What is a pilot really worth?

[trey kule]

After reading the AC thread about "fair" wages, and several other threads regarding what pilot's perceptions of fair wages are, I have to ask...what is a pilot really worth?

this may be unpopular, but technology did away with the FE in modern aircraft. And technology has advanced even more, that coupled with checklists, SOPs, and the magic of computers, an airline can take a kid after about 6 months of training, give them another month or so training, and put them in a large aircraft, at what seems to be , an acceptable level of safety.

Yes people will talk about how much it costs. The awsome responsability, and the need for experience. But the reality is just not so. In fact, I can see in the not so distant future that the pilots who have really valuable experience and skills such as float flying, will be better paid than airline pilots...if they already are not there.

How much navigation does a new CPL really have to know? It is all pushbutton with systems to backup systems to backup systems. Lights, voices, bells, shakers, to eliminate the pilot pretty much being able to recognize anything themselves without help.

Forgetting all about the what ifs, and the isolated untypical abnormal situations, and the truth is the job is not longer about having experience and knowledge. It is about being able to program and follow a checklist...

Flame away, but it is the reality. And the continuing decling pay scales of airlines reflect that reality.

My rant for the day.

[True North]

Ignorance is bliss.

[dstechnical]

whatever the market dictates

[Odysseus]

What is a pilot worth? Ask Sully.

[Magnetron]

What is a pilot worth? Ask Sully.

+1

The flying public always complain about ticket prices and some may even say that they don't do anything/any work up front.
When sh*t hits the fan though (and i know it's rare nowadays with modernization and automation but it still happens and it's unpredictable...) so when sh*t really goes down south fast, ask them who they want in the pointy end.

[Northern Flyer]

What is a pilot worth? Ask Sully.

No offence but what did Sully do that anyone else would not have done? I'm not trying to take anything away from his accomplishments but........ Would another pilot just give up and plow it into a building? I don't think so, the river was the safe bet, and obviously you are going to slow the aircraft down as much as possible before touching down wings level. It's a great story, and the media loved it though.

[FL_CH]

If it was someone else, then we'd be mentioning his name instead. Sully just happened to be the one to give an example of "what the pilot is worth".

[godsrcrazy]

I don't mean to take anything away from Sully but he could have went from a hero to a zero in .5 of a second. Lets just say although the canadian geese were against him everything on that river was for him. If all those boats etc were not in the area be for that thing sank and everyone got wet the casualty rate would have been a lot higher. Were is the praise for the captains and crews of the boats that drug everyones butts of the wing without taking out what was left of that airbus. Manoeuvring ferries and boats that are 100 plus feet long up to that airplane without breaking it apart is no small task. Most people couldn't put their 18' foot byliner there without crashing into the wing. I don't recall seeing any of their faces on TV as any sort of hero's.

[Beefitarian]

OK but I hope none of us figure Sully didn't do anything any 23 year old guy with Trey's six month FMS programming course could have done? We certainly want experience up there when it's needed.

I don't think the OP is well worded but I see what you did there Trey. For most flights it's glass cockpit "touch the screen get a banana." flying. Automation is making it easier all the time to do the usual job. Add to that it's still driving an airplane so some of us think that's fun.

As far as any business owner is concerned employees are only worth the absolute least amount of pay you need to provide them with to keep them doing the job. If they can find some ratty backstabber to come in and do it in a perceptibly similar manner for less, 96 times out of a hundred they will replace you with that guy. "Hi welcome to walmart."

There has always been certain key guys that can do things many can't and they might negotiate a better deal but for the general population even if you are a great pilot you're not going to stand out at Air Canada, the type of company with enough profit they can afford to pay well.

That's how the Unions got started, most of the guys there were worth keeping and even the worst guys were good enough to get hired at some point. Even still they needed to come together as a group to negotiate better deals for everyone or the company would laugh them out the door. "I've got thousands of resumes from guys I could replace you with, get to work." It wasn't young guys that formed the unions. It was guys that had kids probably a divorce or two, just getting older threatened their jobs. Your biggest expense when you're a young guy is flight training, booze and maybe a semi decent car.

Buying a house is one of the few things I've regretted and I didn't even get divorced to lose it. If I'm honest it's a good thing, my mortgage is less than rent but at the time it required money I could have spent on getting a CPL so I could be one of the guys you wan't totake a pay cut.

So are you just warning guys that the glory days are over get ready for billions of guys to further dilute the pilot market? Do you think they will eventually pull a Ronald Reagan, fire everyone and offer the jobs at a lower price to whoever wants to come back with no contract? Second do you feel the executives honestly earn the $300 000 000 in bonuses or do they get that because they have the purse?

I suppose you're just pointing out an up and coming truth, it just seems mean.

[True North]

What is a pilot worth? Ask Sully.

No offence but what did Sully do that anyone else would not have done? I'm not trying to take anything away from his accomplishments but........ Would another pilot just give up and plow it into a building? I don't think so, the river was the safe bet, and obviously you are going to slow the aircraft down as much as possible before touching down wings level. It's a great story, and the media loved it though.

