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Old 05-13-2017, 10:51 PM
 
557 posts, read 598,624 times
Reputation: 689

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Quote:
Originally Posted by lvmensch View Post
Virtually guaranteed. And the airlines that don't will get driven to it by the low cost carriers who do. And after a while they may not even be pilots. Overseeing a computer is a different job.
Yeah, no.

 
Old 05-14-2017, 03:16 AM
 
Location: North of Canada, but not the Arctic
20,890 posts, read 19,353,769 times
Reputation: 25374
Quote:
Originally Posted by kokonutty View Post
Today I'm pretty much retired but there was a time when if I screwed up at work I could have killed twice as many as you could. Figure it out.

I grew up with a very good friend whose father was a chief pilot for one of the largest airlines in the world, a guy with bomber experience in the Pacific who even got to float on a raft for a few days there waiting to be picked up when his plane went down. This is a guy who twice got on an aircraft that had been hijacked to take them across the ocean but he just wanted to go fishing and grill a steak, not talk about how much money he thought he deserved. He inspired confidence which is precisely what I pay for when I fly and I spent a lot of years as a road warrior flying multiple legs every week.
And he was probably making $1,000,000 in today's dollars corrected for inflation. Pilots used to make a lot more relative to other professions than they do today. There's an old saying that they could buy a new Cadilac every month. As chief pilot of a major airline, I'm sure he was well-compensated. Sure he never talked about it. I never talk about it in person either. This internet forum gives anonymity to talk about things people wouldn't normally discuss with people, at least not with strangers. Do you think if one of my kid's friends came over! i would tell him I deserve to be paid more?

You are trying to make it seem like I am a bad guy for wanting to be well paid. As if it some kind of character flaw. I suppose you think we should all make minimum wage and be content with that? Sorry, I believe we should all try to make as much as possible and not feel guilty for doing so. People should ask their boss for raises regularly. Workers should unionize for better work rules and wages. The government should enfoce labor laws and stive to increase the standard of living of its working citizens. Companies should compete for good workers by offering competive wage packages. And consumers should pay for quality service.
 
Old 05-14-2017, 03:28 AM
 
Location: North of Canada, but not the Arctic
20,890 posts, read 19,353,769 times
Reputation: 25374
Quote:
Originally Posted by lvmensch View Post
Come on. You are a high end bus driver often with a good union.

And in the next generation there will be only one of you overseeing a computer who will actually operate the aircraft.

Your pay is what you and your union can bargain for from the system. Simple as that. You may do as well as the railroad guys who have basically struck a deal that they are valuable and irreplaceable even though they are easily automated out of existence with likely an increase in safety.

I enjoy flying airplanes. Fun thing to do. But not a task requiring great skill. Did you watch the French guys ride a perfectly good airplane into the sea because no one thought to put the nose down?
Kind of proves my point. How many planes would plung into the sea before people stop flying? That plung began when the Captain was out of the cockpit going to the bathroom. So much for your single-pilot argument. Maybe we should have a third pilot in the cockpit for those situations. May have prevented the German Wing suicide-murder as well.

I've heard the "glorified bus driver" reference many times before. I wish I could pull over to the side of the road when something goes wrong.

Yes, pilots owe a lot to their unionization. Airline management treated pilots like crap before they were unionized and many still do. Management is interested in one thing: making more money for themselves, not the airlines. They go from airline to airline screwing things up and then leaving with golden parachutes. They make millions and give themselves generous bonuses, all the while asking their employees to take consessions. But I never hear skeptics like you refer to them as "high end paper pushers with good connections to the board of directors". No it is the contemptible little guy who does a dangerous job behind the scenes day in and day out to keep the economy humming that raises your ire.
 
Old 05-14-2017, 08:50 AM
 
Location: Lone Mountain Las Vegas NV
18,058 posts, read 10,220,374 times
Reputation: 8828
Quote:
Originally Posted by Retroit View Post
Kind of proves my point. How many planes would plung into the sea before people stop flying? That plung began when the Captain was out of the cockpit going to the bathroom. So much for your single-pilot argument. Maybe we should have a third pilot in the cockpit for those situations. May have prevented the German Wing suicide-murder as well.

I've heard the "glorified bus driver" reference many times before. I wish I could pull over to the side of the road when something goes wrong.

Yes, pilots owe a lot to their unionization. Airline management treated pilots like crap before they were unionized and many still do. Management is interested in one thing: making more money for themselves, not the airlines. They go from airline to airline screwing things up and then leaving with golden parachutes. They make millions and give themselves generous bonuses, all the while asking their employees to take consessions. But I never hear skeptics like you refer to them as "high end paper pushers with good connections to the board of directors". No it is the contemptible little guy who does a dangerous job behind the scenes day in and day out to keep the economy humming that raises your ire.
There were 3 pilots on the Air France flight all in the cockpit. None thought to push the stick forward. The Captain returned to the flight deck when still at high alititude.

So it is clear the presence of two or even three pilots does not provide full safety. And momentary inattention by a bus driver brings far greater danger to the passengers than the same by a pilot. In that sense a pilot is at less risk than the bus driver. Try taking your hands off the wheel of a bus for 15 seconds on a 70 mph hour freeway.

