[Novus]

The airline industry is dying and along with it the pilot once seen as a AAA recession proof job is just another Joe caught in the race to the bottom. British Airways and a few other airlines made their pilots go with out pay at all for a few weeks to months at time. They call it unpaid leave minus the leave part.

[Sixstrings]

Here, I found a link backing up my recollection of that Continental crash in New York.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')nder questioning from the board, Mary Colgan Finnigan, Colgan's vice president for administration, confirmed that Rebecca Shaw, co-pilot of the fatal flight, drew an annual salary of about $16,200. The board also said that Shaw once held a second job in a coffee shop while working as a pilot for the airline in Norfolk.

Asked whether Colgan expected Shaw to live in the expensive New York area, near her base in Newark, Finnegan responded: "Pilots are told what the pay scales are. Our pay scales are within the industry standard."

Shaw, 24, had a cross-country commute. She and her husband lived with her parents in Seattle.

Kathryn O. Higgins, an NTSB board member, called the long-distance commuting, crew-room sleeping and other fatigue-related factors "a recipe for an accident and that's what we have here."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051301848.html

[PrestonSturges]

Better we should die in charred dismembered pieces scattered over a frozen Iowa cord field than give one inch to unions or people that expect pensions.

Better your pilot should stay up half the night hassling with an asshole roommate and do a shift at Starbucks before flying your puddle jumper through a blizzard.

Better your pilot should be getting chewed out by a 22 year old shift manager for making a bad latte than studying the flight manual that describes how to handle wing icing.

This is the free market Reagan promised.

[Pretorian]

Hey dude workers are a dime per dozen now. Slavery was abolished for a good reason. Welcome to the world baby. I'm sure they would have prefer that to cleaning latrines somewhere in Pakistan.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'H')ey dude workers are a dime per dozen now. Slavery was abolished for a good reason. Welcome to the world baby. I'm sure they would have prefer that to cleaning latrines somewhere in Pakistan.

[the48thronin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'H')ey dude workers are a dime per dozen now. Slavery was abolished for a good reason. Welcome to the world baby. I'm sure they would have prefer that to cleaning latrines somewhere in Pakistan.

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'B')etter we should die in charred dismembered pieces scattered over a frozen Iowa cord field than give one inch to unions or people that expect pensions.

Better your pilot should stay up half the night hassling with an asshole roommate and do a shift at Starbucks before flying your puddle jumper through a blizzard.

Better your pilot should be getting chewed out by a 22 year old shift manager for making a bad latte than studying the flight manual that describes how to handle wing icing.

This is the free market Reagan promised.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', '
')I'm sure those Pakistani latrine workers would be willing to fly a 757 for even less than the pilots we have. Give them H1B visas, a copy of flight simulator, and tell them to report for work.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'B')etter we should die in charred dismembered pieces scattered over a frozen Iowa cord field than give one inch to unions or people that expect pensions.

Better your pilot should stay up half the night hassling with an asshole roommate and do a shift at Starbucks before flying your puddle jumper through a blizzard.

Better your pilot should be getting chewed out by a 22 year old shift manager for making a bad latte than studying the flight manual that describes how to handle wing icing.

This is the free market Reagan promised.

[Novus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', '
')Are you the guy that sets salaries in Cuba where surgeons drive cabs to make ends meet?

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'A')re you the guy that sets salaries in Cuba where surgeons drive cabs to make ends meet?

[Stonemason]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'T')his is the free market Reagan promised.

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', '
')
Cuba has a surplus of surgeons and Cubans on average are healthier and live longer than Americans. They must be doing something right.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'B')etter we should die in charred dismembered pieces scattered over a frozen Iowa cord field than give one inch to unions or people that expect pensions.

Better your pilot should stay up half the night hassling with an asshole roommate and do a shift at Starbucks before flying your puddle jumper through a blizzard.

Better your pilot should be getting chewed out by a 22 year old shift manager for making a bad latte than studying the flight manual that describes how to handle wing icing.

This is the free market Reagan promised.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', '
')Are you the guy that sets salaries in Cuba where surgeons drive cabs to make ends meet?

[MarkJ]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he result is not only the diminishing of a once coveted profession but increasing concerns about safety as many pilots are worked to the very limits of regulations, leaving them exhausted as well as relatively poor.

[billg]

Besides compensation for expenses incurred through pilot training programs, there is really no reason why commuter airline pilots should be paid anymore per hour than garbagemen. These are both necessary functions in our society, and one function should not be valued over the other function...both jobs have their challenges and special qualifications.

You say that airline pilots should be paid more because they need more incentive to protect the lives of the people in tow. In a healthily functioning society, people do what they do OUT OF SERVICE TO OTHERS not out of desire for monetary gain. Yes, it is true that certain people have special skills and our society needs to recognize that skill, support it, and direct it into appropriate activities. However, there is no reason why that skill needs to be tied to monetary gain (although we are conditioned to believe that this should be the case). If we have a special skill, we demand that society compensate us appropriately for that skill (above and beyond what we need to take care of our expenses). However, we need to ask, what is the basis for those demands...to serve ourselves or to serve others??

Our present economy and monetary system does a completely inadequate job of reflecting an individual's true worth to society. We pay a professional basketball player millions of dollars while we pay a carpenter relatively little. It is completely whacked. Not only are we distorting an individual's worth to society, we are giving totally unqualified people a disproportionate amount of power to command earth's resources (which is what money really is). Tell me this...do you think someone like Kobe Bryant has any friggin clue how his investment decisions affect the health of the ecosystems on this planet.

In a healthily functioning society, if there is such a thing as concentration of wealth/resources, it should be with those who understand the ecology of this planet and can create jobs that support not only people but the intricate web of life that sustains them. Granting huge amounts of power (thru money) to people who have NO UNDERSTANDING of the larger picture equates to complete sabotage of our species and other species on this planet.

A truly sustainable economy respects the worth of all individuals and their contributions and operates out of a principle of service to others and the planet.

[PrestonSturges]

[quote="Sixstrings"
.......Up until relatively recently, a person could apprentice to a lawyer and then take the bar exam without ever stepping foot in a law school.[/quote]

This is true, and there's lots of embarrassing stuff about how the bar associations made everything more rigid to reduce the "alarming numbers" of Jews and Negros passing the bar exam.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('billg', 'B')esides compensation for expenses incurred through pilot training programs, there is really no reason why commuter airline pilots should be paid anymore per hour than garbagemen. These are both necessary functions in our society, and one function should not be valued over the other function...both jobs have their challenges and special qualifications.

You say that airline pilots should be paid more because they need more incentive to protect the lives of the people in tow. In a healthily functioning society, people do what they do OUT OF SERVICE TO OTHERS not out of desire for monetary gain. .....

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', '
')
Cuba has a surplus of surgeons and Cubans on average are healthier and live longer than Americans. They must be doing something right.