Slashdot Mirror
The Ten Most Overpaid Jobs In The U.S.
misbach writes "Here is what the 'compensation experts' have to say are the
ten most
overpaid jobs [original article at CBS MarketWatch]. 'Almost no one in America would admit to being
overpaid, but many of us take home bloated paychecks far beyond what's deserved.
'Fair compensation' is a relative term, yet human-resource consultants and
executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive compensation that can't
be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances.'"
First of all, self-preservation is a fairly strong instinct you can count on in such a situation. As the article rightly points out, you should more fear the mechanic or the overseer to think "fuck it" if he sees that the left wing can fall of in mid-flight any flight now. He will not be on board when that happens. Why not pay him the 250K and the pilot a 100?
This is why estate taxes originally came about. The government was extremely worried that a de-facto aristocracy would form out of the money that Industrialists were accumulating. So in order to prevent assets from endlessly collecting interest, they decreed that a large percentage of an individual's wealth would return to society upon death. This would also ensure that, at some point, SOMEone would have to work to bring more money in. Not exactly what one would call a fair system, but since Rockefellers and Kennedys do not own GE and Microsoft today, I would have to call it a partial success.
Now just recently estate taxes were repealed by the fiscal conservatives. Will this finally tip the scale to the point where wealth can endlessly create more wealth, so meritous, hard-working individuals like Ally Hilfiger can entertain us with their priviledge? Our children will find out!
===========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
A friend of mine's Dad is a flight instructor, and tells about how there are a lot of things a pilot had to do to get a license that they don't now. They figured out, that by forcing unexperienced pilots to go into spins kills more people, then the number of people who are on a plane that go into spins.
A modern airplane can be built so it's nearly impossible to stall. So it doesn't have nearly so many of the problems it used to have, and thus pilots really to know as much or be as technically skilled as they used to due to modern Engineering.
All that said, I'm still aware of several scenerios where a pilot saved people by doing something deemed "impossible", by everyone I know who knows anything about planes. I think the FAA has new training due to a plane crash that happened near Siox City, Iowa. A guy was steering a plane using the flaps in a way that wasn't supposed to work. It was supposed to tear the plane apart. However, that was the only control left on the plane that worked. I think 90 people lived (of the 170). I saw film of it, it was terrifing.
Finally, pilots don't get enough time off. They should get paid that much for how much time they spend away from their families, and the hours they put in.
Kirby
That may be the case, but from what I understand it's rather difficult to become a pilot in the military. For one thing, your uncorrected vision has to be 20/20 or better, which eliminates a whole bunch of people. By the way, as I understand it, "uncorrected" means just that: no corrective surgery, no glasses, no contacts.
If you want to become a pilot through civilian channels, you do indeed have to make large sacrifices. The training is quite expensive and quite extensive. You have to train for your private pilot's license, your commercial license, your twin engine rating, your flight instructor's license, and then you have to work as an instructor to build enough flight time (at least a thousand hours or so) before anyone (even cargo haulers) will consider you. And when you are finally hired, you won't be hired by the majors -- you'll be hired by the regionals at best. And those guys start off at about $30K per year. Captains in the regionals make around $70K per year. That's for putting in 12-16 hour days, with a "home base" that may change on a yearly basis and which may be quite far from home.
It's ironic, really, because the kind of flying the regional guys do is harder than the flying done by the majors. The regionals typically operate turboprop equipment that flies in the 15,000 to 25,000 foot altitude range, where weather is much more of a factor than the 30,000 to 40,000 foot range the majors fly in. The regionals tend to fly into smaller airports that have fewer or older navigational aids and which also tend to be in areas of more dangerous terrain. And their equipment isn't as good as the equipment the majors fly, so icing (for example) is more of a problem.
