Overpaid bus drivers?

When airline travel took hold in the post-war years it was indeed a rapidly growing field of endeavour with new technology appearing day after day. These technological advances included the dawn of the jet age and at every turn pilots were called upon to step up and meet the new challenges. Automation and navigation were still evolving and pilots formed more than just the final filter warding off an accident. With untold lives sitting behind them, pilots safely carried their precious cargo expediently to their destination and the public marvelled at the mode of transport and respected its exponents.

Unfortunately, those days also brought a greater rate of hull losses and deaths than we see today. Through decades of learned lessons, improved technology, training and infrastructure aviation has become immensely safe. Everything from enhanced weather radar and ground proximity warning systems to precision approaches and ever-improving air traffic control has made the skies a safer place. And with this growth in automation, the role of the pilot has changed too.

No longer is the airline pilot pushing, pulling and peering through a fogged windscreen. Bakelite headphones pulled tight as rain leaks in at the corner of his side window, desperately trying to sight the runway through the gloom. Today, automation and ergonomics have made the flight deck a more comfortable place, filled with resources and redundancies. To the public, these great metal birds now just flew themselves and pilots were increasingly redundant.

What had occurred was that the world of aviation had changed for the better. 

The role of the pilot became more about making sound decisions and managing the interface between man and machine. 

Through these changing times came quicker, safer flights and yet the pilot’s role was perceived as less and less critical. In parallel, surgeons now operate on the heart with keyhole surgery on occasions they once needed to spread open the rib cage. 

Is their task any less vital? The goal is the same – it is only the skill-set that has changed.

For pilots and surgeons alike it is a skill-set that is equally deadly if man does not respect the technology and work in unison. And should the technology fail us, there is still the need to be that pilot with the headphones pulled tight, pushing and pulling the aeroplane around the sky. If anything the range of skills in manipulation AND management are greater than ever and this state of readiness is neither easily gained nor maintained.

From paying one’s way through the expensive path of civil flight training or signing away a decade of one’s life in return of service to the defence forces, being a pilot comes at a heavy cost. Even at the end, there are no guarantees and often advancement to the next level comes at a further cost. 

Nor does the learning process ever finish. There is ground school theory, emergency procedures training and the ever-present flight simulator. Furthermore, there is checking and training on a regular basis which can end a pilot’s career should they fail to perform. Let’s not forget the medical requirements that can prove equally terminal to a career in the air, but wouldn’t even raise an eye-brow in a ground-based profession. Very few careers exist under the microscope like a pilot’s and yet they are still generally their own harshest critic.

This is not to begrudge any profession their benefits and many jobs are not appropriately rewarded – just ask any nurse, teacher or police officer.  

However, pilots do seem to have slipped between the cracks. Today they fly more people in higher density airspace and on approaches to ever lower minimum altitudes. The technology facilitates this, but the pilots guard against the reduced margins.

Yet to this backdrop, pilot’s conditions have come under siege, paradoxically in the face of passenger growth. They are flying more hours, farther distances and with shorter turnarounds. Some jet airline pilots are now further fiscally burdened by paying for the cost of their endorsement. In the United States, a good many regional airline pilots are holding down second jobs just to meet the bills and I suspect that scenario could well happen here.

As a result of these factors, aviation is not the enticing career it once was. That allure was the part of what drew those who were fortunate enough to have the skills to fly and the perseverance to maintain their standards over decades. They were individuals who committed to an airline for the next 40 years, not until their next KPI review or performance bonus. 

The unfortunate consequence is that many of the best-suited individuals from the next generation may well pursue their careers elsewhere. Rather than the ideal candidates filling our flight decks, many will be lost to more lucrative professions that impinge less upon their lifestyle and bank balance.

It may seem like modern airline flying is little more than “bus driving”, but that monotonous assuredness is the by-product of safe air travel. Climb-Cruise-Descent and an inflight movie should be the passengers’ experience as the crew go about their business, and the less the crew are called upon to intervene beyond their standard procedures, the safer the flight has been. 

Compared to the bygone days of steely-jawed pilots defying the odds and the weather to arrive on time, today’s flight crew may seem pedestrian. Rest assured their skills are no less critical to the safe conduct of flight and they are equally aware of the precious lives in their care. If in spite of the way their profession has changed they are still seen as “overpaid bus drivers”, then that is a perception of the ill-informed that they must live with. But they’ll do so with both the knowledge of the truth and a great sense of pride in the career they have chosen.