Yikes. Didn't know how much it sucked to be an up-and-coming pilot. I will be nicer to the people I greet on airplanes from now on.

My friend just quit his very lucrative position as a sales rep for Johnson & Johnson to become a pilot. I guess I will not forward this to him!

The only financially feasible way to do this is to join the military and fly for them for about 10 years. The million-dollar flight training gives you a good chance of going straight from there to the "Big Air" jobs without having to work in commuters. Of course...you have to go to war and stuff in the meantime. So like everything, life is about choices.

I'd say if you can fly a Warthog through some ground-to-air fire for a few years, you are probably qualified to circle around LGA every now and again.

I too flew as an airline pilot for four years before coming to law school, now a 2L. I know many of those in that article, sleeping on an airplane for 4 hours in Vegas is much worse than the legal profession.

The people that have $150k in debt are the ones who are too impatient to go about it the "other" way. I'm currently in law school, but I have about 1000hrs of flight time, a Flight Instructor rating, and enough experience to make me marketable to an airline. I have no debt from my flight training, and my parents didn't pay for it. I started flying when I was 16, paid for my ratings as I got them. Once I got my CFI, I taught people how to fly while I built up my hours. I got paid fairly well to do it, and did other flying jobs on the side. Going to Embry-Riddle on loans is probably worse than going to Cooley law school. The average first officer at an entry-level airline makes less than $20k/year to start. I decided against flying for a living and decided to go to law school.

Guys in my high school used to fly a Warthog through some ground-to-air fire for a few years and then circle LGA for a few hours all the time, it was no big deal.

FRAT STUD

The ex-military guys are the ones who forget to depressurize the cabin on landing and hurt everyone's ears. Passenger comfort stuff like pressurized cabins aren't part of warthog training.

So your ears hurt. Did the pilot avoid ground-to-air fire? Exactly. Now stop complaining.

I spent 20 years flying in the Air Force and could have had my choice of major airlines at several points during my career. I opted for law school and large firm corporate practice. I 've never been happier. Few of my friends who fly commercial, including those beyond the furlough window, can say the same.

The new format of this blog stinks. Please go back to the old format.

The airline pilot unions are partly responsible for the problem. In order to protect their own jobs, they required that all newly-hired pilots, regardless of experience, must start at the bottom rung of the seniority list and earn the lowest amount. This protected the jobs of the current employees. The problem is, every pilot union did this, so pilots cannot switch airlines without starting from the bottom. And when an airline folds, all of its pilots are sorry out of luck and must start over as the most junior pilot somewhere else, regardless of experience. When an airline goes into trouble, guess which pilots it fires first? the most junior ones.

The end result is cushy pay for the most senior pilots at the most stable airlines, and years of job insecurity and low pay for everyone else. Thanks prisoner's dilemma.

The airline pilot unions are partly responsible for the problem. In order to protect their own jobs, they required that all newly-hired pilots, regardless of experience, must start at the bottom rung of the seniority list and earn the lowest amount.

Uhh . . . no. The pilot's unions AGREED to this compensation structure as a concession in collective bargaining negotiations; it was the AIRLINES that demanded it in the first place in order to reduce labor costs.

Whatever. They're overpaid, glorified bus drivers, all of whom will be replaced by either monkeys or computers in ten years. Quit bitching and fly my ass - as you're overpaid to do.

Jason Captain, 32, of Fort Worth who left the Navy last November, walking away from $75,000-a-year lieutenant’s pay for flying military brass in and out of Guantánamo Bay.

He started training last month to fly a 76-seat regional jet for a Northwest Airlines subsidiary and expects to make about $21,000 his first year.

WOW

Something about this guy doesn't add up. He's a lieutenant in the Navy, but his name is Captain? If you take into account that a captain in the Army is the same grade as a lieutenant in the Navy, he is obviously not who he says he is. The only solution is to promote him to major.

Guys in my high school used to beat the shit out of people who began a sentence with "guys in my high school," it was no big deal.

