Was being an airline pilot a prestegious job?

[mnemosyne]

@Mean_Mr.Mustard

So, what’s a typical pay range for a pilot these days? I gotta believe, even with cuts, they make a nice wage. (not that they don’t earn it)

The pay rates in that link are possibly a little misleading. It lists Colgan Air First Officers as making $21 an hour, which sounds good to me (about $40-42 000 a year), but flight hours are so restricted, and a lot of regional airlines don’t pay for commuting (even though many pilots do have to commute to work) etc etc, so the pilots likely make far less than that. The NTSB Public Inquiry into Colgan Flight 3407 revealed that the First Officer likely made about $26 000 a year. She lived in Washington State and was based out of Newark, New Jersey and could not afford to live near her work. I think the Captain was in the $50-60 000/year range, but I don’t remember.

Pilots for major carriers do make a lot more (as seen in that link), though.

[Johnny_L.A]

I was going to mention that, but I was too lazy.

As for the OP, I think the prestige of being an airline pilot has lost some of its shine. (Of course, I’ve never been one so I don’t know.) If I had the ratings, I think I’d rather be a traffic helicopter pilot or medevac pilot.

[Lionne]

My boyfriend’s a commercial pilot and I still think he has the coolest job on the world. He doesn’t understand the whole “but you get to FLY!.. a PLANE!” mentality and is pretty frustrated with the industry ups and downs, having already been furloughed and recalled after a year and a half on the job.

[chappachula]

There are two issues here, I think:
the prestige of the pilot…and
the prestige of flying in general.

as for pilots-I still kinda respect ‘em.
But as for the friggin’ airline companies…well, we all know how little they respect us customers.

Back in the old days, it wasn’t just the pilots that were cool…it was the whole exotic culture of air travel.
I suppose it’s similar to railroad travel a century ago. The Orient Express was cool, too , in its day.

[Wallenstein]

Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men has a section on airline pilots, and how on one of American Airline’s subsidiaries pilots were banned from collecting food stamps, as even though the wages were appaling the airline wanted to preserve the image of pilots.

You can read an extract here, but some of the salient quotes:

[QUOTE=Michael Moore]
As I’m sitting in a Michigan airport waiting for my American Airlines flight to Chicago, a man in a uniform sits down beside me and strikes up a conversation.

He […] revealed that the starting pay for a pilot at American Eagle was $16,800 a year.

“What?” I asked, sure that I had misheard the figure. “Sixteen grand per year?”

“That’s right,” the captain responded. “And that’s high. At Delta’s commuter airline, starting pay is $15,000 for a pilot; at Continental Express, it’s around $13,000.”

[…]

It gets worse. That first year as a pilot, you have to pay for your own flight training and your own uniforms. After that’s all deducted, you end up with about $9,000. Gross"

[…]

"One of our pilots last month went down to the welfare office and applied for food stamps. No kidding. With four kids, at his level of pay as a pilot, he was legally eligible for assistance. The front office at American found out about this and sent out a memo that said no pilot was to apply for food stamps or welfare-even if they were eligible for it! Anyone who did apply would be let go.

“So now my buddy just goes down to the food bank on his way home. They don’t ask for anything from you that would get back to American Airlines.”

[…]

While captains who had been with these commuter airlines for a number of years were pulling in the big money ($40,000/year!), first-year rookies in many cases were living below the poverty level.
[/quote]

[Big_Norse]

@Johnny_L.A

As for the OP, I think the prestige of being an airline pilot has lost some of its shine. (Of course, I’ve never been one so I don’t know.) If I had the ratings, I think I’d rather be a traffic helicopter pilot or medevac pilot.

My bro-in-law has been a large airline commercial pilot for ~15 years (after a stint flying in the Navy) and part of the shine that’s come off the job is that he doesn’t find it fun anymore since 9-11. At any moment a nutcase with a boxcutter may come straight for his jugular (it’s gotten better since they’ve shored up the cockpit doors, but it still gives him pause).

In the years after 9-11 the companies did so poorly the pilots took paycuts just so they could keep their jobs. And as he points out, he gets paid by the hour, but only for the hours he’s in the air, not all the hours he’s away from home. Spending a day laying over in Paris is only fun the first dozen times you do it.

[mhendo]

@Mr.Excellent

You can’t just press a button and have the plane land itself, either. As I understand it, auto-pilots require considerable skill to configure and operate properly.

and

@msmith537

Well clearly flying an airplane is much more complicated than driving a bus and much less forgiving of error.

