Working 22 days per month, 16 hours per day, and earning $19,000 per year doesn’t help your mood: “Think Your Job Is Depressing? Try Being an Airline Pilot: New study suggests pilots are more depressed than the average American” (Smithsonian).
Related:
- my 2009 article on the steps of a U.S. airline career
- how unionization leads to airline bankruptcy (and pilots starting over at the bottom)
- our program to help young people become depressed
Germanwings 9525, EgyptAir 990, JAL 350.
Maybe ATC staff should also have suicide hotline training, just in case?
Sweatshop economics, nothing else.
Why would anyone take this job? I assume it’s like the Freakonomics “why drug dealers live with their moms” thing – the people at the bottom of the pyramid make next to nothing but every one of them is deluded that HE will make it to the top of the pyramid and make the big bucks, so it’s worth putting in a low paid apprenticeship. But most never do. See also post-docs.
I find this very unpersuasive. As the post title implies, there is an underclass of airline pilots who are underpaid and poorly treated, but there is also a broad segment who are well off and well adjusted. A lot of the contrast is from the rigid unionism that enforces the split. If the flying plutocrats are so few, why are they not outvoted in union councils?
That doesn’t sound good. Difficulties with concentration are a symptom of depression.
Your “how unionization leads to airline bankruptcy” story is pure fantasy. Do you really believe that nonsense?
@Jack D: Why would anyone take this job?…the people at the bottom of the pyramid make next to nothing but every one of them is deluded that HE will make it to the top of the pyramid and make the big bucks, so it’s worth putting in a low paid apprenticeship. But most never do. See also post-docs
See also aspiring law school students.