Actually piloting planes is not that hard mid-flight ; that was proven 6 years ago.

The reasons pilots are handsomely compensated is not difficulty of task, or high responsibility, but rather the fact that they have some of the best unions around. And this is changing with the appearance of low-cost carriers.

That's why coach drivers (urban bus drivers often have SNCF-like compensation), who work for many small companies, or nurses (description of the problem here, ) are not.

SNCF compensations are what you can get, when your profession doesn't have direct access to the money supply of the company, and are reasonably well organised in asking for the raises. Nurses are an example of what you can get without proper organisation. What you can get with really good unions is exemplified by, say, book workers, in France. What you get with access to the money supply is exemplified by the banking convention collective.

Of course, nowadays, when neo-liberals are the one with media access, they are pushing the line that SNCF workers are the ones who are "generously compensated", whereas it is the nurses, or John BusDriver, who never goes on strike, who isn't adequately compensated, because he never collectively asked for a raise with the proper arguments - those of withdrawing work.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

So what? Did your family friend watch the signals, or did the locomotive driver continue to do so? Ditto about the wake signal? Does he even know the railway signal book? Traffic dispatcher and order-giving rules? The TGV's brake percentages? Could he stop the train at the platform, or depart? Could he recognise a motor failure, or know what to do when the aggregator for air conditioning is defect? I can 'hold' the throttle on an airplane, in fact children can do when the pilot lets them in, and that's not even forbidden. (BTW, personally I think that TGV driver who let your family friend in would deserve to be fired.)

Most of the time, a TGV driver would have trouble creating a crash if he tried.

Heh. In the case of a TGV, that's true apart from stations, because the automatic a safety systems are so elaborate. But that only means that would a TGV driver attempt to create trouble, the train would stop.

A bus driver must take corners, drive on mountain roads, has lots of visibility problems, can fall victim of an exploding tyre...

A freight train driver must negotiate tight curves and switches, drive on mountain lines, has lots of visibility problems (with the brake distances trains have, every train driver has lots of visibility problems), and can fall victim to a broken wheel tyre, broken rail, failed brakes (especially on a descent), another train in his route after a signal error, landslides into his right-of-way, and bus drivers crossing the red light.

A jet pilot must be able to land a 4 reactors plane with a single reactor left. What would possibly be the equivalent on a TGV?

Stopping a train with 75% of the braking disconnected. And that's pretty critical. Or initiate braking when you have 1 second for that and jumping out of the train ahead of a collision.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Sure, there are desk jobs, ticket sellers and conductors. But then traffic controllers, shunting crews and freight train drivers do night shifts, maintenance shop workers have an alarm clock set even earlier than locomotive drivers, in fact some work only by night. By why did you took TGV drivers as example previously?

but then 25 hours of work in a week (TGV driver)

From this, I guess you are channelling an attack article circling on the French web. It is a crude spin: 25 hours is the driving time, not the work time, the work time is 35 hours like for hte rest.

Le Web des Cheminots [ www.cheminots.net ] - votre forum de discussion entre cheminots, agents SNCF et passionnés des chemins de fer

Un temps de travail annualisé
Alors, fainéants les cheminots ? En décembre, le directeur de l'Ile-de-France a mis les pieds dans le plat, affirmant que les conducteurs de RER travaillaient « 182 jours par an [...] pour une durée de service de six heures en moyenne » . A la SNCF, le temps de travail - 35 heures, calculé à la minute près - est annualisé. Certaines semaines ont six jours, d'autres deux. Mais on travaille le week-end, les jours fériés, à Noël (ou le jour de l'An), et l'on « découche » plusieurs fois par semaine. Précision : un conducteur ne conduit pas 35 heures. « Sur une journée de 7-8 heures, je fais 4 heures, calcule un conducteur TGV. Le reste du temps il faut préparer la machine. Un train, ça ne se démarre pas comme une voiture ! »

A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.^[1] To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. Often, the straw man is set up to deliberately overstate the opponent's position.^[1] A straw man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is in fact a misleading fallacy, because the opponent's actual argument has not been refuted.