[skydog]

Nothing's changed for me. I do believe that a pilot is worth that 200K. But it is not my place to tell someone where he should work and for how much. Nor will I villify him for "bringing down the profession" because he is working for less than I am. The "I just wanna fly" people messing things up are the ones who put so much effort into a poor paying job (i.e 20K). Now here is where we disagree. I, along with probably 80% of the population, happen to think that 65K a year is a decent salary. People can live on it. People can purchase homes. People can save for retirement. It's not all the money in the world, but I know many people who doing just fine on similiar salaries. They own homes, they own new cars, they take vacations, they save for retirement, they put their children through school.

The fact is every profession has it's top of the heap jobs, and it also has its bottom of the ladder jobs. Some doctors and lawyers make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Others (the majority) make considerably less. That is not because one is a scab or is willing to undercut someone else. It is because it was the opportunity they had.

Any career path is a pyramid, with the best paying jobs at the top. The unfortunate thing about a pyramid is that there is not room for everybody at the top. Someone has to be in the middle, and someone has to be at the bottom. As has been stated many times by many people on here, success in this career field is as much about being in the right place at the right time, as it is about qualifications. This flying profession is full of qualified and talented people who spent their careers at commuters or cut rate operators because they were never in the right place at the right time.

To Mr. Eikenberry (sp?) Mr. Taylor, and to others I may have slighted, I owe an apology . I don't mean to imply that you personally are trying to "keep the little guy down." This is a fantastic website and resource, and I have noted how encouraging everyone on here is to the newcomer.

However it can't be denied that, as a group, the folks flying the big jets for the big bucks have an interest in ensuring that the the rest of the pilot population not fly big jets, or even small jets for little bucks. One need look no further than the mainline RJ scope clauses to find evidence of that. If the mainline pilots had their way, all the guys at the regionals would be zipping around in 30 seat turboprops for the rest of their careers, thereby denying those guys a chance to have a decent career. Why should I as a little guy, support that?

As for me, I look back and I realize I was one of those guys "ruining it for the rest" because I "didn't-care-about-money-I just-wanted-to-fly". When I finally realized that, I took stock of the industry, and decided that I would rather do somthing that allowed me to have a decent salary and lifestyle, rather than risk spending my entire career trying to be that one in a hundred that makes it to, and stays in, the big time.