Is a train driver worth more than a Naval Officer?

Basher · 13 Jan 2024

I listened to GB news the other night and there was an interview with a retired naval commodore about the difficulty of recruitment for the navy.
The commodore said we pay train drivers more salary than an officer saling/fighting some of our warships.

RailUK Forums

TJ123 · 13 Jan 2024

Basher said:
I listened to GB news the other night and there was an interview with a retired naval commodore about the difficulty of recruitment for the navy.
The commodore said we pay train drivers more salary than an officer saling/fighting some of our warships.

It sounds like the same old story everyone deserves to be paid more than train drivers because all they are perceived to do is push buttons, when we know in reality it is way more than that.

Train drivers and other railway staff know they are paid a decent wage for what they do, but there always seems to be this need to put them down for some reason, some other job always does more weather that be doctors , nurses, teachers etc. Railway staff know what contributions others make.

One of the good things about the railway is that it generally gives people an equal chance to join the industry, so using the train driver as an example anyone can apply providing they meet the criteria, they don't need a fancy degree or masters or need thousands of pounds or need stupid amounts of years of experience for a role.

Another good thing about the railway is it has people from many different industries, people coming to the railway as a second career people from banking, aviation, education, emergency services and yes plenty of people from the armed services.

The way I see it, is that the railway is also a business and like any other business will pay what they need to to get the right people in place. So as I mentioned the railway has plenty of people who have served in the armed forces and come to the railway as a second career and they bring with them their transferable experience and skills. Some of these people are now seasoned train drivers, driving instructors, operational trainers and are passing on some of their experience, skills etc on to the newer generation of drivers, that to me can only be a good thing.

Horizon22 · 13 Jan 2024

Basher said:
I listened to GB news the other night and there was an interview with a retired naval commodore about the difficulty of recruitment for the navy.
The commodore said we pay train drivers more salary than an officer saling/fighting some of our warships.

This is going to be hugely varied. Some ships are larger than others and therefore probably have a higher ranked/paid officer in charge. Plus there's also a huge range in how much "we pay train drivers".

Economist · 13 Jan 2024

A Train Driver earns about the same headline pay as a Lieutenant Commander and that's before you factor in things like subsidised housing, food and private education for the latter. When you factor in things like working hours, I'd say it balances out fairly evenly, since a naval officer will likely do a lot of unpaid overtime.

The public see automated trains in places like Dubai and think that the railway in the UK could be readily automated, they don't appreciate that train driving is a highly productive job. Additionally, we're not paid for what we do but for what we're expected to do when things beyond our control go very badly wrong.

The railway recruits a lot of ex-forces personnel, the ironic thing is that quite a few of the "overpaid" drivers will have sailed on the ships the Navy is struggling to fill.

185 · 13 Jan 2024

At the time of the Croydon Tram crash, their salary was about £34,000 for a 38-40 hour week - a little more than a london bus driver. A Croydon tram driver has up to 200 people's lives in his hands.

Captain Birdseye flys 330 passengers with British Airways on his 777 earns £167,000 and has a second assistant on £100,000 sat helping him total flight deck staff cost £267,000 before 9 cabin crew salary £300,000 grand total of £567,000 for the 330 passengers.

A train driver earns £50000-£65000 has between 500 and up to 1200 people's live in his hands.

All three can screw up and I reckon we get good value from our train drivers. The reality is we live in a failed, mismanaged country where greedy crooked managers, directors and owners pocket the cash and try turn the rest of us against each other on paltry salaries - in ALL industries.

The managing director of one train company earns £300,000 and hides in cupboards every time something goes wrong and I am convinced reading some of the emails he sends out, he uses Texas Instruments Speak and Spell (ages 3-6) to assist him.

Lucan · 13 Jan 2024

I have done both and can assure you that being a naval officer is more demanding even in routine. Apart from on-board duties, even as a relatively junior officer I was sometimes in a position of having to handle a bit of international diplomacy, such as when engaging in conversation with political officials in foreign ports - supposedly informal conversation but they will measure everything you say. That is beside the fact that a wrong decision by a naval officer could trigger WWIII.

Buiadh · 13 Jan 2024

I think that your mistake was watching GB News.

irish_rail · 13 Jan 2024

Wouldn't expect anything less from the likes of GB news frankly. But I drive a train with sometimes as many as a thousand people on board. I'd say my salary is more than justified.

