Time for a Minimum Wage for Airline Pilots
 

Last fall I wrote a piece about the depressing job prospects for students graduating from aviation trade schools. After a couple of years and a hundred thousand dollars or so, these graduates are heading off to an uncertain career market. I take that back. Right now it is certain, certain to be bad for the foreseeable future. Not that there aren’t jobs available for young people (or not so young people). There are some jobs out there flying commuter airliners, starting in the right seat and working your way up from there.

The remarkable thing about those jobs is that anybody will take them. They pay so poorly, little more than $15,000 a year for many starting first officers, that the only people who can afford to take them are people who have nothing to begin with. These are typically very young people or those so desperate to fly that they’re willing to work for less than survival wages to stay in the air some way. The career move is a huge gamble. Will these jobs, that pay roughly as much as migrant workers make, pay off in better paying positions down the line? Maybe. Maybe not. But when you, or mom and dad, have already sunk a hundred grand or more in a career path, there tends to be some motivation to stick with it.

The root of the problem is with the regional airlines. They’ve figured out a way to game the employment market by offering next to nothing to pilots while still knowing that they’ll not only get applicants, but a glut of applicants. They can pay a pittance for pilots who are willing to do the job with hopes of getting on with a major airline down the road.

I'd be all for letting market forces straigten things out--after all, nobody has to take these jobs--if it weren't for the negative impact on safety of putting in the cockpit of a jet a couple of lightly experienced pilots who live under economic conditions that almost guarantee fatigue and low morale. What will happen? Buffalo will happen. Lexington will happen. Can the commuter airlines, which are desperate and existing on the edge themselves, live with a crash like that every few years?

It sure seems like it, and that cynical attitude is dead wrong and it’s time we did something about it.

I say forget about requiring more hours for commuter pilots, or an ATP, and get down to a genuine economic incentive: a minimum wage for pilots.

Now, I’m against a minimum wage for professionals in principle, but here it’s the only solution that makes sense. We’ve long had federal minimum wages for the most humble of workers. That’s because, when jobs are desirable, employers will pay less than what’s humane. Minimum wage laws are designed to protect the poorest of the poor from their own desperation.

That’s what we need to do for pilots by instituting a minimum annual salary of, say $50,000 a year, maybe a little more. The labor market would change overnight, as a lot of highly experienced, highly qualified pilots who can’t afford to take a job in the cockpit today would raise their hands immediately. Then the commuter airlines would hire them. Despite appearances, they do care about safety, though not quite as much, apparently, as turning a profit. Force their hand by mandating a living wage and they’ll hire the best pilots available. The flying public and the pilots who fly them deserve nothing less.

It's Time for a Minimum Wage for Airline Pilots | FLYING Magazine

Agreed. But I still don't support a gov't mandated minimum wage.

Just thinkin' out loud here, but how about this. If the FAA mandated that all airline crew members must have an ATP and the minimum requirement for an ATP was 3000 hours, then in theory supply would decrease and airlines would have to raise wages to attract people. I dunno..

Minimum wage will help us all to pay the bills, but it wont have a direct effect on safety(You can still pay a 200hr pilot $50k to fly a plane). If the government raises the minimum requirements to fly for a 121 carrier then that will directly effect safety by requiring more experience/knowledge in order to get into the cockpit. The higher required experience/knowledge will have an indirect effect on wages as well.

You could make the limit 10k hours if you wanted to. You would still have regional airlines undercutting eachother to bid for contracts.

Pilots will always be willing to fly for less money each time contracts come around if it means that they WILL retain their job long-term. We suffer through the tough years in hopes of attaining that higher income later.

But as another poster put it, "averages be damned, it only takes one."

Something needs to be done.

Sorry to be so upfront but you don't seem to understand basic economics, if you made the minimum requirement 10,000 hours to be hired by a regional airline, you would have a total of what, maybe 1000 applicants on the street right now willing to take that job versus the 20,000 applicants you would have if it was for commercial minimums. but out of those 1000 people that do have 10k hours, of course they are not willing to work for 20 grand a year, they have spent years and years getting that time and will only take that job if it pays lets say at least 60 grand. the airlines would be forced to raise pay and in response to that be forced to increase their prices when they bid for contracts. majors would then be forced to raise prices to the passengers, it may only be 10 cents per ticket but it would be raised.

The government needs to fix the railway labor act, and this issue would solve itself.

Didn't the CEO of American Eagle state:"Pay has nothing to do with safety".

It's not what i believe but it's what's being told to congress.

That is it, simple thing called "barriers to entry." It will reduce competition for applicants and in turn result in higher wages. This is basic economics, and I challenge anyone to dispute this.

I have to respectfully disagree that the root of the problem is with the regional airlines. Not unlike any other aspect of the free market system, the reason for the low wages is because airline managers can pay what they do and be successful at it.

With regards to low pay, I see two reasons for it in the above quoted statement.

First,
No shortage whatsoever of potential workers.

Second,
Willing and hope. Even though the wages are very low, workers are willing to accept them. Why? Because of the hope that it will lead to a more prosperous and fulfilling job one day. It's a gamble that has been as much a part of aviation history as has the law of physics.

What can be done?
Negotiate. When a pilot group's collective bargaining unit agrees with management contractually as to what should appear on the paycheck, then and only then will wages come up.

How does an airline manager keep costs down when salaries increase? Two choices:

1: Raise ticket prices.
2: Do more with less.

Is the traveling public willing to pay double or more to fly from A to B when cheap fares have more or less become the norm and not the exception? That would lead to a lessening of a demand for air travel and thus necessitate a lesser need for air transport. In other words, most airlines would shrink to meet the demands of the market.

Doing more with less is certainly an option too. To compensate for the increased salary expense, airlines would simply decrease the size of their labor force and/or the size of the airline. Most major airlines might just opt to do less business with their regional partners and more with their own assets. Would that lead to more opportunities at the majors? Maybe, maybe not.

Same game, different location. If more jobs opened up at the majors due to less business with their regional affiliates, this would not be job growth in the industry but rather a shift of where those positions are required. And my guess is that for every one job created at a mainline (under this particular scenario) would probably equate to at least the loss of two jobs at the regional level. In other words, you create an even lesser demand while increasing the supply. And as mentioned in the above quote, there are "a lot of highly experienced, highly qualified pilots who can't afford to take a job in the [regional] cockpit today."

I think I do.

I think you have to account for more than just supply and demand here. You are not wrong in thinking that higher requirements would result in fewer applicants. I agree. A sudden restriction in supply most deffinitely would increase wages as well.

Read on, if you can handle it;

Things that will not change by implementing 'barriers to entry' are things like the seniority pay scales and pic requirements at majors. These two items alone are enough to cause Colgan pilots to be willing to work for less than Comair pilots, for example. If it means 'fast upgrade, fast track to higher wages' then pilots will continue to undercut eachother for the same reasons, and eventually you will lose any and all gains associated with increasing the barriers to entry.

So lets call eachother idiots and pretend nobody knows what they are talking about some more.