I refer to the letter from John Walker headlined 'Importance of pilots' work habitually exaggerated' (Sunday Morning Post, July 8).
If Mr Walker belittles the skills and responsibilities of airline pilots, I am curious what he would have to say about my chosen profession as a flight attendant.
For more than 10 years now, I have worked alongside these pilots.
They are hard-working and highly-skilled professionals and I take offence at your correspondent's implication that they are not so far removed from train drivers. How could one compare airline pilots to the likes of MTR drivers, ferry masters, and long-distance bus drivers?
Granted all are in the transport industry, but no one can seriously suggest they should be remunerated equally. Some people earn a fraction of what others earn, because of market forces. Mr Walker says that most pilots 'are trained at public expense'.
That may have been so in the past, but in today's cockpits most pilots that I work with are no longer ex-military. Many have worked as commercial pilots for a number of years before landing an airline job. And many are still paying for their flying training years after it was completed.
