Ok. Before anyone get's the wrong idea, this is only a thread and I guess all I'm doing is sharing my thoughts but here we go:

I'm not an airline pilot, I am a CFI and I have been for close to a year and a half. I did get hired by Comair and Eagle and now Im swimming in their pools.
I enjoy my job and I feel like in this country our jobs, including instructing is under-appreciated and I feel like pilot's have been taken advantage of so I think it would be nice if pilots get the respect back, the kind that I have heard of and read about, the one back in the 1970s. The reason why Im writing this is because after doing my taxes, and looking at the income of my friends working for regional airlines, I made more, and that's just pathetic. (Not the pilot's fault at all, just saying it's just wrong) so how do we fix it? I thought about it, and I think one way of fixing pilot's salary would be some kind of government help, and I don't mean that the government should pay us or anything like that, just hear me out. (and this may not be an original idea, please don't start bashing me and say it's a stupid idea, just give me an honest response, good or bad)

For each seat occupied, there would be a fee of $5. (Rev or non-rev) EVERYONE sitting in a seat on a flight pays 5 dollars extra - call it Pilot's fee or whatever you like.
If you buy a ticket and there is a connection, fee is applied only once. if it is a non rev, then you have to pay it for each flight. (if you think about it guys, 5 bucks extra to fly from one city to another isn't that much)
Now, the only way this would work, is IF all the airlines had to charge that fee, and I think the only way they can do it if the government stepped in and make it a required fee (sort of a tax).

I did some calculations for Delta. I looked up the amount of passengers they carried in the month of January, 2009. It was 7.65 million. I also looked up the amount of pilot's Delta employs. I did go through most of the regionals that I found are contracted by Delta and the total number of pilot's came to 22,887 pilots. Please correct me if anyone wants to find out the actual number. BUT FOR THE SAKE of the argument here, let's use those numbers. $5 x 7,650,000 = 38,250,000 and dividing that by 22,887 gives me 1671.25 That would be the amount of money each pilot would receive extra after the month ended and based on the numbers for each month.

Now, here we go with some of the problems I've thought of:
Why only pilots get this money? and not FAs? well because pilot is a skilled job, which takes a lot of effort, time, money to train for. And I have to say, as a flight instructor, I have seen a lot of students who try few lessons and realize it is not for them. FA's don't spend months of training, long hundreds of hours, and spend THOUSANDS of dollars on their training, so I feel like that is a fair reason why this fee is for pilot's only.

Airlines don't want to increase their ticket prices. - well, you know what, whenever someone feels like flying in a multi million dollar jet from NY to MIA for 100 bucks is fair, well then extra 5 bucks won't hurt anyone. besides, it used to be a privilege to be flying in an airplane, now it seems like stepping into a bus (no offense to you guys working your A$$ off working for the airlines)

Ok. please dont Bash my idea, i mean, Im just sharing my thoughts and if you dont like it, then well maybe you shouldnt fight for your right to earn a more respectful salary for your highly valued skill.

If anyone wishes to add something to this, let me know, if you guys think it is a good idea, then perhaps its time to do something about it, I mean Im not working for the airlines (yet) but I'd love to do anything to turn this career around and make it better than it seems to be right now.

PS sorry for the long thread.
PolishPilot