That is exactly the point. Any highly trained, experienced flight crew might likely have done the same thing. The ability to stay calm, focused and accomplish the required tasks in a very limited time frame comes with experience. Flying a modern airliner looks easy, and generally it is, until things start to go bad. That s when you can't put a price tag on experience, just ask Air France.

As to the question of heroism, Sully was not a hero. By definition heros puts themselves in harms way. Sully didn't. It came looking for him and he responded using his training and considerable skill. That is not heroic, that is survival.

"Were is the praise for the captains and crews of the boats that drug everyones butts of the wing without taking out what was left of that airbus."

Well let's see. The ferry captains cross that river what, 10, 12 times a day? They bring their boat successfully into a slip without damaging either the slip or their boat each time. That is what they are paid for. This time they carefully pulled their boat to within feet of an object that just happened not to be a slip. Yeah, that's about the same as successfully ditching an A320 - with exactly zero time to plan for it.

[The Mole]

$150,000 should be the average income, for a profession pilot.

[Mostly Harmless]

Sully did what any pilot would do, he flew it until it couldn't be flown anymore. His whole crew did a fantastic job, and he earned my respect by telling the media something they didn't want to hear over and over again; it was a team effort. The media wanted a single hero.

However, this was a spectacular and unusual event. Now why was it an unusual event? Because it is impossible to record all the accidents, incidents and other events that never happen because the people operating the aircraft recognized a situation and avoided it. (*This is not to say Sully and crew did anything wrong because they did not, in fact they did everything right) How do you measure events that don't happen? How do you praise an accident that was avoided completely? Every day, pilots are making decisions and taking actions to avoid dangerous situations and bring every one to destination safely. So, while you can train a person to fly an airplane, and they can do so with success, you must remember that these people are being mentored by more experienced pilots and that their skill set and value will increase over time. Just like any other profession. (This is why some lawyers are 250 and hour, others are 750 and hour.) Your 6 month old pilot isn't flying alone, he's flying with a 10 year+ captain.

Now everyone loves to bash the airline pilot for having a lot of automation on hand but, has anyone thought about the complexity of the aircraft which is being operated at that level? Has anyone thought about the difficulties that the technology and automation introduce into the flight deck dynamic? Do any of you who throw stones over an autoland system understand the complexity of that system and just how much it can screw up? You may wish to put your faith in computers, but I do not. Computer programmers are not pilots. Computers do break, they are not infallible.

Flying a large aircraft has become as much about managing the aircraft in its entirety including, systems, route, weather, regulations, and the crew itself, as it is about hands and feet skills.

So, I guess the real question isn't "What is a pilot worth?" The real question you should be asking is, "When I step onto an airplane, what is my life worth?"

[Meatservo]

I think about this all the time. I suppose what you have to do is divide people into two groups (and there are pilots in both groups): those who think flying an aeroplane is a big deal, and those who don't. There's no doubt that it USED to be a big deal, and that's why the issue exists. What you need to do, I suppose, is get rid of the "why should I bother to learn all that stuff" attitude, actually approach flying like the art that it can be, and then get to work proving that all that knowledge and skill makes you safer and more worth having around that some dope who did the bare minimum to get the TC license and now gets led around by the nose (and the GPS) and complains about his pay being less than it would have been 20 years ago.

Society has dictated in recent times that being an "executive" (kind of a misnomer considering that it's actually the pilots and other employees who actually "execute" anything) is more of a big deal than being someone who actually performs any of the money-generating skilled actions. I know they are highly learned and make decisions that affect a lot of people, but some of them make several times more per year than the total lifetime earnings of the highest-paid airline pilots, and I have a hard time understanding what one person can possibly DO with all that money, let alone whether or not they deserve it. One thing is for sure, though (and I hate to hear myself saying it because I would gladly see most "executives" condemned to a concentration camp) they go to school for a lot longer and spend a lot more time at work than the average airline pilot.

I sometimes think about how some european countries have a much higher knowledge requirement for pilot licensing. The argument against this, I suppose, is that a pilot doesn't NEED to know most of it anymore, so why bother learning it. Well, I guess if I was in charge of evaluating how much a pilot is "worth", I would say that good, I don't NEED to pay you for most of it anymore either, so why bother. I'm absolutely convinced that if the requirements here were as high as they were in England, say, many people in Canada who are pilots now wouldn't have had the fortitude or dare I say the intellectual capacity to have toughed it out and gotten licensed. This is perhaps why some people don't think that airline pilots are "worth" as much anymore. Look at it this way: the harder it is to make a product, and the value of the raw materials, and the ultimate scarcity of the finished product, are a large factor in how much the product is worth. In other words the relative "importance" or intrinsic value of the product is relatively unimportant compared to how hard it is to get and how much work went into making it.

[Colonel Sanders]

If one accepts that a pilot is in fact a commodity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

I do not know why pilots think the laws of economics,
that apply to every other industry, should not apply to
them.