Although I though I saw in Mythbusters where they demonstrated that with all the auto-pilot and computer aided functionality, it’s actually surprisingly easy for the tower to talk someone down 80s/90s action movie style.

Well, i haven’t seen Mythbusters, but from the reading i’ve done, i think it’s much harder than most people seem to think.

If you’re interested in the world of piloting commercial aircraft, i highly recommend the work of Patrick Smith, who writes the Salon blog Ask The Pilot. Smith discusses all sorts of airline and air travel related issues, and some of his recent articles have dealt specifically with the issue of automation and the difficulty of flying a plane.

Does Cockpit Automation Foster boredom?

Both Pilots Sick: Could You Land the Jetliner?

The Cockpit Automation Myth that Won’t Die

From last article listed:

Several years ago, researchers in Denver gathered together 112 private pilots and put them to the test in an old Boeing 737-200 simulator. Of the 112, only 23 managed to get the plane from 35,000 feet to a reasonably intact landing – in clear weather, with instruction from the ground. Approximately 50 percent were unable to manage anything at all. Mind you these were FAA certificated pilots.

And from the middle one:

What if? Could DeLuna have somehow landed that 400,000-pound jetliner on her own?

The answer, in my opinion, is an asterisked no. Provided she could figure out how to work the communications radios, there is a very outside chance that she could then have been talked through a series of descents and into setting up an auto-land procedure at O’Hare. Such a scenario would be fraught with complications and the chances of disaster extremely high. She would have to be coached from 35,000 feet all the way to the point where an automatic approach could commence, complete with any number of turns, descents, decelerations and aircraft configuration changes. I reckon that would be about as easy as dictating brain surgery over the telephone to somebody who has never held a scalpel.

<snip>

Effectively, the autopilot is not so much a single thing as it is a system – a collection of guidance components. Nowhere, you’ll notice, is there a button marked “Land Now at Closest Airport.”

He’s not saying it’s impossible, but it’s certainly harder than it looks in the movies.

@aceplace57

Traditionally commercial airline pilots were ex Air Force or Navy pilots. They had received extensive training in the military and had logged a lot of flight hours. Then, they got civilian flight training to learn the airline planes.

The low pay is changing things. The military pilots make more staying in the military. A lot of them aren’t interested in flying for the airlines.

Depends on the carrier, and the country.

A guy i went to high school with is now a 747 pilot for Qantas. He joined the Royal Australian Air Force after college, flew large transport planes for the military, and then moved on to the commercial airliner, where he currently (i think) flies on the Sydney-London route.

@Mean_Mr.Mustard

So, what’s a typical pay range for a pilot these days? I gotta believe, even with cuts, they make a nice wage. (not that they don’t earn it)

Doper pilot141 discussed the issue of pay in a thread some years ago, and he commented that the best-paid pilots are usually those working for the big courier/cargo companies like Fed Ex and UPS. The figures in Johnny L.A.'s link tend to support this.

And pilot141 also said that the best-paid passenger jet pilots, at least in the US, are generally Southwest pilots, but i think he also said that they had to work a lot of hours to max out their pay, which he put in the $200-230K range.

[mnemosyne]

One of the issues the industry is facing is that there are fewer people being trained as military pilots than in previous generations, since there are more unmanned aircraft being used. The cost of becoming a pilot for a civilian is ridiculous - just obtaining your minimums for a Commercial Pilot License is often quoted as being about $50 000, and most people need way more than the minimum hours. A CPL won’t let you work as an airline Captain either - you need a lot more training and experience before you can get your Airline Transport License. There’s also a serious push to increase the minimum hours required.

So fewer military trained pilots + increasingly cost-prohibitive civilian training + increasingly lower pay, particularly at the start of a career + ageing pilot population = commercial pilot shortage in the long-run.

[Koxinga]

@mnemosyne

One of the issues the industry is facing is that there are fewer people being trained as military pilots than in previous generations, since there are more unmanned aircraft being used. The cost of becoming a pilot for a civilian is ridiculous - just obtaining your minimums for a Commercial Pilot License is often quoted as being about $50 000, and most people need way more than the minimum hours. A CPL won’t let you work as an airline Captain either - you need a lot more training and experience before you can get your Airline Transport License. There’s also a serious push to increase the minimum hours required.

So fewer military trained pilots + increasingly cost-prohibitive civilian training + increasingly lower pay, particularly at the start of a career + ageing pilot population = commercial pilot shortage in the long-run.

