Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbuna
One reason I retired as a LEO at age fifty was because I was financially secure and still in good health.....take what bonuses life offers you and make the most of it.
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"The most important duty of ours is to be happy in this life." (D.H. Lawrence, in these or quite similiar wordss).
Because whatever monuments of ourselves we build in life - time will sweep them away sooner or later.
I know nothing about the pilot business, but I saw documentaries about it on TV, and they painted a very gloomy picture. The young ones entering training have to pay for it all by themselves at Lufthansa, leaving them with debts between 150 and 200 thousands at the end. They then need to collect flight hours, and many accept to not get paid but to pay the airline for getting allowance to fly, because over here they will lose their license if they do not show up with so and so many flying hours per years. And in Germany, they then count - before the (social) law - as "unemployed without job training" Many accept to get treated like flying slaves by airlines in the cheap-flyer-segment of the market. And when they get a sorted employment, they then need long time to get rid of their monumental debts.
It is no dream job, it seems. Not at all.
Much of the pilot strikes at Lufthansa in recent years, which did not end and did not end, was about this problem, and the problem of if your health detoriates such that you are not allowed by the doctor to fly, you again end up stranded as an unemployed and without any formally/legally recognised job training/education. Legally, pilots in Germany are extremely handicapped and left behind.
It reminded me of the situation many students at British, french and American universities, who leave universities with so high debts that they are extremely vulnerable for gettign totally exploited by the job market and cannot find a chance to breathe and think just in their monthly struggle to get themsleves and their debts financed, somehow. There was a heart-breaking documentary on it on TV some months ago, I think I posted about it back then.
Whenever I hear such things, I know how gentle life so far has dealt with me, and how much luck I have had.