Low Pay for Airline Pilots "Threatens" the Country

   “I had to refresh the page  times to view this page for some reason, however, the information here was worth the wait.”

Society just needs to decide how important things are, and how much we're willing to pay. I read a shocking article yesterday about doctor's pay falling, and it makes me wonder if we as a society want the best and brightest to have these jobs, or do we feel like just anyone off the streets can do an okay job. Airline tickets are way too cheap, anyway. Even if the price went up, the extra money would probably go into the pocket of one of America's 500 richest people, rather than into the pilot's pocket. Our country needs to fundamentally re-examine so many of the things that we're doing as a society. But we won't do the difficult work of society...instead the Tea Baggers will argue with the Libtards, and at night we'll all get together to watch Dancing With The Stars. Happy America!

Take a look at what EMTs and Paramedics typically earn outside of government agencies.  The guy saving your life can often makes less per-hour than the guy who preps and cleans the ambulances overnight.

That said, many EMT/Paramedic jobs are seen as a stepping stone to traditionally better paying --though perhaps not for long--firefighter jobs, hence the large supply of potential employees.  Large supply, limited demand = low wages.  Sad but true.

Sounds like we'll eventually have pilots working for $10 per hour and two free snacks!

That's about what I make as a long-haul truck driver. No free snacks, though.

I was an FO at the airlines for 3 years, never made more than $20k in a year and rarely saw my family/friends.  Finally I decided it wasn't worth it and I'm back at school to work on a new career.  So yes, the wages and working conditions are driving people from the cockpit.  I wish more people would follow suit.  Get the government out of our contract negotiations (see the RLA) or have them mandate wages and working conditions.  As it is right now, they are actively repressing our pay and working conditions while they search for any other reason to blame the problems on.

Major issue with those numbers. Those numbers are based on 40 hrs/week. Pilots are only paid by the flight hour even if they are reviewing flight plans or waiting on their next flight or sitting in a hotel. They are limited to 100 hours/month and in reality average about 80-85 hours/month....So comparing hourly rate to that of other jobs is not accurate and actually makes the pilots situation worse as compared to the window washer.

The hours presented above are per flight hour.  A real hourly pay would equate to about half of what is presented in this article.  

These window washers get paid for 80 hours bi weekly. Pilots get paid 76 hours per month!

If pilot pay is so low, then why do they continue to fly? We know why! SJS; Shiny Jet Syndrome. Window washing at 20 bucks an hour or RJ flying for 20 bucks per "flight" hour. We know what's right for you.

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Keep in mind that the hourly rate for pilots is only from the time re aircraft door closes until the time it opens again. It doesn't count the time spent on duty at the airport. So if you take what a pilot made in a day of flying, divided by the time they were at work, in their uniform, the effective hourly rate is even less!

We are now in a world of bean counters. It is easy to ask what is the least amount of money we need to budget for the job code. And then cut that.

“When I fly, I always take Delta… That’s because they pay their pilots the most money… You don’t want to fly with unhappy pilots.” 

Johnny Carson, Tonight Show monologue, 1981

Traversing race, culture, gender, education level and socio-economic standing is the desire to be happy. It is the most powerful force buried at the center of the human soul. An individual’s “happiness” is directly linked to how life unfolds relative to expectations. Hopes and dreams in a mate, family, friends, social standing, or a career are just a few areas that can fall short, meet, or exceed expectations.

Tragic irony of high expectations is the possibility they will not be met hence a greater risk of an unhappy life. Throughout life expectations are created and destroyed. Over the course of a lifetime a common pattern emerges where expectations follow a trace akin to a bell curve. Zero at birth, peaking mid-life, and diminishing as one passes the “mid-life crisis”. With this knowledge one might conclude the key to happiness at any point along the curve is to simply lower your expectations. Unfortunately expectations are often set as a result of something external to or as a result of something the individual did or did not accomplish. Print, video, and other environmental exposure are powerful influences. Performance in academics, sports, social life, college and graduate school play an important part of setting expectations. Success indexes life’s expectation curve higher while failure drives it lower. A driven, successful, highly capable person who has climbed the ladder to Chief of Neurosurgery at Massachusetts General will have radically higher expectations than a person who flunked out of high school, smoked dope for three years before setting a lifetime career goal to become a forklift driver at the city garbage dump.

Business leaders recognize it’s essential in a market-based enterprise to have happy employees. “Best man or woman for the job” does not imply the one who has the highest level of capability but rather the person whose capabilities and expectations most closely match the duties, responsibilities, and compensation the job has to offer. Management must balance the need for competence against cost. When a business cannot meet employee and customer expectations balanced against revenue, it will fail. When an entire industry finds itself in this situation, the entire industry will fail.In the airline industry an unprecedented percentage of unit revenue and unit expense is outside control of management.

In 1978 pricing power was wiped out with passage of the Airline Deregulation Act. During the 1990’s the Internet matured making it almost impossible to gain a revenue advantage over a competitor. Awash in red ink it was no surprise the chainsaw was wielded at labor in an attempt to reduce costs following the Dot-com bust of 2000 and the events surrounding September 11, 2001. It was the perfect storm. Luckily the airlines had resources in place to deal with the tragedy.

