Private Jet Pilots

Today I was working at the very airport where my boss keeps his corporate jet.  Here's what it looks like; 

My boss sends this aircraft to fetch us when he sends us out of town and needs us back quickly, among other things.  It's always the same pilot and while the rest of the employees are drinking cocktails in the passenger area, I sit up front in the co-pilot seat and chit chat with the pilot.  I LOVE big machinery that can be driven, operated, ridden or flown, so I really like it when I get to go in the little turbo prop jet.  Can you imagine the brain power it must take to engineer this kind of machine?  It boggles the mind.  I digress, back to the pilot.

Our pilot is on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365.242199 days per year including leap year.  He is a former aeronautics mechanic, so he can explain every little detail about the craft itself and the flight; things like uncommanded slat deployment or the major importance of setting barometric pressure in a small plane.  Yeah, yeah, get to the point lady!  What's this got to do with Versed and Versed pushers?  Are you ready for the big segue?

Guess how much money he makes to fly the plane and to know every single little detail and pretty much every single nut, bolt etc that's in this expensive little aircraft.  $600 an hour.  Remember he's always on call.  He has to know everything about the plane so that if there is an emergency he can land it safely.  I think his job is a teensy bit more involved (and more dangerous to himself and others) than an anesthesia providers job and they make $200 an hour more. I trust this pilot with my life, but anesthesia providers? Not so much.

$600 an hour seems fair for the job that our pilot does.  $800 dollars an hour for some prissy little amnesia provider seems like such a RIPOFF!  If our pilots were as careless as anesthesia is, there would be a whole lot more crashes, dontcha think? 

There is a self preservation instinct that goes along with flying a jet, which is lacking with anesthesia.  Just because they wreck YOUR life, it doesn't mean a thing to them as long as we just keep paying those $800 an hour ridiculous fees. NO WAY is an anesthesia nurse worth more than a private jet pilot.  What a skewed system we have.