The Juice Isn't Worth the Squeeze

Pre-Flight, Issue #2 — the cockpit, translated for everyday life.

There is a school where hundreds of the students are children of airline pilots. One global carrier, one campus, the flight deck in nearly every family.

One day a teacher asked her class of teenagers what they wanted to become. The usual spectrum came back: doctors, engineers, athletes, artists. But one career was missing. Not a single student named the cockpit.

When she asked why, the answer was unanimous: "the juice isn't worth the squeeze."

That verdict came from our own children.

They are not guessing. They have seen the other side of the coin — the one the glossy brochure never shows. They have watched the flying parent miss the birthday, the Christmas, the match that mattered. They have seen the state we come home in after a night duty, and learned to keep the house quiet just so we can survive the rest of the day. I am not complaining. I am reporting the feedback from home.

People say two things about this job: pilots are well paid, and pilots never run out of work. Both are half true.

The pay is comfortable for a passion job. It is nowhere near private equity, neurosurgery, insurance portfolios, tech, or real estate development. We are not close to those numbers, and we never will be.

And job security? Yes — but. The "but" is heavy. A global pandemic can halt the entire industry overnight and cut a pilot's income to a survival wage; a good friend of mine went thirteen months without seeing his family in 2020. A political crisis in the Gulf can ground an airline with no end date — crews who left with an overnight bag for a 24-hour layover came home a month later, while their families sat under missile fire.

Then there is the expat life most of us live. You change continent every decade, and you always know that, sooner or later, you will leave the place you currently call home.

And underneath all of it: this career is only as strong as your health. The job is taxing. Lose your medical certificate, and you lose your cockpit the same moment.

So no, I will not sell my children the brochure.

But here is the other column of the ledger, and it is not small. This life builds rare skills, and a stack of memories most people never come close to. It builds worldwide friendships with bonds like family. My boys are eight and twelve; they have already lived on three continents and speak three languages at native level, with a fourth on the way. They cross the planet the way other kids take the metro. My wife and I have shared this life for almost a decade, and our furniture has circled the globe three times in a forty-foot container.

If you ever want the honest audit of a life, don't ask the people who admire it from the outside. Ask what the insiders let their own children choose.

I call mine my chameleon kids. They walk out of schools where a dozen languages fill the hallway and a different skin colour is a feature, not a difference.

So if one of them runs toward aviation — or away from it — I will understand either way. They know the true cost of this life better than any sedentary child. They read the whole ledger, not just the shiny side.

And every time I think about it, I want to play Culture Club's hit song — Karma Chameleon.