What industry have you gone to? I can't imagine what someone with only flying experience could walk into and be on remotely close to a standard FO salary let alone skipper money, unless they'd been moonlighting as a financial advisor or something.

Flew the world’s largest passenger airliner with close to 500 people on board for the U.K. Flag Carrier from LHR to MIA yesterday. Gave me the opportunity to then secure myself a ticket to watch Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Finals and see the Florida Panthers win their first Stanley Cup a few hours later. A truly amazing experience.

Genuinely not willy waving here just trying to point out these are things your average man on the street will never, ever get close to doing just one of let alone do both on the same day.

It’s very easy to be negative about this job. I do it myself on a very frequent basis. However sometimes you need a reality check and mine came yesterday. The opportunities we are afforded and the immense responsibility and prestige of what we do is something you are not going to replicate doing anything else. Yes there are some serious downsides to the nights out of bed, time away etc but let’s not pretend that this gig is some kind of hardship. It’s anything but.

(I appreciate that this is a very different day to day than the average SH loco experience but that is a conscious choice that many people make, including mine to not take that path). In my opinion the lesser experience (in some people’s view) of SH loco still beats the living hell out of sitting in a suit in an office 9-5 and will every day of every week of every year.

Towards the end of COVID (not that we knew it then) I started a small ground-based business as aviation was looking a bit dodgy. Fast forward to now and flying work is full-on but at least you can go home after a successful trip and forget about airlines until the next one. Not so with most other endeavours: the stress of running your own undertaking or even working in a high pressure job for someone else carries on 24/7 these days, especially now planes have wifi!

As above, if you’ve tried 9-5, Monday to Friday and it just didn’t gel, then aviation could work for you. On the other hand, if you like weekends, bank holidays, Christmas, etc. it probably won’t.

There is nothing worse than flying with someone that does not enjoy flying either at the start or end of the careers. So I would suggest if you do not enjoy it then leave and try something else.