Wages on the chart are as low as $19/hour – and that’s only for the hours you’re ‘flying’ (i.e., the engines are running).
Something to consider when you’re complaining about air fares.
It’s been like that for a long time. The regionals are a really, really tough game, and most people don’t make it to the big carriers. It’s just like minor league baseball. I seem to be making a lot of baseball analogies today.
Being a flight attendant is also not the cushy, glamorous, high paying job most people think it is.
It still beats washing the plane. Or wishing you would get hired to wash the plane.
I recall the issue being mentioned when a regional airliner crashed near Buffalo in 2009. Pilot error was a factor and the media reported how little experience the two pilots had and how little they were paid.
The copilot/First Officer could not afford to live near her base, so she lived with her parents (IIRC) in the State of Washington and commuted to work.
How much do they actually do anymore?
I remember a few years ago a plane overshot the MSP and didn’t get turned around for fifteen minutes or so. I don’t think the Aviation Board (or what-you-may-call-it) ever was able to find out what those guys were doing in the cockpit.
I’m just a neophyte, barely starting out on my sport pilot certificate, but my understanding is that while much is or can be automated, a skilled pilot becomes very important when things go pear-shaped. Admittedly, things don’t go pear-shaped often, but when they do, the stakes are quite high.
Something isn’t right here. Previously, about a year or two ago, pilot pay was the subject of a thread. Quotes from Wikipedia, or some such, about their pay made it seem laughably low.
Then, one Doper got on, and seemed to put the lie to the quotes/tables, etc…
I don’t buy it. There’s an information gap in the reportage, or they aren’t factoring in bonuses, or something… Pilots are richer than Croesus.
They manage the flight. Depending on the level of automation available on the aeroplane that might involve a lot or not much “hand flying”, but airline flying hasn’t been about hand flying for a long long time. The first airliner capable of landing itself was in service in the 1960s!
Was that me? If so I work in a different country and my point may have been that it’s not the airline industry that has crap conditions, it is the American airline industry that has crap conditions, and if you can get out of the US you can enjoy a reasonable lifestyle flying turbo-props and small jets.
There probably are things that aren’t getting reported though, it is very hard to compare conditions between companies because of the way different allowances work. For instance, I don’t get an hourly pay, I get a salary plus overtime that kicks in after I’ve flown 70 hours in a month. (Some “hourly” companies are very similar in that you might get an hourly rate but they guarantee a certain number of hours regardless of whether or not you’ve flown them.) Pilots in our company get an allowance for flying late at night, tax free meal allowances when away from base, a phone allowance in recognition of the requirement that we be on call at certain times, plus various other bits and pieces. The company I used to work for paid significant allowances just to offset the high cost of living at the base. So if I were to quote my salary it is actually a bare minimum that I am guaranteed to get provided I’m breathing. It happens that with the work I do, my base salary is pretty close to what I end up getting because we don’t do much in the way of overtime or trips away from base, but with a different network of routes it could easily add up to much more. This is all Australian conditions though, I assume my American counterparts get various allowances but maybe they don’t.
In general though, it is true that some pilots don’t earn much and others earn quite a lot. It seems to me that in the USA the point where the pay becomes reasonable is further along in a pilot’s career than over here, but the basic concept is the same, start out working for the love of it and not much money, end up working for the money and not much love ;).
Part of the US response to the Colgan crash was a requirement to have 1500 hours and an Air Transport Licence to be able to sit in any seat in an airliner (it used to be that only the captain required an ATP.) This is kind of ironic because both of the pilots in the Colgan crash actually had significantly more hours than the new requirement. The FO had 2200 hours and the captain had about 3200. So that particular change doesn’t address anything really, and in other parts of the world cadet pilots with as little as 250 hours total time have been flying as co-pilots for well respected airlines with good safety records.
I was surprised at how little they were getting paid though. The big difference between conditions there and here that I can see is that you guys have quite big annual pay increases so how many years you’ve been with a company makes a significant difference to what you get paid. Over here the years of service increments, if there are any, tend to be smaller. My company pays the captains one salary with no annual increases other than a percentage designed to keep up with inflation, and it starts the first officers on 55% of the captain’s salary ending at 65% after 4 years. Looking at that article, the first officer’s rates nearly double between their starting wages and final wages.
