Quote:
Originally Posted by pilot602  And herein lies part of my point.
Pilots arguing with pilots that we are worth less than we are.
A plumber, an electrician, a lawyer, etc. all hold their licesnses in much higher regard than we do.
Pilots are not a dime a dozen. At best there is a two-to-one ratio of "active qualified" piltos for every 121 job. That's not counting 135 or 91 jobs. And, that is not an over suply. Law schools have been graduating roughly 12 law students every year for the last 10-15 years for every one law job and the median (not average) starting pay for a lawyer is $160,000 per year.
Another way to look at our numbers is less than one-half of one-percent of the US population holds a student pilot certificate or better. There are some 650-700,000 practicing doctors in the us and a combined total of roughly 300,000 commercial and ATP rated pilots that currently hold active medicals.
Again, if a given pilot group all decided not to renew their medicals the airline for which they work would be flat out screwed.
Instead of arguing about why we should be happy at what we make maybe we should act more like plumbers and sells our certificates and medicals for a proper price.
Again, just something to think about. |
Where does that figure come from? From looking at the BLS website, the average STARTING salary (9 months after graduation) is 55K a year and the median for ALL attorneys is 94K. That isn't that great considering you will have to give a minimum of 6 years (most likely 7) post high-school. Here is my thought...doctors don't become doctors for the money (and after all the cost associated with it and the inital investment of school, is it really worth the money?) most lawyers (OK, some) don't do it for the money, and well, you shouldn't fly for the money. I am not going to say that 19K a year is fair, because it isn't. 65K a year as a 5 year CA with 16 days off...that is nothing to sneeze at and knowing what it is, I would accept that. I also accept that the 1st year pay is going to suck...if it changes, that's great, but I don't EXPECT it. Hell, you can't expect anything in the job but uncertainty. I know that ALPA is "takin' it back", but again, this isn't a career one should get into to get rich. OK, let the flaming begin...