There are commercial pilots and there are commercial pilots.
The senior staff can pretty freely pick the longest and easiest flights with the most turnover time, and thus they can enjoy eating and sleeping, and probably some shopping or exercising as well. On the other hand, if you're a young co-pilot you are likely to get the shittiest flights and the worst possible schedule, and you will probably find yourself in situations where you've flown more than your fair share of hours straight and you still have to haul one last plane home. And wake up next morning at 6am to begin a new shift.
I must say that planes have autopilot but operations don't. That might not be of much consolence, however.
Pilots to some extent (the senior airline pilots who can afford to fly privately), but that is often to get back to the joy and freedom of roaming the skies at will in light aircraft vs the demanding and rigid world of commercial flying, so arguably not the same thing.
Ah, I worded that badly. Ultimately the pilot is the decider as you say. I was getting at the idea that (so I am told) the day to day experience of piloting is very much about working within a regimented system.
I can cut a long drive in half or by two-thirds in what are considered slow (read: beginner-friendly) single-engine airplanes.
You take on an entirely different relationship with the weather.
Flying into expected congestion beats driving any time. I really enjoy flying to college football games, where just getting out of town afterward may take 90 minutes or more and then the rest of the trip home.
It creates flexibility and opens up options that road travel does not. I can get to the beach in two hours from where I live, making a day trip for fresh seafood doable. My son was in Auburn last year for the Tennessee game. Another couple flew down with me; we picked him up in Auburn and thence headed to Tuscaloosa. He got to watch four SEC teams play each other live in the same day.
Charities Pilots N Paws and Angel Flight transport rescue animals to their forever homes and vulnerable medical patients to and from treatments.
Fewer interactions with TSA creeps.
Maintaining my required medical certificate and protecting my investment in flight training creates a strong incentive to stay healthy. I’m in my best shape in decades. Of course it’s possible to find overweight pilots.
If you intend to fly to any sort of scheduled event, strongly consider adding an instrument rating, which will make you a much safer, more precise pilot and should increase your likelihood of surviving inadvertent flight into IMC.
It’s a rewarding intellectual and physical challenge. Phil Greenspun posits[0] that it keeps the mind active and young longer.
If you go to the local general aviation airport, you'll find lots of guys in their 60s and 70s who are tackling challenges that are way beyond your own capabilities. Certainly these guys are much sharper and in better mental and physical shape than the average person of their age. Flying requires mental acuity and real-time decision-making that seems to keep pilots young. A lot of older folks seem to be preoccupied with trivial matters, such as organizing their junk mail or minutia within their childrens' lives. Old pilots don't seem to be subject to these preoccupations and the topics of their conversations have more in common with young pilots than with other old people.
Pilots are still doing a job, and sometimes that job involves keeping their skills fresh and honed, or working around a partially non-functional or degraded autopilot. Sometimes it's even a matter of personal preference, with some pilots preferring more hands on time than others.
In fact, shorter flights may carry more risk with the regional pilots that operate them typically having less flying experience and a higher likelihood of suffering from fatigue.
Same here. I'm in my late 30s and am by far the youngest at any pilot gathering I attend.
I really don't know where the airlines are going to get the next generation of pilots from. Of course with the horrible pay and hours, I can't blame anyone from not choosing that career path.
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