Buiadh said:
I think that your mistake was watching GB News.

Indeed

DarloRich · 13 Jan 2024

Basher said:
I listened to GB news the other night and there was an interview with a retired naval commodore about the difficulty of recruitment for the navy.
The commodore said we pay train drivers more salary than an officer saling/fighting some of our warships.

there was a twitter post by some daily Tory graph commentator ( might be the same guy as the OP mentions ) making the same point. Instead of trying to make a silly divisive point I thought his question was wrong. His question should be why don't we pay our service people as well as we should. There no link between the two jobs and it is wrong to try to make such a link. To make the point: You could easily ask if Torygraph columnists should be paid the same as toilet cleaners!

Buiadh said:
I think that your mistake was watching GB News.

is the correct answer!

whoosh · 13 Jan 2024

Economist said:
A Train Driver earns about the same headline pay as a Lieutenant Commander and that's before you factor in things like subsidised housing, food and private education for the latter. When you factor in things like working hours, I'd say it balances out fairly evenly, since a naval officer will likely do a lot of unpaid overtime.

The public see automated trains in places like Dubai and think that the railway in the UK could be readily automated, they don't appreciate that train driving is a highly productive job. Additionally, we're not paid for what we do but for what we're expected to do when things beyond our control go very badly wrong.

The railway recruits a lot of ex-forces personnel, the ironic thing is that quite a few of the "overpaid" drivers will have sailed on the ships the Navy is struggling to fill.

Yeah, funny how significant things like housing and meals are rarely mentioned in the comparisons!

All our Armed Services personnel need good, well paid jobs to go into when they leave and join Civvy Street. The railway is currently a good place for them to go.
A politicians argument would be to pay train drivers less, and therefore deny a lot of armed forces personnel that good, well paid job as a second career.

HullRailMan · 13 Jan 2024

Train drivers are often compared to nurses, teachers, doctors etc when it comes to wages….those other jobs need degrees which are paid for by the individual. Train drivers wages are astonishing for a walk-in off the street job that requires no formal qualifications.
In terms of watching GB News - it’s funny how so many people can’t cope with anyone that presents an opinion or position they don’t agree with.

Leuvenn · 13 Jan 2024

A lot of people, I guess bruised by a LU strike or two, have got in their head the Train Drivers do nothing but press buttons.
I guess it's technically true, but so do Accountant and Bankers. We shouldn't live by this weird Victorian idea that the more physical your job is the more money you should be paid. The salary for a given role is determined by the value given to it by society which, although seemingly arbitrary, is entirely logical.
A typical example is how some complain of how Nurses (on an average of £35,000 per annum) are paid far less than drivers. Yes, but in order for a nurse to travel to work, a given nurse has to use a train, as do accountants, bankers, doctors, police, politicians, etc. Millions of people use the London Underground everyday with faults such as door catches costing TfL, and by extension the tax payer, around £70,000 per minute.

In short the value added by Train Driver's is disproportionate to most others because a Driver adds a disproportionate amount of value to our value chain

irish_rail · 13 Jan 2024

HullRailMan said:
Train drivers are often compared to nurses, teachers, doctors etc when it comes to wages….those other jobs need degrees which are paid for by the individual. Train drivers wages are astonishing for a walk-in off the street job that requires no formal qualifications.
In terms of watching GB News - it’s funny how so many people can’t cope with anyone that presents an opinion or position they don’t agree with.

I think the value of a degree is frankly overrated. Recently I drove a train from Paddington to Plymouth, and I followed a "stopper" which departed Paddington a couple of minutes in front of me (running around 30 minutes late). I subsequently followed said stopper all the way to Plymouth. So for a total of nearly 4 hours I was using intense concentration, and constantly coming up against yellow and red signals. All the while , one lapse of concentration and at best I am hauled off trains and given a b*llocking , and at worst people die. I can tell you maintaining that level of concentration over very long periods isn't easy. No, it isn't something university can teach, but it's a skill none the less, and certainly worthy of the salary I receive (which by the way hasn't increased in 5 years, and taking into account inflation has dramatically gone down). I just wish people in the media actually understood how complex and at times difficult the train driver role is before throwing the usual "anyone who joins the military with zero qualifications deserves to be paid more than train drivers purely because they are in the military ".

