A Tale of Two Perspectives

,                                                Perspective






Perspective is something I think is important to have in the aviation industry. Everyone has a different path in this industry, some come from military background, some go to college specifically to be an airline pilot, there are many paths to being an airline pilot.  With each path each pilot has taken comes perspective.
There is no "wrong" path be becoming a pilot, where people run into a problem is that they believe that their perspective is the only one. 

In this industry luck truly is 90% of when/where you get hired, the other 10% (I would say) is networking.  Since luck does play such a huge part in your career trajectory, people who have been lucky lack perspective on what happens to the less fortunate.  This doesn't make them bad people, but they also aren't necessarily people want to talk/work with. 

A Tale of Two Perspectives

For example dh flew with a CA (we will call him Bob)a few months ago that he has become friends with, he is younger than dh (that gets more and more common these days) but he was a great guy, I even got to meet him once when I was non-reving!  Bob is great and very down to earth, easy to get along with, and understands that nothing in this industry is a given.  Bob was furloughed from his regional and was lucky to get hired on where is now currently and upgrade relatively early in his career.

Now onto CA Jack (again not real name), Jack is also younger (younger than Bob even) Jack got hired here when he was 22.  Jack isn't a bad guy (hey he bought everyone coffee!) but lacks the perspective of a hard airline career.  Jack tends to think every one can do what he did in their career and doesn't understand how someone can be 40, have a masters, and still only be an FO.  Jack can't understand this because Jack's never had anything bad happen in his career, he lacks perspective, and to be honest acts entitled.  This comes across when talking to him in his attitude.

Honestly though age has not much to do with perspective, it seems life experiences are much more of an indication on this.  I have met some really great down to earth guys in the industry that are in their mid to late twenties, these are almost always the guys who have been either A) furloughed or B) worked at an airline that went bankrupt.  These guys pass no judgement on anyone, after all they understand the instability of the industry and the way it works.  I have also met 40+ year olds who act/sound immature because they have been lucky in their career and don't understand why everyone doesn't just do what they did.  Then there are the guys who have been lucky and they know it, these guys are great, no condescending remarks and comments about how "easy" they have had it.

I *might* be biased but dh has a pretty good attitude about his career.  He's been through a furlough, a fake flow through, his regional being sold, and he still loves his career and won't even consider doing something else besides flying, trust me I've tried.  But recently he's gotten really down on himself and his career, this has something to do with his very sad W-2, but also he's flown with a few guys recently who have been the lucky ones and lack perspective, and think that everyone should have done what they did.  These aren't the people anyone wants to fly with, so even if you don' have perspective have some understanding that perhaps not everyone is as lucky as you.