure rate is way too high.

You can all relax.

So what is the benefit of pilotless airliners exaclty? In the big scheme of the operation the pilots wages are insignificant anyway.

Next is the question of who is going to put thier money on the line to refine and develop the technology, and thats all before some regulator somewhere has to stick thier neck out to even certify it (We all now how difficult it is to even just get a medical renewed in a timely manner)

Once all thats done you have to convince the public there is something in it for them and get them on board... the same public who form thier unwavering views from social media and WhatsApp groups.

Remind me again what the benefits of a pilotless airliner were that make over coming all of those obstacles worth the risk and expense?

I dont doubt it's technologically possible, I just dont think its feasable in the lifetime of anyone here.

Executive bonus's bonus's and bonus's!!!!:ok::ok::ok:

Sure, there are technical obstacles to overcome and refine. But 20 to 25 years is a long time in the evolution of aviation technology.
Commercial impetus and passenger acceptance of pilot-less flight only needs some nutcase pilot to pull another mass murder suicide, or do a “shut up Gringo” on a grand enough scale.

And yes before the anal retentives jump on me, I know he did not exactly say “shut up Gringo” but his reaction and comment was just as dismissive.

Have a little think about the infrastructure required to support a pilotless aircraft at airports alone then have a think about the country you live in. Australia. A state government announces a long awaited rail line to Tulla airport, then tells you it will be ready in 10 years. Yep, 10 years to build a 20k piece of track. Mind you 10 years is nothing when you consider the airport has been there for 45 years or so before a rail link was announced. Badgerys Creek took 34 years to commence construction. It would be piss easy to pilotless an aircraft from the US to Australia, it's been done before but have another think about the infrastructure required and think about the incredibly average infrastructure that Australia is famous for, Australia 'the lucky country' not.

Tossbag, valid points but the Chinese can build a hospital in a week and a high speed railway in a year. 25 years from now they will be running Australia anyway.

Mach, pilotless aircraft would happen tomorrow if the Chinese were involved, mind you, that would depend on how soon they could steal the technology and would include quite a few accidents along the way. On your second point, I don't think it will be 25 years.

Australia is booming. Jobs are being created for pilots that were not there before. We have the USA taking Australian pilots in unprecedented fashion. All this as hundreds, maybe beyond a thousand experienced Australian pilots are home from abroad. We still have retirements and pilots fed up in bigger numbers than before. The employees of all those expat pilots have not recovered yet. Asian demand will eventually be extraordinary and not far behind the US.

Yet these pages are full of nauseating resignation and working class mindset. Start pushing back. I’ve no doubt retention will see you having an ear that wasn’t there before.

No it isn't........There has been virtually no change in the last 25 years so why is the entire paradigm is going to change for pilot-less aircraft?

Boeing & Airbus will still be making aircraft designed in the 1970s & 80's in the 2030's!!