This Thing With Pilots

so there's this thing with commercial airline pilots where there was formally a glut of pilots who were mostly former military and because there were so many pilots the salaries went way down because the air travel industry is horrible

because of the era of internet commerce and two day delivery standards the cargo industry needed pilots so badly that the salary of pilots went way up in the cargo industry and all of the commercial airline pilots started going cargo

hey wow cargo is awesome and the pilots can watch the game and listen to music and smoke cigars and the pilots don't have to wear captains uniforms because that's just a costume for the passengers and while we're on the subject of passengers there is so much less stress in the cargo industry because the pilots don't have the added moral weight of lives on board

and so all of the most experienced veteran pilots went to cargo and the people flying commercial are now the least experienced and most poorly vetted pilots and even though there is a huge need for new pilots the air travel industry refuses to pay commercial pilots more

at some point the air cargo industry will start to hire all the former military drone pilots and there will be an even lower salary for cargo pilots and the air travel industry will refuse to hire them back because they are horrible

nobody will know or even care if the new same day standard delivery cargo planes are flown remotely or even ultimately by computer overlords and nobody will know or even care if commercial flights are flown with AI and the pilots are just two minimum wage employees in costume sitting up front