Flight Instructor here.
Several of my students have gone on to the airlines, and most are doing quite well. As stated above, the starting pay is pretty low, but it climbs quickly. One of my former students (who I taught on a tiny grass field) called last month to let me know he’s made it to the right seat of a 747, and his salary’s well into the six-figures. It took a little under 20 years from regional turboprop to that point.
I’ve posted here occasionally about another student of mine, my son. He started flying for the regionals this summer in a Dash-8. This is the 80-seat version of the plane Richard Pearse flies (who’s been kind enough to PM a few tips for him) 
He’s been told, due to equipment/route changes he should expect an upgrade to the 175 by Christmas (sorry, couldn’t find one in his airline’s livery).
As to the pay, the article doesn’t mention all the extra trip, per-diem, equipment, and other add-ons. IIRC, my youngster’s first full month of line flying (after training and waiting on reserve) netted about $3400. This is a bit more than the article reports.
According to my kid, experienced Captains in the regional easily clear the six-figure hurdle. One poster above mentioned it’s difficult and most don’t make it to the big carriers, but it’s analogous to saying most medical school student’s don’t become surgeons. A lot of them don’t have that as a goal. He tells me the older regional left-seaters tell him they’re satisfied with making plenty of dough and having the seniority to control their schedules. If I understand it right, moving up to the majors means restarting at the bottom (and a likely pay reduction). Many are at the point in families/life/etc. where the hit isn’t worth it. (I don’t know about you, but I could be satisfied with a 120K/year job that gave me 15 days off per month)
If you’ll forgive a small sidenote: After all the training, classroom, sim-rides and observing crews from the jumpseat, the day came when the training captain handed over the controls and he actually flew a plane full of passengers. He did very well (of course) and after he landed, his crew took him to dinner to celebrate his 24th birthday. 
Not anymore. I went on to the BAe146 about two and a half years ago and am just coming to the end of my first year as a captain on it. (I am on the SDMB instead of studying for my next recurrent simulator session.)
Cool! 
Good point. The longest sector I do is 2 hours and to me that is 1 hour too long, I used to want to do the international thing but now I can’t think of much worse than sitting in an aeroplane for that long. I’d much rather fly four short sectors and end up back at home for the night. Sure I’d get paid more flying international but my current gig has me home every night (or every day when I’m on the freighter), I get every weekend off and I work on average 2 - 3 days a week. I’m definitely at a point in my life where lifestyle is far more important than a bit of extra money and the “glamour” of constant travel. To top it all off, the BAe146 is an antiquated piece of shit with a useless autopilot and an inherently high workload, in other words quite a bit of fun :).
The world is his oyster. I didn’t get on to a turbo-prop until I was 31.
Great to hear Richard. Looks like a neat airplane (I couldn’t resist googling cockpt pictures). Apologies for missing your upgrade, as I think you did mention it before.
It’s interesting how pilots become fond of the quirky airplanes, isn’t it? pullinSon claims the -8 is somewhat quirky too, and now thinks it’s the greatest airliner in the world. (Based on his sample size of one, I guess he’s right in some odd logical sense) And thanks for the good wishes. He’s on cloud 9 right now, and is even enjoying some of the hilarious hazing-like stuff that happens to new pilots.
[sorry about getting off topic, Johnny LA]
It is a pretty great job if you have seniority at a company who takes care of their employees. I have several good friends who work for Southwest and it really is a cush job, the pay is good with nice raises every year and the perks are many. Since none of my friends have kids, they are able to spend much of their off time traveling the world, as well as seeing much of America during their work week.
But most attendants who don’t get hired at an opportune time, or by a stable company, face endless cycles of layoffs and unwanted relocations.
She was making $16000 a year as a pilot and was working a second job in a coffee shop to make ends meet.
So much for “richer than Croesus”.