And there are dangerous jobs in aviation. But they are not the ones in a large airliner.

My opinion of corporate executives is not part of this discussion. And I like flying airplanes and have no objection to pilots. However their deification is sometimes over done. They do the same thing as bus drivers on bigger more complicated buses. Simple as that.
 
Old 05-14-2017, 09:15 AM
 
11,025 posts, read 7,757,214 times
Reputation: 23695
Quote:
Originally Posted by Retroit View Post
And he was probably making $1,000,000 in today's dollars corrected for inflation. Pilots used to make a lot more relative to other professions than they do today. There's an old saying that they could buy a new Cadilac every month. As chief pilot of a major airline, I'm sure he was well-compensated. Sure he never talked about it. I never talk about it in person either. This internet forum gives anonymity to talk about things people wouldn't normally discuss with people, at least not with strangers. Do you think if one of my kid's friends came over! i would tell him I deserve to be paid more?

You are trying to make it seem like I am a bad guy for wanting to be well paid. As if it some kind of character flaw. I suppose you think we should all make minimum wage and be content with that? Sorry, I believe we should all try to make as much as possible and not feel guilty for doing so. People should ask their boss for raises regularly. Workers should unionize for better work rules and wages. The government should enfoce labor laws and stive to increase the standard of living of its working citizens. Companies should compete for good workers by offering competive wage packages. And consumers should pay for quality service.
That's quite a leap; I trust your thought process will be better if faced with an emergency.
 
Old 05-14-2017, 10:54 AM
 
Location: Montana
293 posts, read 358,590 times
Reputation: 193
As a former commercial pilot for over thirty years, our pay was always subpar. The airlines now days are making a killing and neither the flight crews or the passengers are getting much benefit from it. My thoughts.
 
Old 05-14-2017, 08:06 PM
 
Location: North of Canada, but not the Arctic
20,890 posts, read 19,353,769 times
Reputation: 25374
Quote:
Originally Posted by kokonutty View Post
That's quite a leap; I trust your thought process will be better if faced with an emergency.
Your snide remarks add so much to your argument. Like as if me wanting to be paid more is some indication of lack of judgement.

Last edited by Retroit; 05-14-2017 at 08:34 PM..
 
Old 05-14-2017, 10:50 PM
 
11,025 posts, read 7,757,214 times
Reputation: 23695
Quote:
Originally Posted by Retroit View Post
Your snide remarks add so much to your argument. Like as if me wanting to be paid more is some indication of lack of judgement.
Try reading it again. Pay particular attention to the part of what you had written that was bolded and was what I replied to. There was nothing there at all about your desire for more money being linked to your judgement. Now you have me questioning your reading comprehension.
 
Old 05-15-2017, 04:27 AM
 
Location: Beautiful Pennsylvania / Dull Germany
2,205 posts, read 3,312,788 times
Reputation: 2148
Quote:
Originally Posted by Retroit View Post
Kind of proves my point. How many planes would plung into the sea before people stop flying? That plung began when the Captain was out of the cockpit going to the bathroom. So much for your single-pilot argument. Maybe we should have a third pilot in the cockpit for those situations. May have prevented the German Wing suicide-murder as well.

I've heard the "glorified bus driver" reference many times before. I wish I could pull over to the side of the road when something goes wrong.

Yes, pilots owe a lot to their unionization. Airline management treated pilots like crap before they were unionized and many still do. Management is interested in one thing: making more money for themselves, not the airlines. They go from airline to airline screwing things up and then leaving with golden parachutes. They make millions and give themselves generous bonuses, all the while asking their employees to take consessions. But I never hear skeptics like you refer to them as "high end paper pushers with good connections to the board of directors". No it is the contemptible little guy who does a dangerous job behind the scenes day in and day out to keep the economy humming that raises your ire.
I think the future will rather be a drone-concept when the airplanes - beginning with cargo airplanes for a proof of concept - will be remotely controlled from the ground. The responsibility will more and more be taken away from the people in the cockpit and it could be like 1 guy in the cockpit and a groundcrew flying the plane together in the first step, and in the next step a fully automated flight with like a group of 50 pilots sitting in the ground control station for taking over in any kind of critical situations. That won't be in 10 years, but maybe in 25 or 30 years.

Regarding management you are right. The challenge is to design their contracts in a way that more money for themselves would only come with more money for the company. But I do not think the responsibility of a pilot is substantially higher than in other jobs, such as doctor, engineer (designed the airplanes you are flying) or whatever. Just the job has a lot of myths, fascination and passion around it, which I can absolutely understand as an aviation enthusiast.
 
Old 05-15-2017, 04:54 AM
 
Location: North of Canada, but not the Arctic
20,890 posts, read 19,353,769 times
Reputation: 25374
Quote:
Originally Posted by kokonutty View Post
Try reading it again. Pay particular attention to the part of what you had written that was bolded and was what I replied to. There was nothing there at all about your desire for more money being linked to your judgement. Now you have me questioning your reading comprehension.
Well thank you for participating. I guess I still don't know what your point is then. All I wanted to know is what people thought they were paying their pilot and what they were willing to pay. It sounded like you thought I was conceited for even thinking about being paid more. I apologize it I misread you, and would still be interested your answer to my original question without your moralizing over it or your personal attacks.
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