Pilots worth ?
 

These guys (or gals ?) certainly earn their wages. What a superb demonstration of skill.

YouTube - Tegucigalpa, Honduras Toncontin airport landing

Flying lid

Surely the answer is that you are worth whatever the market at the time dictates. The market has lots of influences pulling in different directions and at present due largely (but not exclusively) to the actions of the biggest recruiter in Europe this is reducing the apparent worth of being a pilot.
Jobs certainly do not give remuneration linked to their responsibility otherwise Wayne Rooney would not be able to afford quite so many cars! Academic ability is also no indicator (although usually better to have a good education) as you can check in the back pages of New Scientist where typically a position requiring a Phd with relevant experience gets you about £30k. Ships Captains may be thought of as a reasonable comparision but I disagree as the level of academic qualification exceeds any ATPL (Open University gives 120 credits for Masters Certificate against 0 for ATPL), the experience needed to become Master of an LNG carrier with say Shell would be about 15-20yrs from starting as a cadet (maybe same as 747/777 Capt with BA but not sure, certainly more than LoCo or regional) and the level of ongoing responsibility where the ships Master has 24/7 for four months or more as against the duration of the flight/s for the aircraft Captain.

What do I think Pilots should get? More than they do (but then I was a Union Rep!)

Not so long ago, City University, London, accepted an ATPL as the basis for entry into their MSc programs in Air Transport, and Safety. That would imply an equivalency to a Batchelor's degree.

I would argue that to reach PIC on a wide body at a major carrier would take as long as the example quoted, about 15 years from ab initio. In that time the airman would have to have successfully passed 30 proficiency checks, 15 route checks, 15 class 1 medicals, several type qualification courses, numerous CRM, dangerous goods, health and safety, first aid, firefighting and other minor training on a repetitive basis, and have had close to US $1M expended on his training. He would have intimate knowledge of volumes of Ops manuals, FCMs, JAR regs/FAR regs, .
Falling foul of any of the above training /exams/knowledge can have career-ending consequences.
I humbly submit that that is quite a responsibility.

ZQ,
the most obvious comparison is with the experience and qualification one requires to be a President or Prime Minister!

And that's what I said as well Cannot agree at all that the ATPL written exams equate to a first degree. I did the writtens as a seven week full time course followed by multiple choice exams which seek to achieve something quite different to an academic degree. A Masters Certificate required a total of two years at college (1yr for intial certificate then two lots of six months) concluding with "proper" written exams of three hour duration on Navigation, General Ship Knowledge (construction,stability and loading), Business and Law, Engineering and Control and Passage Planning (Meteorology was done at First Mates level) then a three hour oral exam including a compass swing.

Having said all that I still found getting the ATPL the more demanding as nothing quite reproduces the feeling of sitting next to the CAA Examiner as you are about to launch off on the IR!

I approached the City University several years ago and an ATPL does qualify you to commence the MSc course mentioned above. Check the website to confirm this fact. It appears to be popular with pilots, air traffic control officers and airline management.

Most MSc courses require a good first degree (2:1 or above) OR relevant professional qualifications OR 'other suitable experience'. The idea in this day and age is to enable all those wishing to obtain a degree to have the opportunity - the main concern is whether the potential student is 'up to it', rather than hard and fast academic qualifications (Universities are 'businesses' after all and want to 'sell' their courses!).

I decided to undertake an MSc in law instead with my other professional qualifications as entry requirements and I'm part way through this course of study at the moment.

It has to be said that the qualifications I used to gain entry to the MSc course took six years of study to obtain, whilst it took me only a few months of self-study to revise for the ATPL exams (having already obtained a CPL a few years previously).

Masters courses are becoming increasingly popular as it seems this level of qualification is becoming de rigueur amongst management these days.

KR

FOK