For the last 35 years a Washington D.C. based think tank funded by the airlines, Airline Industrial Relations Conference, has existed to achieve one objective: Control airline personnel cost. How well have they done? In a word, phenomenal. I will illustrate the fruits of their labor with their crowning achievement................. Airline pilots

In terms of inflation adjusted dollars, Airline pilots today earn less than half of what they did 35 years ago. The unit of work can be measured by flight hours, duty hours, hours away from home, Revenue Passenger Miles, Available Seat Miles, or most importantly, revenue generated per pilot.

Industry hyperbole: Pilots are paid way too much. Look at the hourly wage. Look at how little they work. Seems like a whole lot of money to pay someone for a part time hobby.

In reality if consideration is given to opportunity cost, time value of money, true number of hours required to become and work as a commercial pilot, risk in terms of not completing a career for any number of reasons, including getting killed; The economic justification is not substantiated to become a commercial pilot even if the career goal is attained. 

Industry belief: There is not now nor will there ever be a shortage of people willing to work as pilots at any wage. True fact. Nor will there ever be a shortage of people willing to be Professional Ball players, or Firefighters or CEOs at any wage. The question is this: Will the industry be able to attract and retain the level of competence required at any wage? The answer is no. At the current Federal minimum wage you would not be able to consistently find competent Professional Ball players, Firefighters, CEOs or Airline pilots.

 Industry stance: Pilots don’t get paid minimum wage and planes are not falling out of the sky. The current national manpower pool of airline pilots came in with substantially higher career expectations, thus capability than what will be the next generation airline pilots. Airlines now operate on borrowed time during the transition. It will take years, perhaps a decade for current pilots to retire and or leave the profession in significant numbers before the damage to safety will be acknowledged.

Industry opinion: Statistically we are enjoying an era of unprecedented airline safety. There will always be some level of risk to flying.

A time bomb is being built as airlines focus on lower expectation pilots. As the industry continues the “race to the bottom” airline leadership will confront a pilot labor pool decimated to such an extent that safe, reliable air transportation will no longer be feasible within the cost structure they created. As the next generation pilots take command we will see much more of what is now just the tip of an alarming iceberg: Unthinkable missteps by incompetent pilots resulting in massive loss of life and substantial hull losses. Recent events such as the Helios 737 crash, the West Caribbean MD-82 crash, the American Airbus A300 crash, the Northwest Pinnacle CRJ crash and the Delta Comair CRJ crash are examples are inexcusable errors that should have never happened. Safe air travel was built by minimizing identifiable risk. The industry has become complacent with the current level of safety and is willing to accept increased risk in an effort to reduce personnel costs.

 Industry objective: Replace human capability with technology. Over the last 35 years the modern airliner has been loaded with safety features in an attempt to idiot-proof flying. If we can teach Homer Simpson to run a nuclear power plant we can now teach his twin brother to fly a jet plane.

Flying is a dynamic environment requiring considerable judgment and intervention beyond the capability of technology. Members of the Airline Industrial Relations Conference need to dispatch with the NTSB Go Team so they could see first hand the true fruits of their labor. The severed body parts and blood splattered airplane wreckage. The stench of burned human flesh and charred remains at the crash site of Delta Comair 5191 in Lexington, Kentucky. They should be required to console the loved ones of those who were killed. Only Airline Industrial Relations Conference members would attempt to quantify why such a hull loss is acceptable. Air Conference members should be held accountable for manslaughter, or if they fully understand what they have done, murder.

Safety of the flying public needs to take priority over trying to staff airline cockpits with the cheapest human resources the industry can find. The Simpson’s is just a cartoon.

Interviewing people from every walk of life for three decades he understood what made people tick. If he were alive today, Johnny Carson would not be flying Delta or any other airline. He would not be able to find any well-paid happy pilots. The leaders of the airline industry have won and the flying public has lost. And it was all for what? $5.

Find out how long and to what expense one has to do to become a regional airline pilot.

The regionals are the stepping stone to the major airlines but in todays day and age you'll be stuck making below 50K a year for at least 5 years before cracking into a Captain position at 75K. All this while enduring long hours away from friends and family, having every word uttered, action taken, recorded and potentally review by the company and the FAA, to retain the childhood dream. The profession used to mean something, used to be fun, used to be desirable, now it's the easiest way to drinking alone in Fargo, facetiming with your family from Durango and cheating on your husband or wife in Chicago, all while paying off your student loans for years at a benefit level less then a full time worker at McDonalds! From the outside the profession looks incredible, from the inside, it's downright shameful!! If you talk to the most experienced airline pilots today I garentee you 90% of them would leave if they could take 20+ years of crawling and scratching there way to the level of income today to anything outside the aviation community. The road to happiness in aviation happened in it's heyday of the 70's and early 80's, now it's just a big pain in the ass! Stay away, the glamor is design!!