FRAT KILLAH'

"Whatever. They're overpaid, glorified bus drivers, all of whom will be replaced by either monkeys or computers in ten years. Quit bitching and fly my ass - as you're overpaid to do."

Dude, do you have ANY idea how to fly an airplane? Apparently not.

Yes, many of the systems in a modern airliner are computerized or mechanized - but flight directors, autopilots, and the like can go haywire, so you need to be able to put the bird down manually, anytime, anywhere.

Landing a dinky Cessna 172 is tough enough; try doing it with 300 tons of aluminum, steel, glass, wires, and passengers.

"... pay that reached $300,000 a year, 20 days a month off work, the prestige of one day commanding a $200 million airplane, and a lush retirement at 60."

20 days a month off work? BigAir pipe dream trounces BigLaw pipedream.

The secret is, you fly for a commercial carrier for a couple of years, then go fly corporate jets. A friend of mine was in ROTC, finished his commitment to the air force, then flew commercial for like two years until Independence Air folded.

Now he flies a farm equipment company's private jet. He's solidly upper-middle class and when the corporation's executives don't need him to fly, he hangs out with his wife and kid.

Nice work if you can get it.

I'm one of these First Officers at a regional right now, thinking of going to law school. I have two Points:

1. We are glorified bus drivers 75% of the time. The other 25% of the time you don't want us worrying about how we are going to pay our rent next week...trust me. Just look at the recent Comair lexington crash. When is the last time a bus driver took a wrong turn and killed 50 people? You screw up as an attyorney, maybe you'll cost some corp. a ton of money. As a bus driver you might bend a fender. You screw up in my job, you kill people.

2. You can do everything right in this career and finally make it to a big carrier, make your $100,000+ per year, and then your company goes under. Where does all that experience and hard work put you? Right back at first year pay and the bottom of the seniority list. 35k/year. And you still have 50k+ in loans to pay off. Pathetic.

It's a good thing pilots like flying. If not nobody would even think about getting involved in aviation.

I've done both. First I went to law school, passed the bar, but I knew I wanted to fly the big iron and travel, so I got on with a major carrier about a year after graduating. Because I had a lot of military flying time before I even went to law school. I also practiced law on the side and took a break from flying to work full time, so I enjoy both parts, but the bottom line do what you want, but also be realistic. Currently I am flying international and do work 10-12 days per month. Some people can handle multiple time zones some cannot. But I do enjoy seeing the world unfold and it is kind of neat to go into certain cafes around the world where the employees know you by name. Life is short, do what you want to do, just don't be unrealistic.

This guy Captain, is brave, but misinformed. Instead of staying in the Navy another 10 years where he could retire and then still be young enough to have an airline career, given the fact the mandatory airline pilot retirement age is now 65. Instead, Captain is banking everything on this chump change route? Good luck. I hope he can get on with Southwest, but one thing that is clear,Captain will not be doing that much better in the next ten years and he certainly won't have the last great pension for the masses, a military pension, which is indexed for inflation. Hopefully Captain's wife will persuade him that he can do a lot better back in the Navy, or even the government, with better benefits. I would not leave a solid job to start a career path via regional airlines, that is simply nutty. Which is why the only reason I got on with my company is because it is a major airline.

True, about making the big bucks and then the company going bankrupt. Still, I think most Americans understand that concept of no warranties with regards to job security. Just ask the hundreds of attorneys and bankers that have been laid off.

Finally, it figures some pilots would even call themselves "glorified bus drivers," that is like calling yourself an idiot, well perhaps you are if you allowed yourself to work in the slave galley equivalent called a regional airline. What's next you're going to call yourself a "glorified paper pusher"
as an attorney? Take pride in what you do, but don't dumb it down solely because you worked in the armpit of the airline industry. I can assure you it takes more than a bus driver mentality to get from point A to point B, just ask Capt Scully who deadsticked his A320 into the Hudson.

PS The nice thing about flying, when you are done, with your trip you are done, if you fly the first part of the month and the last part of the next month, you can have a month off between trips... add a month of vacation and bing, you've got two months off. Don't hate, aviate.