This column's going to read like a goddamn paid advertisement for the airline industry, but this is what it's come to, because there's something uniquely grating about the widespread misconceptions surrounding the unrivaled achievement that is humankind soaring through the air. People will bitch on and on about how religion is a lie, but then they'll be afraid to get on a plane because rationality is only fun when it's challenging someone else's beliefs. So let's challenge yours. Or, to phrase it more kindly, humans may have evolved to walk, but ironically we're orders of magnitude better at flying. So here are the myths that need to die ...

5 Pilots Make Tons of Money

Pilots are well known to be up there with doctors and lawyers and guys who make bullshit apps in the annals of Those Raking It In. Except, did you know that, according to the book Cockpit Confidential, ticket prices have declined in part because pilots' salaries have also declined 42 percent in the past three decades? Pilots make less than you think they do. And you know who else you can say similar things about? Artists. Hear me out ...

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Because they're the same. Considering how hard and time-consuming and expensive it is to get to a place where you're allowed to take the controls of a $100 million airliner, the only people who get to do that job are those who have to fly. Much like the arts, it's largely the domain of obsessives who'll persevere through anything to live their dream, and much like artists, pilots are taken advantage of by an industry that gradually cuts back on how much they earn, full well knowing that they'll never quit and get other jobs. Professional artists are just the ones who survived the attrition, and pilots the same.