Hmmm . . . I wonder if there are any initiatives for commercial pilot H1B visas, or the like?

[Johnny_L.A]

@Koxinga

Hmmm . . . I wonder if there are any initiatives for commercial pilot H1B visas, or the like?

When I was flying (helicopters), the FBO had several foreign students. It was said that it was cheaper to rent an apartment in the L.A. area and train in helicopters here, than training in Ireland (where the instructors and at least one of the students were from). If that’s true, then H1Bs mightn’t do any good.

[Livardo]

Poor Middle Eastern flight students must get scrutinized to hell after 9/11

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

I don’t understand the OP. Granted the pilots of puddle-jumpers may be overworked and make far less money than a bus driver. But aren’t the senior pilots who operate the large, long-haul planes still very well regarded, and paid?

Granted if you’re a kid and you think it must be the coolest job ever, by the time you grow up you’ll have learned that much of the work is just routine and it’s probably not the coolest job ever, after all.

[Quartz]

Pprune is a messageboard dedicated to pilots and the air industry.

[Hank_Hill]

I’m an airline pilot with a major US carrier. I made $165,00 last year as a first officer. Captains make considerably more. Make no mistake, we work HARD for it and shoulder a tremendous amount of responsibility. We also make huge personal sacrifices. I haven’t been home for Christmas is 12 years.

The industry today is certainly not what it once was. Airline pilots used to be seen as being one step below astronauts, now we’re one step above cab drivers. A lot of the public’s image of pilots has to do (unfortunately) with the airlines themselves which have had to slash service and pay to the bare bone just to keep up with the cost of doing business. It’s easy to provide first class amenities and turn a profit when oil is $15 a barrel and ticket prices are up, but try doing it with oil at $130 a barrel and a public demanding $100 roundtrip transcons.

Contrary to popular belief, the airplanes do NOT fly themselves, and driving a bus around The Bronx and piloting a multi million dollar airliner with 200 plus souls onboard have exactly nothing in common. Incidentally, military pilots don’t always make the best airline pilots. The best captain I ever flew with was a civilian pilot. Sully may have been an Air Force Academy grad, but the fact is any of my colleagues at any major airline would have done the same thing because that’s what we’re trained to do. We’re paid to keep YOU safe when everything else falls apart. If a doctor steps into the operating room and screws up, they kill one person. When an airline crew screws up…well, you get the message.

Having said all that, the profession is what you make of it. It’s not flying Pan Am Clippers to London anymore, but it’s a lot better than digging ditches.

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

@Hank_Hill

If a doctor steps into the operating room and screws up, they kill one person. When an airline crew screws up…well, you get the message.

Yeah, but I get to keep killing patients, because I don’t usually die in the process of killing them! So in a career, I can take out a lot more people than most pilots can.

Otherwise, your post is spot-on, if a bit time delayed.

QtM, former owner and pilot of a Boeing N2S3, and who once got a ride from Bob Hoover in his P-51! All that was lots more fun than doctoring, that’s for sure.

[Little_Nemo]

Sure, Qadgop, being a doctor and a pilot is okay. But the real prestige is being able to tell people you work in a prison, am I right?

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

@Little_Nemo

Sure, Qadgop, being a doctor and a pilot is okay. But the real prestige is being able to tell people you work in a prison, am I right?

You nailed it. That factoid sure turned a lot of heads at a recent conference I attended with 400 other Family Medicine physicians.

Prison stories seem to fascinate even us narcissistic, jaded physicians.

[si_blakely]

@Qadgop_the_Mercotan

You nailed it. That factoid sure turned a lot of heads at a recent conference I attended with 400 other Family Medicine physicians.

I was thinking that there wasn’t too much Family involved in prison medicine, but I suppose treating jailed mob members counts as Family Medicine

On a serious note, in some population groups, prison time for male family members is almost a given, so the likelyhood of you practicing Family Medicine is actually pretty high (but also rather sad).

Si

[SanVito]

I still think it’s quite prestigious, but maybe I’m thinking of the transatlantic, flag-carrier airline pilots rather than the budget airlines. I have a friend who has moved from being an officer in the RAF to a flight officer for British Airways, and he’s way cool.

Pay grades don’t look bad either: Captains with BA make between $127,000 and $215,000 per annum, with 6 weeks paid holiday, 12% pension contribution, free flights for the family, discounted holidays, PLUS on-duty pay of $15 per flying hour.

Sure as hell beats being a bus driver.

[Sailboat]

@SanVito

Sure as hell beats being a bus driver.

Until you run out of gas.