As an enthusiastic proponent of general aviation, I tell anyone who'll listen just how much fun flying small airplanes can be. The flip side to this, which gets talked about a lot less, is that flying can also become surprisingly boring after a while. Nobody thinks so when it's fresh and new and mildly terrifying, but the road from competence to comfort to boredom is a surprisingly straight, short and well-traveled path. Every lapsed GA pilot I've ever encountered has trod that sad road to its inevitable dead end. Many of my fellow airline pilots, meanwhile, consider aerial boredom to be a veritable hallmark of a professional pilot. Most enjoy their jobs, mind you, but they've flown variations on the same basic flight for the past 25 years and rightly take a certain amount of pride in providing that consistency. The downside is that relatively few exhibit much enthusiasm for the flying itself, as evidenced by the rarity of those who fly recreationally.
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