Fragezeichnen · 13 Jan 2024

irish_rail said:
I think the value of a degree is frankly overrated. Recently I drove a train from Paddington to Plymouth, and I followed a "stopper" which departed Paddington a couple of minutes in front of me (running around 30 minutes late). I subsequently followed said stopper all the way to Plymouth. So for a total of nearly 4 hours I was using intense concentration, and constantly coming up against yellow and red signals. All the while , one lapse of concentration and at best I am hauled off trains and given a b*llocking , and at worst people die. I can tell you maintaining that level of concentration over very long periods isn't easy. No, it isn't something university can teach, but it's a skill none the less, and certainly worthy of the salary I receive (which by the way hasn't increased in 5 years, and taking into account inflation has dramatically gone down). I just wish people in the media actually understood how complex and at times difficult the train driver role is before throwing the usual "anyone who joins the military with zero qualifications deserves to be paid more than train drivers purely because they are in the military ".

If you think you can dismiss the entire higher education system with an anecdote about needing to concentrate for a few hours then I think you haven't got even the slightest clue what degree level education is about.

A modern train is a sophisticated machine of such complexity that no one person can fully understand every detail of every system, and is the product of hundreds of thousands of hours of design work from experts in metallurgy, bodyshell design, electrical and electronic engineering, software engineering and more, All of this is overwhelmingly done by people with degrees in the relevant Engineering and Science disciplines and who needed those degrees in order to do their job. It runs on tracks designed by civil engineers, geotechnical engineers and more. Whilst they aren't as strongly connected to the operation of the train as the crew, every component in that train will have been authorised for use by a named individual who signs to say they are satisified that according to their professional knowledge, it is a safe design for production use.

Yes, the arguments about whether train drivers should be paid more or less than teachers are tiresome. However, it's also really rather tiresome listening to people who most likely don't have a clue how any of the technology they rely on completely works beyond what was explained to them in their training course, and given 1000 hours to design a working train or a signalling system would probably still have a blank sheet of paper in front of them, imply that higher education is worthless just because it isn't relevant to the task of operating the finished product, and because non-operational jobs don't involve the same physical and mental hardships as being on the front line.

train_lover · 13 Jan 2024

Here's a question for everyone, Are train drivers paid to much or is everyone else paid to little?

Enthusiast · 13 Jan 2024

185 said:
Captain Birdseye flys 330 passengers with British Airways on his 777 earns £167,000 and has a second assistant on £100,000 sat helping him total flight deck staff cost £267,000 before 9 cabin crew salary £300,000 grand total of £567,000 for the 330 passengers.

A train driver earns £50000-£65000 has between 500 and up to 1200 people's live in his hands.

All three can screw up

I think there's a critical difference which you may have overlooked.

When Captain Birdseye and his mate screw up and a catastrophic incident ensues, the chances are that a very large percentage (often 100%) of the souls who entrusted their safety to them - and perhaps some more on the ground - will die. By contrast, when a train driver screws up, even if the results are serious, there are rarely more than a handful of casualties.

Looking at the last fifty years (back to January 1974) there have been around 100 recorded rail accidents in GB. These resulted in 241 fatalities. Only a very few of these incidents were attributable to driver error. But the most significant point is that in only five of these did fatalities run into double figures:

Clapham (35)
Ladbroke Gve (31)
Polmont (13)
Taunton (12)
Great Heck (10)

None of these were down to driver error (if you agree that Ladbroke Grove was caused by poor signal positioning). Many of the passenger trains involved would have been heavily laden. In fact the numbers injured at Clapham approached 500 and at Ladbroke Grove over 400. The point is that, even in a serious accident, rarely are more than a small proportion of passengers killed.

By contrast, you don't have to look too far to find instances where "Captain Birdseye" has made an error and a very large percentage of passengers - if not all - are killed (and occasionally there are fatalities on the ground as well). As well as that, there is a far greater variety of errors that an airline pilot can make that can have catastrophic results than a train driver can. In short, if you're in a serious train crash there's a very good chance you will survive death or serious injury; if you're in a serious air crash there's a very good chance that you won't.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not for one moment trivialising the role of a train driver. It is a highly skilled and responsible job; they must get it right because their mistakes can lead to tragedy. But to make the comparison with airline pilots on the basis of the number of passengers each has in their charge is not really appropriate.

