| Man, I thought those gigs paid well -- commercial airline pilots make bank, right? |
Yes and no. Flying is something everybody wants to do. So there are a whole series of hurdles you must pass through in order to get employable by the Major carriers. A typical pilot path is to get your commercial and instructor tickets, build up your first thousand or so hours, then go to the regionals and hang around a few years building enough hours to get hired by the majors. When times are good, some folks are able to go from zero time to the majors in 5 or so years. When times are bad, it can take at least twice as long. That's the airline path. Salaries aren't what they once were, back in the days prior and immediately after deregulation, when a Pan Am 747 Captain was pulling in 250k a year in early 80s dollars. That would be something near the order of 1 million in today's soft dollars. These days, most us domestic carrier captains top out at somewhere around 150k a year, unless they are fortunate enough to fly for a major foregin carrier....such as Japan Airlines or Emirates. Southwest has a stock option program, and some Southwest Captains have become millionaires due to it, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
So getting back to the career path, as a new low time pilot with 300 or so hours and an instructor ticket, you can expect somewhere between 15-20 an hour for your services, however at most flight schools you don't get paid unless you are actually instructing or flying. Therefore, you can expect to work 7 days a week, for somewhere under minimum wage when it is all factored out. Some folks get lucky and end up in a busy school making considerably more, but most of us are lucky to see one or two thousand a month for 70 plus hour weeks. However, you are building flight time that would cost considerably more to acquire if you were paying for it yourself. It also looks better on your resume to have paid hours rather than paying for them. Once you make the cut to the regionals, you make 20k or so your first year, then a bit more, this is justified as an investment in your training. The regionals aren't necessarily a good deal if you aren't looking to go to the airlines. They were hiring like mad last summer, sometimes picking up pilots with as low as 500 hours total time. However, I spoke to a couple regional guys who said they flew 150 hours in the past nine months, while I have been averaging somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 hours a month. Also, instructor time is Pilot in Command time, while regional airline first officer time is Second in Command time. This is important when acquiring hours towards your Airline Transport Pilot license, which requires 1500 hours of which 500 must be Pilot in Command time. At the rate some regional pilots are going, they will be trapped in their current First Officer jobs for several years.
All this means that an airline career isn't necessarily the most attractive one. My particular aviation goal is either Cargo or Fractional operations. Both segments have been and will continue to boom, and the pay differential isn't all that different from the airlines. It is a long and difficult road, and it is hard on one's family if married (which I am not) but it is certainly attractive from a long term standpoint. One big gripe of mine is how the legacy carriers cut the pensions of their retired pilots. When someone puts in 30 plus years away from their family, suffer through multiple divorces, and manage to operate safely the entire time, they deserve every dime of their pensions. This is especially true when compared to the shenaginans of airline executives, who manage to award themselves multi-million dollar bonuses while gutting the operations of their companies.
The bottom line of this entire rant is simple. You fly because you love to, you don't do it for the big bucks. By the time anybody becomes a captain of anything, the money hounds have been weeded out.
Skysurfer808