If it were up to me, the guys in the regional airlines would be making more than the guys in the majors, simply because their job is harder.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Airline Pilots are limited by the FAA to like 100 hours a month and 8 hours flying time per day w/o a 12 hour off time. Senior Captains often can ick long trips where they get the 8 hours in on 1 flight. Jr Pilots have to make multiple takeoffs and landings which at busy airports and with weather can be very stressful. Delays due to weather don't count towards the 12hr max duty day, so there can be some LONG days. Right now, airlines are really getting some concessions (S$$$) out of pilots, who not only have to worry about terrorists but thier own CEOS stabbing them! Senior Captains with 15-20 yrs experience who fly the "heavies" like 747s get a nice 6 figure income, the guys and gals flying for Southwest make about 60K. Seniority is the key, as well as getting trained on lots of different aircraft in order to move up. Often a captain of a small plane will get trained on something else and move up, but he is back to being co-pilot or flight engineer and maybe even a pay cut until s/he is certified on the new equipment. It's not an easy job, you have life and death over a lot of people and have to deal with a lot of Gov't red tape as well as other things. These guys earn the checks!
I'm a flight instructor, and I'd like to respond to some of your post.
First, the fact that most accidents can be attributed, at least in part, to pilot error is no surprise. The word "most" implies a ratio. As the systems on airplanes become more reliable, and procedures more conservative, that leaves pilots who are getting both better and worse to make up the rest of the percentages.
Pilots are much more educated these days in subjects as diverse as aerodynamics, systems, physiology and crew resource management, etc.
At the same time, some of the skills previously taught are not now mandatory. The spins you mentioned, for instance. It used to be mandatory that you gave students spin training, and that CFIs (Certificated Flight Instructors) had to demonstrate spins to get their licenses. As your buddy's dad noted, however, there were more people being killed by the training than by accidents. I had a student inadvertantly enter a spin during slow flight who froze on the controls for roughly two turns until I was able to get him to let go. So I easily understand the now lesser requirements. Having said that, I and many others still give spin training. Most students stare agog at the rotating earth on their first spin rather than do anything constructive, so I think it's unfair not to get them through that initial "shock and awe" before sending them out into the world where, as shown above, they might enter that situation inadvertantly.
So we're growing them smarter; but at the same time, we may not be arming them with everything we used to. Having said that, spin training isn't necessarily useful to a DC-10 driver.
As for aircraft design... you can build airplanes that are very stable, very smart, very fault tolerant and forgiving, etc.; but every piece of that perfect airplane adds complexity and problems of its own. For instance, the Airbus that crashed at the Paris airshow because the computer entered "land" mode and wouldn't allow the pilot to exceed certain parameters in his go-around attempt. In 1994(?) there was a Fed-Ex DC-10 crew that was attacked by a disgruntled employee who struck all 3 crewmembers with a framing hammer. They disabled him by initially performing a split-S maneuver that no computer would have allowed. The attacker wanted to fly the airplane into the Fed-Ex hub in Memphis and would likely have succeeded if the pilot had been unable to fly the airplane beyond its operational parameters. History has many more such stories of times when doing something the airplane wasn't supposed to do saved the day. You don't want a computer to control everything. There needs to be context for actions; and currently, only humans can really analyze that.
Also plan on getting rid of anything smaller than a passenger jet, if you're going to require the same systems that those high-end airplanes carry. They're simply not feasible in terms of weight and price for smaller airplanes, though that is slowly changing.
In the Sioux City crash, the pilot was using differential thrust from the engines to control the airplane. If you increase thrust on the right wing, it travels a bit faster and produces more lift, which causes it to raise a bit and the airplane to turn. The sweepback angle on the wing enhances this also, as the forward wing (the one on the outside of the turn) is effectively longer than the other wing. (That's a lot easier to illustrate visually.) Anyhow, the Sioux City incident is a perfect example of how necessary the pilots are.
Finally, I know of jobs that pay a lot less and are more demanding on average. For instance, the dishwasher at your local restaurant works a lot harder day in and day out than the airline pilot who flew you to Cleveland last week. The reason we don't pay the dishwasher 100K per year (aside from the now exorbitant $1000 price for chicken-fried steak) is that there won't ever be a dishwashing emergency that will cost the lives of hundreds of people if not dealt with in the next 20 seconds.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!