Another point that irks me is the fact that a hired pilot dies when your ship is destroyed, even though you clearly have escape pods (Anaconda), and even though passengers can escape just fine. This is very bad for the crew mechanic and together with the impossibility to stop payments, when you temporarily do not use your crew, this has caused many cmdrs to use pilots as throwaway items. They don't even upgrade them anymore, but fire them before they cash in, or when they switch to crewless ships.
Don't forget that while they are in use, they are reducing your XP gains to half (or worse, if you are playing in a wing/multicrew/etc.)