Adam Williams · 13 Jan 2024

HullRailMan said:
In terms of watching GB News - it’s funny how so many people can’t cope with anyone that presents an opinion or position they don’t agree with.

It's gutter "journalism", which has been found to breach the Ofcom code on five occasions already. As of December there were 13 other Ofcom active investigations into the broadcaster. There have been numerous denials of climate science, for example - which to be clear, is simply not up for debate by media personalities, there's an incredibly strong scientific consensus which has been formed on the basis of peer reviewed evidence - from presenters. What you're defending as "opinions people don't agree with" are often simply just demonstrations of "(deliberate) ignorance of established facts".

It's good at generating "engagement" and clicks though, and social media "outrage" from folks who sadly have a negative z-score and are a standard deviation or two away from the mean.

irish_rail · 13 Jan 2024

Fragezeichnen said:
If you think you can dismiss the entire higher education system with an anecdote about needing to concentrate for a few hours then I think you haven't got even the slightest clue what degree level education is about.

A modern train is a sophisticated machine of such complexity that no one person can fully understand every detail of every system, and is the product of hundreds of thousands of hours of design work from experts in metallurgy, bodyshell design, electrical and electronic engineering, software engineering and more, All of this is overwhelmingly done by people with degrees in the relevant Engineering and Science disciplines and who needed those degrees in order to do their job. It runs on tracks designed by civil engineers, geotechnical engineers and more. Whilst they aren't as strongly connected to the operation of the train as the crew, every component in that train will have been authorised for use by a named individual who signs to say they are satisified that according to their professional knowledge, it is a safe design for production use.

Yes, the arguments about whether train drivers should be paid more or less than teachers are tiresome. However, it's also really rather tiresome listening to people who most likely don't have a clue how any of the technology they rely on completely works beyond what was explained to them in their training course, and given 1000 hours to design a working train or a signalling system would probably still have a blank sheet of paper in front of them, imply that higher education is worthless just because it isn't relevant to the task of operating the finished product, and because non-operational jobs don't involve the same physical and mental hardships as being on the front line.

I've never said higher education is worthless. It may surprise you to know, but I went to university! But the narrative that your entire life's earning potential should be completely reliant on you having achieved a degree is a really rather depressing dystopian one. Many people come in to their own well after their teens, and to write people off who are not university educated is highly discriminatory. Remember, many that end up going to University do so because they where born into wealth and have had better life opportunities, right from birth. I'd like to hope the country we live in is more open and accessible to all, regardless of upbringing and background.

yorkie · 13 Jan 2024

train_lover said:
Here's a question for everyone, Are train drivers paid to much or is everyone else paid to little?

If everyone was paid a minimum of a train drivers' salary, you would get hyperinflation.

I don't think this is a serious question because it's pretty obvious that if the minimum wage became the same as a train drivers' salary, this would be an untenable situation; drivers' salaries would inevitably rise.

The idea that a train driver's salary and a minimum wage salary should be the same thing is completely fanciful; a train driver's salary is always going to be significantly higher, and there is absolutely no way that could ever change.

Basher said:
I listened to GB news the other night and there was an interview with a retired naval commodore about the difficulty of recruitment for the navy.

Is this documented anywhere?

If so, a link and quote would be useful; if not, then I don't think it's in any way 'newsworthy'.

Basher said:
The commodore said we pay train drivers more salary than an officer saling/fighting some of our warships.

I don't know what this means. Can you elaborate on what job role(s) are being compared? (without knowing what is actually being said, I don't see how we can have a meaningful debate)

Ultimately, comparing salaries between jobs is fraught with difficulty. Some people like to claim a particular job is 'deserving' of a particular salary (or deserves to be similar to, more than, or less than, another job they are comparing it to) but it's largely irrelevant, as salaries are determined by various factors, such as supply & demand of suitable people, the knowledge, skills and experience they require, the time taken to train them, and more...

Economist · 13 Jan 2024

I'd like to see ASLEF work with one of the TOCs to produce a documentary that goes into detail about driver training, as opposed to focusing on personalities. I'd like the general public who think we are overpaid to try and understand everything from Absolute Block signalling to traction diagrams detailing the systems which feed off the Main Reservoir Pipe. That's before we even get to the out of course and emergency situations.

Leuvenn said:
In short the value added by Train Driver's is disproportionate to most others because a Driver adds a disproportionate amount of value to our value chain

This coupled with the fact that we have a decent union which specialises in train driving.

irish_rail · 13 Jan 2024

yorkie said:
If everyone was paid a minimum of a train drivers' salary, you would get hyperinflation.

