To the traveling public, I suspect that airline pilots are all essentially one and the same. We roam the terminals in the same weathered polyester uniforms, towing the same beat-up flight kits festooned with the airplane stickers of our pasts. We’re all pretty clean-shaven and tend to sport the same close-cropped haircut — only some a bit grayer than others. We assume the same practiced air of watchful nonchalance in the public eye, delivering our in-flight announcements in the standard Yeager drawl. I presume that airline management, too, sees us as essentially interchangeable cogs in its well-oiled travel machine. If airplanes are merely marginal costs with wings, as Alfred Kahn famously claimed, I suppose airline pilots are just marginal costs with funny hats.
Of course we are not identical cogs, nor tidy replications of some ideal pilot prototype. We are men and women with our very own talents, flaws, pasts and egos — sometimes especially egos. We rebel at the suggestion that we are interchangeable and replaceable, seeing ourselves as individually critical to the flying public’s safety and our companies’ continued success. We define ourselves by our experiences, past and present, and categorize ourselves accordingly. We become not merely pilots or even airline pilots, but American pilots and United pilots, ExpressJet pilots and Horizon Air pilots. We divide ourselves into civilian and military backgrounds. We are assigned roles as captains and first officers. We talk about being ex-flight instructors and old freight dogs and former Viper jocks and one-time BUFF drivers. But above all, there is one line that defines and divides pilots across the industry: the line between major airline pilots and regional airline pilots.
