But also nobody wants to see a pilot rushing through the airport, because they’re supposed to be calm, levelheaded people. And you definitely don’t want them rushing through takeoff procedures.

The first two lines weren’t true until more recently. Becoming a pilot was expensive, but not out of reach. You could literally do it by earning money fueling planes up until ~20 years ago. Also, you didn’t get paid shit up until 10 years ago and they started desperately throwing money at new pilots to hire and keep them. Even some larger airlines paid like shit for newer pilots depending on aircraft for a really long while.

The dream was to make it to a major and put enough years in to make the big money.

But in the last decade things have really changed. Pay is decent even for a lot of the smaller aircraft (but not great, depending). But training costs are outrageous compared to 25-35 years ago.