I don't think this is a serious question because it's pretty obvious that if the minimum wage became the same as a train drivers' salary, this would be an untenable situation; drivers' salaries would inevitably rise.

The idea that a train driver's salary and a minimum wage salary should be the same thing is completely fanciful; a train driver's salary is always going to be significantly higher, and there is absolutely no way that could ever change.

Indeed. Minimum wage jobs include shelf stacking, and collecting bottles in a bar. To say that these kinds of jobs should earn the same as a train driver is ridiculous. However, I would argue the minimum wage should be higher, as in some areas (South east for example) it is barely enough to live. So let's raise the minimum wage, yes, but to the level of train driver, that will never happen.

baz962 · 13 Jan 2024

Economist said:
I'd like to see ASLEF work with one of the TOCs to produce a documentary that goes into detail about driver training, as opposed to focusing on personalities. I'd like the general public who think we are overpaid to try and understand everything from Absolute Block signalling to traction diagrams detailing the systems which feed off the Main Reservoir Pipe. That's before we even get to the out of course and emergency situations.

This coupled with the fact that we have a decent union which specialises in train driving.

Wouldn't even know how to book on or sign for or read a won . Probably wouldn't know where to find which job and which unit they would need to drive. Wouldn't get out of a platform or siding.

Samzino · 13 Jan 2024

Enthusiast said:
I think there's a critical difference which you may have overlooked.

When Captain Birdseye and his mate screw up and a catastrophic incident ensues, the chances are that a very large percentage (often 100%) of the souls who entrusted their safety to them - and perhaps some more on the ground - will die. By contrast, when a train driver screws up, even if the results are serious, there are rarely more than a handful of casualties.

Looking at the last fifty years (back to January 1974) there have been around 100 recorded rail accidents in GB. These resulted in 241 fatalities. Only a very few of these incidents were attributable to driver error. But the most significant point is that in only five of these did fatalities run into double figures:

Clapham (35)
Ladbroke Gve (31)
Polmont (13)
Taunton (12)
Great Heck (10)

None of these were down to driver error (if you agree that Ladbroke Grove was caused by poor signal positioning). Many of the passenger trains involved would have been heavily laden. In fact the numbers injured at Clapham approached 500 and at Ladbroke Grove over 400. The point is that, even in a serious accident, rarely are more than a small proportion of passengers killed.

By contrast, you don't have to look too far to find instances where "Captain Birdseye" has made an error and a very large percentage of passengers - if not all - are killed (and occasionally there are fatalities on the ground as well). As well as that, there is a far greater variety of errors that an airline pilot can make that can have catastrophic results than a train driver can. In short, if you're in a serious train crash there's a very good chance you will survive death or serious injury; if you're in a serious air crash there's a very good chance that you won't.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not for one moment trivialising the role of a train driver. It is a highly skilled and responsible job; they must get it right because their mistakes can lead to tragedy. But to make the comparison with airline pilots on the basis of the number of passengers each has in their charge is not really appropriate.

Problem is a train has many more immediate dangers that can occur on its journey than an Aircraft. Once an Aircraft is up in the air its about 2-3 mins before Autopilot is turned on to follow the programmed flight plan and it can be many hours flying before the next stop or usually the final destination.

The most dangerous part of flying is when on the ground or coming into land which accounts for no more than 5%-10% of the total flight time.

If a driver misses something there isn't a second person in the cab in many cases who is trained to notice that and prevent it evolving where as there is in an Aircraft.

Using crash statistics doesn't cover the full story, agreed in a single aircraft crash you'll most likely lose most of the Pax depending on the severity but that is down to basic physics, the real question is how many aircraft collisions, crashes etc occur compared to how many occurs for trains?

Trains have a higher survivability rate once a crash or accident occurs but the amount injured is another factor. Planes do not regularly have serious accidents / crashes and a big part of that is the spacing they have once in the air, they rarely fly over congested or areas of immediate danger for too long.

Train_manager · 13 Jan 2024

At the end of the day. The government elite don't want the working class earning a good wage.

bramling · 14 Jan 2024

Basher said:
I listened to GB news the other night and there was an interview with a retired naval commodore about the difficulty of recruitment for the navy.
The commodore said we pay train drivers more salary than an officer saling/fighting some of our warships.

