I'm not sure that "bringing sexy back" to the profession is (or should be) the goal. Being a professional pilot will always intrigue certain personality types. Big machines, lots of power, speed, seeing the open road, being your own boss, yadda, yadda... built in sex appeal.
The sex appeal, however, is one of the catalysts that results in the lowering of the bar. Up and coming aviators who are chomping at the bit to go as quickly as possible from the right seat of a Cessna 152 to the right seat of a EMB170 will always be willing to do the job for less. Worse, some pilots of CRJs and ERJs will seek larger aircraft (E170/190 etc) in order to satisfy their desire for the sex appeal of the larger aircraft. Don't think it's true? Look at the EMB pilots with the "Guppy Killer" stickers, or the CRJ900 pilots telling people they "flew the 9".
The sex appeal is there.
Our focus should be more pragmatic. If we didn't fly airplanes... if we made widgets. And this was widgetcareers.com (no pun intended there Doug) the focus might be on telling up and coming widget builders the truth about the profession and helping to manage their expectations.
It's important that people who are on the fast-track to the flight deck have their expectations managed as well. They should be reminded that although this job is fun -- fun doesn't pay the bills. Sexy doesn't get you home for your kid's little league game. Accepting flying at the expense of your peers is damaging to the profession. Accepting flying at rates substantially lower than industry average destroys the integrity of the profession. Remind them that although they may be young and single today, at some point their goals will shift. They will want a home and a family... and want to spend as much time as possible with both.
So -- and this is just my opinion -- threads such as "which is better the CRJ or the ERJ" are useless. They emphasize the sexy without adequate consideration for what really matters. I like JC (most of the time) because it isn't filled only with next-gen aviators -- but there is some balance from pilots who have been there/ done that who can sprinkle a dose of reality on each conversation. Is it always positive? No. But it is necessary. There's no point in pulling the wool over anyone's eyes. This isn't the profession it was pre-9/11. Being honest won't make it less sexy... but it will make our fellow JC-ers better prepared for what is to come.
On topic I hope that A300 was not implying that the pilot in question should test his or her limits to see "if he could have made it". He's smart enough to know that tangling with ice (or other hazards) in aircraft that are not equipped to do so doesn't prove anything. The age of the cowboy aviator have long passed. There is no prize for hand-flying the aircraft John Wayne style into the perilous night. Today the flight crew that manages the aircraft and the technology to complete the flight as safely and efficiently as possible is the model we should all emulate.
Just my opinion.
