I don’t think “hours” would be the right unit for surgeons, but even conceeding that-- No, I don’t think your comparison is apt. First, near as I can tell, low starting salaries followed by rapid increases to the $100k+ range is the norm. A little searching shows that there may be a pilot shortage for Asian airlines, leading to around $120k as the starting salary. So, not peanuts.
Second, to have an apt comparison-- even using hours-- you would need to compare this to a surgeon with 10,000+ hours of experience, but had only done heart surgery in a computer program, and then did the real thing & screwed up. Assuming it was pilot error here, which the NTSB is likely to take a year or more to determine.