Who actually believes it’s a glamorous job, as opposed to being a glorified watress/waiter?
Teenagers who are trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives probably. And compared to some other options it is glamorous.
That’s ok, I don’t think I had a thread or anything about it.
[aside]I always found the 146 very aesthetically interesting. [/aside]
Yes, from the table one can tell that the airline pilot pay in the US is heavily weighted towards strongly rewarding long-term staying with the company. Which can be kind of tricky when* the companies themselves* have tended to not stick around for the long term any more. Also, the repeated bankruptcies and mergers have done a job on the crews’ pensions and side benefits and the seniority standings.
The increase in the entry licensing requirements has another economic effect on would-be new pilots: you can credit a part of the hours required by completing a full course in an Aviation College, but that means high pre-employment expenses and probable debt load. (The most crediting of hours happens if you are a military vet pilot but there are much fewer than there used to be.)
I might have found the post you’re thinking of here.
Nothing that poster says negates the premise that some pilots are on crap conditions. He is working for a major airline and has done so for years, you’d expect his base salary to be at the top end of the scale and with travel allowances $165K is what he ends up with. What most people don’t realise is that most pilots in the US don’t fall in to that group. And there is a huge gulf between the low and high end of the pay scale.
Once, in the very early hours of the morning, after landing a BAe146 freighter into Brisbane, I heard the ground controller tell another aircraft to “give way to the Fisher-Price Starlifter and taxi to the apron.” :D. I think they would have to be the only 100~ seat airliner that I would describe as “cute.”
Seniority is both one of the best things and one of the worst things about the aviation industry.
For those that don’t know, most airlines have a seniority list. The list has your name and a number. The number is your rank amongst the company’s pilots determined by your start date with the company. The pilot in the company who has been there the longest will be number 1 and the new hire will be number 234 or 1072 or something depending on the size of the company. If someone retires then all the pilots below them move up the list.
If the company needs to upgrade pilots, or a new basing becomes available or something, anyone can apply for the position and the position will be awarded to the most senior pilot who meets the minimum requirements (if any.) That pilot will then be given training for the new position. They may fail the training and checking process in which case the next pilot in line will get a go, but if they pass everything, the position is theirs. In addition to this, some rostering systems will give preference to the more senior pilots.
This is good for preventing favouritism, it prevents the airline from hiring from outside the company over the top of existing employees, and it provides a clear career path. You start at the bottom as an FO and eventually you will get the opportunity to be a captain. It rewards all people equally. The seniority system is a boon to mediocre everyday pilots who don’t do anything to stand out from the pack but nonetheless still have skills to get through the training process when it is their turn. The really good pilots just have to wait in line with everyone else and the below par pilots should get failed by the checking and training system.
The downside to a seniority system is that it stifles sideways movement from one company to another. Pilots end up locked in to a company because if they leave for a different company they have to start at the bottom again. The longer you stay in a company the harder it is to move and maintain something close to your current salary. That means that airlines aren’t having to compete with each other on wages and conditions as it is almost always better to stay where you are and therefore you have no bargaining power. This is true as long as the total supply of pilots is more than the demand.
If you consider a young pilot who ultimately wants to get into a major airline. Their current job might be training other pilots, or doing a bit of charter work. They probably have to work a second job to supplement their income. They know that to move ahead in their career they need experience flying bigger aeroplanes. When their options are to stay where they are, to take a job at a regional airline possibly being paid the same or less than they currently earn but flying a bigger aeroplane, or quitting flying altogether, most of them will take the second option. The regionals have a steady supply of willing pilots and never have to up their wages and conditions to entice them in.
They do have a problem with their more senior pilots though. Those pilots have the experience for the major airlines and if the majors starts hiring the experience will quickly be sucked out of the regionals. So they need to offer reasonable conditions to the more senior pilots in the hope that enough of them will find the lifestyle/wage package preferable to flying for the majors.
That is, in my opinion, partly why the US carriers have such a range of conditions. The new hires get shit pay because they can and the senior guys get reasonable pay because they have to.