Originally Posted by robthree

This thread seems to come up every year, and there is justifiably much angst produced. One has to wonder what methodology they use to determine pilot pay. For instance they said that there are about 77000 pilots in the US. I count over 79000 (excluding furloughees) in the APC listing under Legacy, Major, Cargo, and Regional. There are another 5000 under Fractionals alone. Not to mention the sizeable contingent of corporate pilots and flight instructors... So just who are these guys counting, and more imortantly who'd they exclude?

Next how do they determine the "Average Pay". Did they take the hourly wage of the highest and lowest earners, take a mean and assume an even distribution? Did they use a median? What's thier methodology?

Based on the text of the full article, I think they are using mean average of gross wages from Federal Tax returns, as they claim railroad engineers are down 15% from last year, and postal workers are up 23%. Its highly unlikely that RR engineers all agreed to a draconian pay cut, or USPS letter carriers got a windfall contract. But thier available overtime hours probably varied that drasticly.

Given the number of furloughs, zero hiring, longevity increases, and lack of retirements due to age 60-65, a 5.1% increase in mean wages is not an unreasonable outcome.

But $119,000 average? Jeeze, Its is hard to imagine. But the junior captain flying a Boeing or Airbus (anywhere) makes better than that. And when you exclude the thousands of pilots making $0.00 its a lot easier to get to that mean.

Clearly the Forbes article is once again a fluff piece, lacking any insight into the subject it tries to cover, or even recognition of glaring problems with its own methodology.

Originally Posted by Sniper

Should be true, but, even in the US . . . it's not.