The question is somewhat loaded, as reality is the market will determine wages based on the demand for labour and supply of labour. Evidently train driving is sufficiently skilled and labour of such calibre sufficiently scarce that a high wage is commanded. Whilst train driving also has significant barriers-to-entry which will inflate the wage, I’d imagine this applies to naval officers as well.

Based on my own experiences, it does seem that finding people with the right skill-set for train driving is becoming challenging. On that basis, notwithstanding what may or may not happen with other jobs, and assuming nothing else significantly changes, the wage for train driving is only going to go one way and that is upwards.

Carl98k · 14 Jan 2024

185 said:
At the time of the Croydon Tram crash, their salary was about £34,000 for a 38-40 hour week - a little more than a london bus driver. A Croydon tram driver has up to 200 people's lives in his hands.

Captain Birdseye flys 330 passengers with British Airways on his 777 earns £167,000 and has a second assistant on £100,000 sat helping him total flight deck staff cost £267,000 before 9 cabin crew salary £300,000 grand total of £567,000 for the 330 passengers.

A train driver earns £50000-£65000 has between 500 and up to 1200 people's live in his hands.

All three can screw up and I reckon we get good value from our train drivers. The reality is we live in a failed, mismanaged country where greedy crooked managers, directors and owners pocket the cash and try turn the rest of us against each other on paltry salaries - in ALL industries.

The managing director of one train company earns £300,000 and hides in cupboards every time something goes wrong and I am convinced reading some of the emails he sends out, he uses Texas Instruments Speak and Spell (ages 3-6) to assist him.

Just so you know, first officers don’t earn that much. Maybe around the 50k mark. Captains earn around 80-90k

185 · 14 Jan 2024

Carl98k said:
Just so you know, first officers don’t earn that much. Maybe around the 50k mark. Captains earn around 80-90k

Not talking easyjet or Ryanair. Specific in the airline and aircraft, my friend does that exact job on widebody BA aircraft.

Financial Times, 2019 - "British Airways · Average captain paid £167,000 a year not including extra allowances · Average £183,000 including flight allowances"

FT said:
https://www.ft.com/content/dccfd6d6-d3e1-11e9-8367-807ebd53ab77

Samzino · 14 Jan 2024

185 said:
Not talking easyjet or Ryanair. Specific in the airline and aircraft, my friend does that exact job on widebody BA aircraft.

Financial Times, 2019 - "British Airways · Average captain paid £167,000 a year not including extra allowances · Average £183,000 including flight allowances"

Delta Captains especially I know a family friend who is a captain and earning quite a bit in the six figures.

Delta Pilot Salary - Discover How Much You Could Earn - Thrust Flight

Discover just how mucha Delta Air Lines pilot salary is and how you could become a professional pilot for Delta.

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Economist · 14 Jan 2024

Samzino said:
Delta Captains especially I know a family friend who is a captain and earning quite a bit in the six figures.

Delta Pilot Salary - Discover How Much You Could Earn - Thrust Flight

Discover just how mucha Delta Air Lines pilot salary is and how you could become a professional pilot for Delta.

www.thrustflight.com

There's a massive pilot shortage in the US and has been since around 2016 (Covid excepted), a quick read of the 2023 Salary Survey thread on a US-focused pilot forum highlights it well. First Officers were typically reporting $200k-$400k and most Captains $350k-$700k due to bidding for "premium" trips with double or even triple time, many were effectively part-timers as well. Incredible stuff and little surprise that they are now the best-paid professions in the US.

Samzino · 14 Jan 2024

Economist said:
There's a massive pilot shortage in the US and has been since around 2016 (Covid excepted), a quick read of the 2023 Salary Survey thread on a US-focused pilot forum highlights it well. First Officers were typically reporting $200k-$400k and most Captains $350k-$700k due to bidding for "premium" trips with double or even triple time, many were effectively part-timers as well. Incredible stuff and little surprise that they are now the best-paid professions in the US.

Its very expensive training to be a pilot, and a lot of sacrifice. Its good they're getting a decent salary once they've climbed the ladder. Usually a newbie pilot starts from regionals and makes their way up to the big carriers. I remember reading on some of the conditions of pilots in those regional airlines especially sleeping accommodations aka crash pads.

Is a train driver worth more than a Naval Officer?

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