Pilot Pay Rates
 

Ok...so there's a lot of discussion on here about what pilots are getting paid to fly certain types of equipment and it's always being broken down by seat. So to settle my own curiousity, I rated a couple regionals against Southwest and Delta to see what we make on average per hour per seat in aircraft. It's actually kind of sad. This is for a 5 year captain at the respective company:

Southwest (128 seat 737-300) - $1.43 per seat/hour
CHQ (50 Seat EMB-145) - $1.32 per seat/hour
XJT (50 Seat EMB-145) - $1.32 per seat/hour
Republic (70 Seat EMB-170) - $0.99 per seat/hour
GoJets (70 Seat CRJ-700) - $0.91 per seat/hour
Skywest (70 Seat CRJ-700) - $0.90 per seat/hour
Delta (178 Seat 757-200) - $0.82 per seat/hour
Mesa (86 Seat CRJ-900) - $0.78 per seat/hour

Just some food for thought.

Colgan (34 seat SAAB) - without looking at the payrate about $1.32 per seat/hour - ranks me right up there with Southwest!!!:) uh.....next

This thread is really useful.

I'm not sure what your point is.

The only thing this math drill says to me is that the fewer seats, the better.

What do you suppose an A380 CA will make using this methodology?

Well, I saw the same logic used in an previous thread and wanted to check it out. Most people say that the bigger the airplane, the more responsibility, the more you should get paid...but how do you judge that? What do you consider "acceptable" for 70 seat pay, 110 seat pay, 200 seat pay, etc? All I was trying to do was make a comparison of pay vs. number of seats on an airplane (i.e. show some sort of ratio between size of the jet and pay scale.) Don't like it...don't read it...

And no, smaller is not always better...

Actually most people feel the bigger the airplane the more revenue generated thus higher payrate. It doesn't always work that way...............Unfortuantely.

Wow... Delta 757. wow

Good point. And one reason more revenue is generated is cuz that aircraft can fit more people on it (obviously it's not that simple...but that's part of it). My whole point is coming from how do we compare what a pilot gets paid on one aircraft to what they get paid on another. More simply...when someone complains that a company is flying 70 seat aircraft at 50 seat wages (that's a line I see a lot on here) how do you compare the two? All I'm trying to do is toss out one way you can compare it...unfortunately it doesn't work for the extremes (A380 or J32). Take it for what it's worth. I use "seats" because in the airline contracts I've seen, the pay rate is broken down by seat (32-49, 50-69, 70-87, etc.).

well if you look at it that way it seems like nothing but how bout if you look at it per year a swa 5 year capt makes 171K (acording to airlinepilotcentral.com) which isnt anything to complain about

Didn't say they should be complaining. I guess I'm not really explaining what I was trying to show properly. I just tried to break an aircraft down to the least common denominator to show a relationship between what people are getting paid at different companies for different airframes. Example, if a 70 seat jet raises more revenue then a 50 seat jet, why is the guy on the smaller jet getting paid more per seat than the guy on the bigger jet? All this was meant to do was to compare the difference in pay between different airframes at different companies.

Whether it holds weight or not...that's up to you guys. Not really going to bother me one way or the other. :D