[ericbarrett]

I looked into it as a career path a many moons ago; I’d probably just now be making captain at a major if I’d gone that route and did everything right. I was definitely turned off by the pay.

Regional pilots, where you do your time if you didn’t join the military, get paid absolute peanuts. You’re looking at a career that pays well under average for most of your younger years, for very skilled labor, then tops out at about the pay of a mid-level software engineer. And you have a terrible schedule and are on call pretty much all the time, so good luck with a family. Oh and if you screw up, you get a mark on your record you have to justify at every interview for the rest of your career—if you’re lucky and nobody died. Not to mention all the layoffs over the years, where you have to keep current when nobody is hiring.