Exactly right! By eliminating competition for jobs for all but entry level new hire positions, airlines have effectively eliminated the forces of free market competition for all pilot jobs allowing them to keep wages artificially low across the board.

It still amazes me when Delta pilots come in here bragging about their new contracts. It's as if they truly believe they are well paid just because they make more than some other airlines. 200k per year after a 20-30 year career investment is not that much money really.

Well, when you think about the difficulty of the "job" and realize most people do it because it's easy money and a lot more fun than a real job (ie sitting at a desk for 50-80 hours a week, staring at a computer, going to meetings, etc), and one that at some levels doesn't require even a college degree, making 6 figures, especially 200+ to "work" 15 days a month (including deadheads and other creative ways to credit more flying than actually accomplished), is quite a bit given the relatively low time spent actually working. People leave 6 figure real jobs to fly regionals. There's a reason for that.

That reason is those people are naive.

Divide income by TAFB (instead of hours flown, or even hours credited) and the "easy money" doesn't quite seem such a good deal.

Uh some people enjoy being away from home. Just because you are away from home doesn't mean you are working, or making money for the company that writes your check. And a lot of real jobs require travel as well.

And I don't think naive is the right word. They knowingly get into the industry and stay, knowing a 6 figure job is out there still. Clearly they have their reasons for doing the airline thing.

So if you work in an industry for 20-30 years you should make more than 200k?? You realize that most Americans who are higher educated and have less time off than you will never break $100k? At 200k a year you're easily in the top 5% of HOUSHOLDS. So how is that unfair?

No one who moves as much revenue as we do, gets paid so little of a percentage of it as we do. Except ship captains, of course.

And truck drivers. And fork lift operators. And warehouse managers. And train engineers. And bus drivers. And subway operators.

Actually, i think most of those folks get paid more than you.

TAFB doesn't count. We fly around lots of people who are on the road all of the time too. If you get into the airline business you know that comes with the job so no complaining about it on the back end!