Originally Posted by
Ski Patrol
I'll throw in the cargo at a later date and eventually weight the #'s for an even more accurate picture. The task just took longer then expected. The discussion drifted toward median pay and I wanted a hard figure for the peeps to look at.
Course if you take 87,534/12 months/300 hrs per diem = The median pilot makes $24.32 per hour at work.
I only did engineering school for 8 years but I did stay at a holiday inn last night. You didn't compute the median of anything; you didn't account for the real distribution function of seniority, the real distribution function of CA/FO ratio, the weigh factor per airline if said airline flies more than one equipment. Your number is an exercise in simple arithmetic mean with wicked right-skewed assumptions (i.e. putting 50% (ie unweighted) of Delta's "CA's" under a simple mean..6400 bodies to be exact, capping off the chart for 76- equipment... ***). Your math is a crude shot at averaging, which is exactly what one cannot do if one intends to accurately portray a statistical sample where a lot of people are on ramen noodles compared to a few who are rolling immorally well... aka the airlines.
Since APC does not provide such distribution functions to properly weigh the payscales, let's say the difference between capping out and nominal CA starting seniority on the charts for the majors (the largest culprits of statistical outliers on the x-axis [pay]) is a generous 20% across the board (I'm left-sizing your wicked right-skewed CA figures for the bulk of legacies to a simple mean since I do not have the distribution functions for CA/FO seniorities and ratios for Delta, American and United). That still puts the MEDIAN for the whole 121 biz at 70K, which is about par for the course. I actually plotted the population distribution as a function of pay scale across all data points given on APC (270 data points) and the x-y scatter makes a funny picture that looks like two people standing on Mt everest looking at a huge purple blob of un-declutterable points at the bottom. What an industry I tell ya....
THE PROBLEM is that you cannot suggest with a straight face that said 70K was the result of working 9-5, being home every night, and having weekends off and the rational assumption of the median that income retention and lateral careerism is a given. As you suggested, when normalized for an hourly figure that could be applied to banking hours you're looking at 19.44/hr...holy sh$t, the opportunity cost is working a 37K 9-5 job and taking the rest of the week off. There's your disparity right there. I can chuck a stone at a bank and land a 35-40K job with a pulse and a degree in basket weaving. This effectively says that the extra time pilots are volunteering their time they are effectively getting paid in takeoff and landings. That's fair enough, but don't call it pay.These computations don't even address the level of applicants that give up within two years of regional work, that would put the number even lower if one were to account for the unemployed and disenchanted who are otherwise qualified.
Look, the reality is that to attain a sustainable airline career that consistenly rewards you above REAL six figure income, when adjusted for hours away from home, discontinuity in pay and the foregoing of the lateral career options that is available to 99% of the population, is to hedge our bets on a statistical crapshoot. This means that the opportunity cost is gonna have to be individually assessed and it's certainly not competitive with other careers that demand time away from home (oil rig work, military and federal civil service, etc). I don't think the sunset at FL370 is really worth that opportunity cost to the median pilot, when all is said and done. But there are enough hobby pilots in the career nowadays to drown that POV for the offering that "it's what you make of it" and that subsidizing non-livable wages for the lower 25th percentile of the sample pool is justifiable, desirable, and worthwhile.
People say, "well 70K is not that bad, I'd do it over again", I say that's disingenous rationalizing from people who are not stuck in that position. It's always "reasonable" to make judgement calls on quality of life when you're not the one being confronted with said constraints. Those who are confronted with such realities and speak up about it are called whiners, after all, poverty is a moral choice according to the peanut gallery of the statistically fortunate. Gimme a break. The reality is that most people DO NOT think 70K as an aggregate income potential goal when pursuing an airline career, SJS included. Most people still choose to delude themselves into thinking that it's a simpleton function of "paying dues" and "staying the course" that's going to reward them with two-sigma to the right of individual median income compensation. That COULD be true of our aforementioned banking job, heck even civil service would net you six figures by holding out long enough, but airline work? Couldn't be farther from the truth.
The reality is that when you put rubber to the pavement with respect to these median income calculation for pilots and translate to actual circumstances, the best the median can cumulatively attain is the prayer of a regional CA lifer job that doesn't get furloughed. Plan accordingly. I did that math and decided said employment conditions and compensation was not worth mortgaging my family and personal relationships. For others that analysis will be different. But stop telling the world 777 widebody CA is "what you make of it" and fundamentally a function of perseverance, REAL LIFE be damned, that's just condescending and misinformed.