Are pilots really professionals?

at1024 said:
It is what it is. You can call it white collar, blue collar, purple collar, or whatever...I like what I do and that is all that matters to me.
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Sounds good. In the Navy's infinite wisdom,they decided to send me to school for a year so I don't have a ready room to come back to after a flight and say "you effin idiot, you almost effin hit me....want to go grab a beer after the debrief". I will have to get get used to the different culture, they don't take too kindly to that kind of rhetoric where I am at now, and it looks like that may be the case here.
 
How did this thread go from....

C-182 flyer said:
I would like to spark a debate about whether being a pilot is really a profession....
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to....

C-182 flyer said:
I am not denigrating either, more venting frustration. .... In the past, how many people drove new cars and bought houses that they could not afford with no money down, or went into tremendous debt to student loans without almost no guarantee that they would have a job that paid enough to live on? Now, people want to blame everyone else because they cannot live the lifestyle they desire. How is it that a CFI who is in debt over his head, and drives a new BMW, worries about which pilot watch he should buy, or a junior enlisted guy drives a new Tahoe when he makes a third of what I make while I have been driving the same, paid off, vehicle for years. I just think people need to step back and realize that nobody owes them anything, and if you cannot afford the nice things in life, it is up to you to improve your situation.
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...?

Plenty of doctors, lawyers, pilots, teachers, gas station attendants, engineers, etc. live outside their means and have issues of entitlement. Stupid is as stupid does, and I'm not sure how it relates to the original debate.

Anywho....back to the question at hand...for my personal opinion on the matter, please refer to avatar at left.
 
Tld said:
How did this thread go from....



to....



...?

Plenty of doctors, lawyers, pilots, teachers, gas station attendants, engineers, etc. live outside their means and have issues of entitlement. Stupid is as stupid does, and I'm not sure how it relates to the original debate.

Anywho....back to the question at hand...for my personal opinion on the matter, please refer to avatar at left.
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:clap::clap::clap:
 
I think Waco made several great points. If you don't know the answer to the question already, you're not.

TLD rounds out the matter, however. The simple fact of the matter is *we are* if we choose to be. A 'profession' isn't really what other people think of it. It's what we think of it ourselves, and how we conduct ourselves. I've said before that being an aviator is a matter of discipline, like medicine, or law.

The confusion that the pilot mill marketers have introduced to the line of thinking isn't hard to see. They took the term 'career pilot' and gussied it up with 'professional pilot'.
What's the difference between the two? Any idiot with a certificate can spend 30 or 40 years bitching about life, occasionally flying airplanes and standing there with their hand out the rest of the time. A professional aviator correlates the things they learn from aviation into other parts of their life- and vice versa. A career is a job you do for a long time. A profession is an attitude and a way of life.

I'm a professional. Who else is a professional? That's the catch. It's a question every person in aviation has to ask themselves.
 
It's one thing to work in a profession, it's another to be a professional. I think anyone who spends significant time working in any particular industry sees the difference. Like Firebird said, it's not what you do, it's how you do it.
 
If it makes you feel better at night... sure, it's a profession. Of course hookers are professionals too. Personally, to misquote Groucho Marx, I don’t care to belong to any profession that will have me as a member.
 
gliderboy said:
Professionals (members of a profession) do not require unions to protect their jobs.
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1. Name a serious, high paying, dignified, and competitive industry paying over 200K that doesn't have unions? Military,Lawyers?..., trading the stock market, career criminals... thats about it.

2. Unfortunately, unions have nothing to do with professionalism or lack thereof it, more so its for pilots to protect themselves and each other. Despite the negative connotations of unions they can be used for everyones good. For example, unions hold votes among their members over different issues. This allows a general concensus of what the pilot group does or does not want. Its hard to get 1000 pilots do agree on much of anything, but the union allows things to be somewhat democratic. Now too much of anything is a bad thing, unions included. Mind you, Herb Kelleher wanted the SWA pilot group to unionize...

But a union is far from making things unprofessional.
 
gliderboy said:
Professionals (members of a profession) do not require unions to protect their jobs.
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It's an association. Airline Pilots Association.

I think that is the key to everything. If the group around your vocation is called an association then you are a professional and worthy of respect. If the group around your vocation is not an association, then you are a mouth-breathing troglodyte with no place in the company of professionals...or polite society really.

The Adult Film Association. American Medical Association. American Bar Association. Airline Pilots Association. All are professionals and worthy of respect due to the "association" in their names (and interestingly, I would rank the associations listed in that order in my own personal "Most-to-Least worthy of respect" rankings).
 
