Ever wonder how much airline pilots get paid? In this post, I want to look at that in a bit more detail, including how all of this is calculated (either for those who are considering a career as an airline pilot, or for those who are just plain nosy).
Continue reading: How Much Do Airline Pilots Get Paid? The Interesting Math…
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Sounds like fair pay to me. Pilots have to go through expensive flight school and some of their wages are meant to pay retrospectively for that.
Let's take a moment to set a general benchmark for pay in the modern era. There are too many ignorant people who think $200,000 is a high salary for a standard twentysomething corporate office worker bee. That's actually the extreme bare minimum, and here's why. The financial rule of thumb is to make at least 40x your net income in rent. A gross salary of $200,000 after tax is barely over $100,000. One-fortieth of that is $2,500. Go on Zillow/Streeteasy and search for apartments in NY or SF at that price. The listings are total and complete dumps. Even $3,500 affords a barely satisfactory studio apartment on the very outskirts of what can be considered a reasonable commute. The minimum satisfactory studio apartment is $4,500 for which the minimum comfortable gross salary is $360,000.
Sounds like fair pay to me. Pilots have to go through expensive flight school and some of their wages are meant to pay retrospectively for that.
Let's take a moment to set a general benchmark for pay in the modern era. There are too many ignorant people who think $200,000 is a high salary for a standard twentysomething corporate office worker bee. That's actually the extreme bare minimum, and here's why. The financial rule of thumb is to make at least 40x your net income in rent. A gross salary of $200,000 after tax is barely over $100,000. One-fortieth of that is $2,500. Go on Zillow/Streeteasy and search for apartments in NY or SF at that price. The listings are total and complete dumps. Even $3,500 affords a barely satisfactory studio apartment on the very outskirts of what can be considered a reasonable commute. The minimum satisfactory studio apartment is $4,500 for which the minimum comfortable gross salary is $360,000.
Tax, or telling facts, is obviously not your fake strong point.
At 200k in SF on NY you're looking closer to 130k after tax.
The general rule of thumb is actually 30% of GROSS monthly income. So by that rule of thumb, you’d need $180K annually to have 30% go towards $4.5K housing.
Second, the cost of flight training is significantly less than that of a lawyer or a physician- careers that have similar level earnings. You could pay $175/hr for 1,500 hours and pay an instructor $70/hr for 100 hrs to get all your licenses and instructing credentials and it would only then be comparable to what a doctor or lawyer pays in cost (not in time, though). There are of course better ways to get to 1,500 than just self-paying and we’re approaching a time of hiring where you might need more hours than 1,500 to get hired by a regional, but it is still cheaper to do than becoming a doctor or lawyer.
Third, the barrier to entry is also significantly lower. I can never step foot on a college or university campus and still make it to a legacy carrier as a pilot.
I hope you’re not actually a lawyer because the arguments you present in defense of US pilot pay are silly at best. The fact that a European pilot with a similar standard of living and cost basis makes significantly less than a US pilot doing the same work, is stupid in my opinion.
There will shortly be a pilot commenting about supply and demand. I’m not mad that unions have bargained for what they’ve got, I just think it’s to the peril of their companies to have labor costs that simply cannot be sustainable long-term. But cash in while you can, I suppose.
Those listings at those prices are for Manhattan. If you are concerned about pricing of accommodation, there are four other boroughs that make up NYC with more affordable prices.
Pilot training is expensive and it takes a while before a pilot salary pays back that spending. There's a lot of unpaid hours which adds up if there's a family involved. Wide body pilots do the best part constant long haul flying is hard on the body.
If a pilot chooses not live at a base (generally because of cost of living/quality of life) then there's difficult commuting involved. Not like your 30 minute drive to the office.
I'm curious what the other factors are that prevent the majority of Pilots from targeting B777 / A350 level licenses so they get paid the most? Is there a glut of Pilots in that area making it harder to break into? Is it harder to get licensed, or considered harder to fly?
I missed your comment before asking my question (above), and this seems like a good answer for why wide body pilot may not be the most desirable option. As a passenger, I've always associated wide body planes as more glamorous than regional/narrow body. I guess it comes down to whether you'd rather do 2-3x exhausting long-haul roundtrips a month or more regular short-haul trips that don't tire you out.
All transport category aircraft, CRJ/Embraer up to 747/A380 is flown is flown on the same ATP/ATPL licenses, so it’s not the license but the seniority at an airline that determines what aircraft type you get to fly
I thought you had be to licensed for a specific aircraft type (e.g. a 737 pilot could not also fly an A350 or B777) with exceptions for certain aircraft that share cockpit designs?
@Super— Pilot's need 'type rating' for each type of plane they fly. It's a specific license in all but name.
Simply put, in the US, when a pilot is senior enough to move up in types, and wants to, the company sends them to school for the type rating. At the company's expense.
"IH8GARYLEFF" Me Too! and there are a whole lot of people that do not agree with his agenda. He needs to be impartial like OMAAT who has shown that you cab be a Good Blogger and not push your ME agenda all the time. There are a whole lot of Good Arabs, Palestinians and Jews that do get along.
I feel this is one of the reasons why US airlines can't provide a good quality of service like ME3 or Asian airlines.. The wage is too high. Almost all the employees at the US carriers are payed more than a double of those foreign carriers who save a lot from the wage and invest more on soft product.
US airlines can't sell tickets at higher prices than those carriers because they're competing, but their cost structure is a lot higher than them. This is also the same as why manufacturing business doesn't work in the US. Higher wage..
I’m not sure I would use the term “too high” given the high cost of living in the US, but yes, you are absolutely right. Paying people in the US costs business a much higher percent of their costs vs many other countries. Rightfully so in my opinion.
Lucky....love your blog, but
...........per DIEM pay, NOT per DIE pay!
Easy to fix.
Thanks,
I'd definitely go as far as to say upper limits for the senior widebody captains is too high. Earning $465k gross is a LOT of money, even if you're living in NYC, Boston, Chicago, SF, or LA. Junior first officer at $120k to $220k for senior pilots for Envoy seems like a good range
Apropos of nothing, but a high percentage of the comments on this article are from Diamond members.
I think the Emirates numbers are about 15 years old, they should definitely be on more than that by now.