How DARE they strike!

[Cav]

I once trained a doctor in Seattle for his IFR rating in my 172. He said it was the hardest thing he had ever done. Guess he didn't mean it....

I'm probably going to regret saying this but...

I guess what we can really take from this is that some things are more difficult for some than others. My guess is that if we (professional pilots) embarked on a medical school education we might view it as the hardest thing we have ever done. In fact I know of one ex regional pilot (furloughed) who is in medical school right now. It would be interesting to hear his view on the topic.

I was once a roomate of a medical student friend for his first two years of medical school before heading off to flight school. No comparison to the two types of education. That being said, I also come from a family of 4 doctors of different varieties and to compare the amount of education that I have had to undertake to become a regional pilot to that of my brother in law who is an anesthesiologist is laughable. If you think we are over worked, underpaid, and never get to see our families then try living his life especially when he was chief resident at a top hospital making around $30k for 4 years. Not to mention the hours.

 

[grassrootsflying]

I want to reply with a really nasty reply about how the national failure rate for CFI cadidates is something like 90% and how I spent a lot longer than 30-60 hours training for something that I consider much more complex than a "leisure activity," and I've only got through my flight instructor ratings.

Those that haven't gotten that far seem to complain the most about how pilots only deserve what the market will provide them. I have NO idea what level of training you're at, or whether you're working as a professional pilot right now. I don't really care to be honest. This is more than a leisure activity for some people.

Your feelings are very sincere. I started flying as a leisure activity with the idea that I could make a living at this, so I did. If someone doesn't enjoy flying at some point in their training, I wouldn't know why they would choose to do it. The point of the above example with the doctor getting his IFR as a leisure activity was to show that 30-60 hours flying for an IFR is NOT harder than getting into, then going through a medical education, which DE727UPS suggested was.

I don't mean to demean the hard work that anyone has put into their careers because it is hard. I only want to debunk the argument that "doctors and pilots put equal amounts of work into their education so they deserve equal salaries" . Education =/= salary. Doctor education=/= pilot education. I agree that pilots deserve more money, but that's not how the world works. Many people deserve lots of things that they never get.

To stay on message, I am saying is that the education required of a doctor is much more than the education of a pilot, I am not saying anything else. To compare the education and knowledge base of the average pilot to average doctor is not even close. A better comparision would be to say that a pro pilot needs to have a master's in aero.engineering, meteorology, and a bS in physics in addition to all their flight training to have a comparable amount of education to a doctor.

My point and my ONLY point is that "don't use the argument that pilots deserve equal pay to doctors because they have equal amounts of education" because this argument is wrong. Check out the studentdoctor.net forum and you will see how much goes into a medical degree, then compare it to how many years it takes to train as a pilot, and see if "doctors and pilots have equally rigorous educations". You don't know what you don't know. I know enough doctors to have an opinion. Take a look through the doctor forum and you will learn something about what doctors go through.

 

[Cav]

Just for the record, my response comparing medical education to flight training mentioned nothing of salary...that's a whole different can of worms.

 

[tonyw]

Cav, keep in mind that after that residency, depending on your specialty, you can do a hell of a lot better. My sister right now is working pretty much six or seven hours a day, and making out nicely. Her opinion on the difficulty of med school is that it wasn't too hard, but then she had just finished her undergrad at MIT so that probably skewed things a wee bit.

I think the residency is comparable to the CFI stage of a professional pilot. When you break down the hours spent working versus your total comp, you'd be better off flipping burgers but it's something you've got to go through in order to get where you want.

Who says we don't have the apprentice system in America any more?

 

[Cav]

Cav, keep in mind that after that residency, depending on your specialty, you can do a hell of a lot better. My sister right now is working pretty much six or seven hours a day, and making out nicely. Her opinion on the difficulty of med school is that it wasn't too hard, but then she had just finished her undergrad at MIT so that probably skewed things a wee bit.

I think the residency is comparable to the CFI stage of a professional pilot. When you break down the hours spent working versus your total comp, you'd be better off flipping burgers but it's something you've got to go through in order to get where you want.

Who says we don't have the apprentice system in America any more?

Good assessment tonyw although I would add that the CFI stage is generally much shorter than that of a residents atleast it was for me anyway. The unfortunate thing for pilots, when compared to medicine, is that the payoff once you finish the "training" stage is so low and now the end payoff is not much higher. The medical profession has always had large barriers to entry to their credit, unfortunately those for becoming a professional pilot are much lower. Most airlines don't even require a college degree even Continental, Southwest, and FedEx to name a few.

 

[MDPilot]

From their websites:

FedEx - Bachelor's degree required
Continental - Bachelor's degree preferred
Southwest - Graduation from accredited, four-year college preferred.

 

[grassrootsflying]

2nd tonyw/cav's posts. I never wrote or even suggested, that being a pro pilot was easy, or that they don't deserve high pay. I never wrote a bad word about pilots, only good words about doctors, yet some replied with a nasty tone. I did write that doctors go through much more schooling than pilots, and endure more, and have much higher barriers to entry, all of which are true. education=/=salary=/=deserving
People on this board complain how the public doesn't understand what pilots have to go through, it's because the public is just ignorant. I am not a doctor, but know enough to say that people who compare a doctor's education to a pilot's education are showing ignorance themselves.

And to people who think that they are somehow special, "You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake". Nothing wrong with being average, by definition, most people are average, it just means that you are not the rare gift to flying that some pilots think they are. What's among the first things you say to or heard as a prospective student-if you can drive a car, you can fly an airplane. These are average people who are trained to a professional standard regardless of their motivation for flying-career or pleasure. And that's why I think average pilots come from average people, and not some superpeopleland that I apparently have been excluded from.