Once again, everyone is worried about what EVERYONE ELSE is doing... If you make a living as a pilot and and consider yourself a professional, let that be the standard you hold yourself to. If you think of your flying job as a blue collar trade that any yahoo off the street could be trained in a day to do, then have at it.

The image you hold of yourself has a direct correlation of how successful or professional you want to be. Just to clarify, success doesn't always have to equal money and professionals don't have to be rich.
 
TwoTwoLeft said:
Once again, everyone is worried about what EVERYONE ELSE is doing... If you make a living as a pilot and and consider yourself a professional, let that be the standard you hold yourself to. If you think of your flying job as a blue collar trade that any yahoo off the street could be trained in a day to do, then have at it.

The image you hold of yourself has a direct correlation of how successful or professional you want to be. Just to clarify, success doesn't always have to equal money and professionals don't have to be rich.
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Well said.
 
Firebird2XC said:
I'm a professional. Who else is a professional? That's the catch. It's a question every person in aviation has to ask themselves.
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I know some weekend warriors I would consider professional pilots. They don't fly for a living, but when they do fly they have the same calm demeanor/squared-away-ness/positive aircraft control/etc. largely written about in Gann novels and Langewiesche treatises that one would expect or demand from someone who flies for a living.

Then there are the "professionals" who I wouldn't want flying my hypothetical future wife/kids or current family around, who happen to be paid but have none of those qualities. Then again, they do show up, and they do their damn job, and then they go home. They are in the piloting profession.

My enlightened conservative colleague said:
I think that is the key to everything. If the group around your vocation is called an association then you are a professional and worthy of respect. If the group around your vocation is not an association, then you are a mouth-breathing troglodyte with no place in the company of professionals...or polite society really.
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I can think of some self-styled professional associations (some of which happen to be unions as well although not in aviation) composed largely of mouth-breathing troglodytes, but I get your point.

TwoTwoLeft said:
The image you hold of yourself has a direct correlation of how successful or professional you want to be. Just to clarify, success doesn't always have to equal money and professionals don't have to be rich.
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And you don't have to wear a crisp white shirt with gold braid and a tie.
 
The definition of a professional can have several meanings.
It can be for a type of job that requires a high level of training (pilots/doctors/lawyers).
It can also be a job that that is usually associated with amateurs (athletes/dancing).
It can refer to a skill (You did a professional job on that resume).
It can also describe a manner in which a person is supposed, or not supposed, to carry themselves (professional conduct).

Using any of these definitions above, a pilot can indeed consider himself a professional.

Unfortunately, the bottom line is, as today's cut-throat career environment dictates, are we being paid as professionals? What everyone else who is not in this industry thinks is just a bonus.
 
gliderboy said:
Professionals (members of a profession) do not require unions to protect their jobs.
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Sure about that? There's a Union that protects the rights of everyone in this country to have a say in the laws that affect their working conditions, the regulation of their fields and how they integrate into the whole.

It's the Union of These United States of America. The entire concept of a Union is to prevent tyrants and despots from having so much power that the people within the organizations and assemblies they operate don't have a fair say in events and are barred the right of due process. Sound familiar?

Every job, career field, 'profession' or otherwise is governed by a Union designed to protect the rights of both individuals and the smaller groups they may decide to join. Even those who waive certain rights to defend that Union are considered professionals if they choose to see themselves that way and conduct themselves accordingly.

images
 
WacoFan said:
It's an association. Airline Pilots Association.

I think that is the key to everything. If the group around your vocation is called an association then you are a professional and worthy of respect. If the group around your vocation is not an association, then you are a mouth-breathing troglodyte with no place in the company of professionals...or polite society really.

The Adult Film Association. American Medical Association. American Bar Association. Airline Pilots Association. All are professionals and worthy of respect due to the "association" in their names (and interestingly, I would rank the associations listed in that order in my own personal "Most-to-Least worthy of respect" rankings).
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A union by any other name...
A person can file a bar complaint with the ethics board, the AMA can suspend a license. I certainly think that it can be considered a profession, and we are professionals. However the Association is mostly a union.
I think the "profession of arms" is similar to airline pilots. The control of the destiny of the "profession" is largely due to external players.
 
Largely, it's all a state of mind. Is a dentist a doctor? Sure. But does a Neurosurgeon see a dentist as on-par with his profession? Maybe, maybe not.

Personally, I think our profession has developed a terrible inferiority complex.
 
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