Realistic pay scales
 

I had a few minutes to think about what the realistic pay is to be a pilot. Being out of the profession awhile I am not using anything specific to a certain company and my duty regs may be rusty so bear with me here.

Let's take a starting F/O making $25 an hour. Now from what I remember that hourly rate applies to flight time only. Since I forgot the duty time regs let's just say it is 14 hours. To my way of thinking that 14 hours is considered being at work. Also from what I remember hearing you can get roughly 3-4 hours of flight time in that 14 hours of duty time. Getting the calculater out that equates to $100 a day. Being at work 14 hours that also equates to a realistic pay of $7.14 an hour. I'm not sure what minimume wage is these days but is a starting F/O realistically making minimum wage?

Now let's take someone who has worked their way up to $65 an hour. Assuming the same scenario as above the person would be making a whopping $18.57 an hour. That being after several years of paying dues not to mention the cost of education.

Throw in trips that would leave a person gone for several days, technically at work in my opinion, and the hourly rate diminishes tremendously. See what I'm getting at here?

Good calculation. Here's something to think about also; next time you go to your teaching/university hospital, you'll likely be seen by residents- they've graduated med school, but can't practice on their own just yet (still in training for that specialty).

When you do the math, many of your doctors are getting ~$10 an hour, maybe even less.

Pilots and doctors both start out getting the short end of the stick. It ain't right, but it's the way of the world. The hospital management abuses them just as much as airline management abuses pilots.

There's the same problem in both professions, everybody complains, but there is no unity, and so the situation will never change. If professionals want more, there must be unity.

Interesting point. I've often wondered why no one has tried to organize white collar jobs.

My guess is because it's assumed (falsely?) that white collars know how to get ahead, or have enough intelligence to know how to work together to achieve a common goal. Apparently, this is false. Meanwhile the blue collars (who realize the strength in unity) are getting much further ahead.

Exactly.

The MD has a defined time period of those conditions though, a pilot does not.

Let me illustrate the terms of a contract I am familiar with. After the first 8 hours of work, hours 9 through 14 are paid at time and a half. Hours 15 through 24 are paid at double time. Once 24 hours are worked, you get a "sleeper". That is 8 hours of sleep time paid at straight wages. Plug in a decent hourly wage to that, for the sake of discussion say $30 an hour. For those on standby the pay is 5 hours regardless of a call. Get a call the the preceeding applies.

Today at work I brought up our theoretical pilot making $65 an hour flight time. When asked if they would work 14 hours getting paid what amounts to 18.57 an hour....I'd better not repeat here what they said.

Check this out: http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/r...061025145.html

Tafb
 

I have always though that you could multiply a pilots time away from base by the minimum wage to com up with an opportunity cost. Then add in the opportunity cost from the investment in education, experience and training expenses and you come up against a huge number.


SkyHigh

That's always been the idea behind duty rigs - the pilot is available to the company, it's up to the airline to schedule the pilot's service's efficiently.

Unfortunately, you never see a 1:1 rig (every hour away from base pays one hour of flight pay). The norm is more like 1:3.5 if a pilot group has rigs at all.

I've thought about the scheduling before also. I'm not totally familiar with railroads but heard that an engineer will take a train so far until another crew continues and the starting engineer will take a trip back to his home base.

Seems to me something like that could be worked out with pilots too. If there is a stop on a milk run another pilot continues the flight with the starting one going back home.

But then again, the working man takes it you know where and the person in the office scheduling, sipping gravy and not being efficient gets rewarded.

A pilot is directly responsible for the health and well being of more people than any brain surgeon.

I just find it so inequitable that people directly responsible for so many lives aren't being compensated properly. I mention this at work to the guys that just went through a 3.5 year apprenticeship and are earning $200k a year and they just have a poo eating grin on their face.

To be honest, I think it's too easy to be a pilot. Anybody can just walk in and get a license. We need a sort of professional body that will control the supply of professional pilots, and screen out the clowns who will fly a plane for next to nothing.

That's how medicine remains a lucrative, (relatively) high paying career. If anybody could just stay at home and study for the board exams, then just show up and do it, everybody would be a doctor, and supply would far exceed demanddemand. Thus salaries would go down. Think about it. How many people do you know who want/wanted to become a doctor? How many actually are?

I'm not saying we should prevent people from flying. It's a wonderful thing, and I'd be the last person to prevent somebody from experiencing the wonder of flight. What I am saying, is that if you want to do it professionally, or for hire, you should need to undergo some further screening process than a simple government exam.

It's all about supply and demand. If we control the supply, we will start to see pilots living much better lifestyles.

Now there is an interesting concept. Many trade unions have apprenticeship programs. Electricians for example at a ship yard near where I live.... hire apprentice electricians... they split their time between doing grunt work in the yard and class work over a 2-3 year period at which time they become full union members with seniority at the bottom but making much more than they did as an apprentice.

The problem to some extent is with the regulations which allow a 121 FO to basically have nothing more than a wet commercial ME ticket. If the FARs required an ATP even in the right seat that would at least be a start. Further complicating matters is the vast number of ways to get experience in aviation.

Couple that fact with how easy it really is to acquire even an ATP well, there you have it. Perhaps if the system was tougher and fewer people qualified... supply would fall...demand would increase and theoretically so would compensation. The unfortunate side is that other than the military ... learning to fly is a business...... and frankly how many CFI's have ever told a student..."you just are not cut out for this"... and refused to continue working on their PPL, or Commercial or instrument rating. NO... the buck speaks and the boss says as long as he is willing to pay... take him up and fly him. Last year I was introduced to a young man who was working on his PPL.... he had 34 hours in a 172 over the previous 4 weeks... and had YET to solo..... Maybe I am in the minority here.... but something tells me that guy may not be the best guy to be a professional pilot... and his intention was to do just that. Just my opinion.

Yep, back in my CFI days I wanted so badly to tell some to "hang it up" but the boss wouldn't let me. If I did and word got back to the employer there would be serious repercussions.

One of my former employers even wanted me to teach a deaf mute to learn to fly and said my name would be all over the papers if I suceeded. Oh, just make up a bunch of index cards with explainations on them. It took me a nanosecond to refuse.

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the flight school that taught the 9/11 hijackers find it odd they weren't concerned about landings? They had money so take 'em up.