[Nark]

It's not accidents like Airways 1538, or the Qantas 380, UAL 232 flights that proves our worth.
It's the flights where nothing happens, and you arrive in Pearson, Dorval, New York and you walk off the plane.
There are countless times where stuff goes wrong and you as a passenger have no idea because the pilots intervened and flew on safely.
Case in point: lately the software in the FMS is making up departures, not adhering to crossing restrictions (early descents) but safety isn't affected because the pilots intervened and prevent the snowball getting bigger.


Right now I'm paid 39 cents per seat per hour that I fly.
I think I'm worth at least 50 cents/seat/hour.

[slowstream]

Some interesting thoughts.

Its a complex question and therefore requires a complex answer first off.

Anyone who has endured 10, 15, 20 or 25+ years in this industry is worth a lot! A lot more than most airlines could afford to pay! Because your getting all those years of aviation experience, life experience and maturity.

Many of us through no fault of our own have had to start over a couple of times either due to a closure or lay-off and we find ourselves starting over again at the bottom of the pay-scale and that is wrong. When I come into an airline with my twenty years of experience I strongly believe I should be compensated at that level! I believe that all of those passengers on the Air France flight 447 that crashed into the Atlantic would have preferred someone at the controls who could have recognized an aircraft stall (without being told it was stalling) and they would have been more than willing to pay more for that experience especially after the fact. Automation was a major contributing factor in that crash and the close call for Air France after that, the lack of experience and training were equally major factors! I was taught long ago that we get paid the bigger dollars to keep that aircraft and its contents safe, we get paid the bigger dollars not for the routine VFR days but for when the weather is horrible and or things start going wrong, we still have to keep everything and everyone safe, thats what were paid for and thats why we're worth more money!

Most of the air travelling public choose to believe thats who is at the controls of their aircraft even though common sense and logic say otherwise, they all want to believe that "Sully" or someone like him is at the controls of their aircraft, its just human nature. From a pilots perspective the automation is nice, but I am NEVER turned off from knowing whats going on, whats happening, whats going on around me and I am always looking for a safe way out! Flying aircraft has never changed, its always about managing the aircraft, your crew, your flight and everything associated with it, I don't ever see that changing for safe flights.

I am also tired of the term "market value" that's pure BULLSHIT! Its a way for airlines to keep costs down and increase profits and keep people under control! I just sold my house and according to numerous realtors I should have sold it for 350K, I said no way, look at the reno's done, look at the craftsmanship, they told me thats all the market will bare. We sold it on our own, sold it for 375K, 25K more than they said, and did not have to pay any realtors fees.

To me this world is all about control, who is controlling whom and whats the motive, its all around us, Government, Corporations, even religion, they're all peddling their own version of how it is, what their truth is and people don't seem to want to question anything or think about it and I can't understand why that is.

So for me, my twenty years is worth more than 42K/year because I had to find a new job!

In my opinion it boils down to education/perception and knowledge. I am worth 120 to 150K+ a year to an airline! I also don't think pilots should have to start over again at the bottom of a pay-scale because they elect to or have to change airlines! Every time we give into to that we do ourselves an injustice and we hurt our profession. I will also say that I have had to do that because its all I could find and I had a family to support and it sucked, but I also told them so, I also told them it was wrong and that I would not likely stay too long without that changing. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do to survive and I'll never pass judgement on to someone for that, but I think we have to keep fighting for what is right and for change because corporations are ALWAYS working to try and find a way to control, people, costs, perceptions and everything in their world.

I've learned having ethics and morals comes at a cost but I am worth it and coming home every night to my family so to speak and looking them in the eye is worth something.

[Beefitarian]

Right now I'm paid 39 cents per seat per hour that I fly.
I think I'm worth at least 50 cents/seat/hour.

~chews cigar~ I got a thousand resumes from guys that'll do it for 34 cents.

[Nark]

Funny story beef.
My company cannot find enough pilots for ground school slots.

They recently upped our FO pay ( outside of union bargaining) and will issue ATPs to FO's when they're typed.
It's happening here in the States. Companies don't have a huge supply to draw from. Something has to change and wages is a starting point.

[Beefitarian]

I was kidding around. But unfortunately Sanders is right. The supply and demand will have more to do with wages than value.

[Expat]

OK. If we don't want to compare with a ferry captain, or a dentist, let's compare the wages with another pilot. The military pilot. They typically make less than 100 k per year, flying very expensive iron(Think F-35), over hostile places, carrying lethal ordonance, which has to be dropped at the right places.
So, 150k for a captain working for a major airline, who has 20 years seniority, is about right. The pay scale from ab-initio, to that level, is a progressing scale...

On another note, the freight companies are thinking about lowering their operating expenses:

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articl ... rs-369439/

It goes without saying that those pilots working from a basement, on a flight computer, will earn less.

[Beefitarian]

Sure but if you spend your life in a basement on a computer as long as you have pop and chips you're happy.


Um... I heard.

[jpilot77]

The military pilot. They typically make less than 100 k per year, flying very expensive iron(Think F-35), over hostile places, carrying lethal ordonance, which has to be dropped at the right places.
So, 150k for a captain working for a major airline, who has 20 years seniority, is about right. The pay scale from ab-initio, to that level, is a progressing scale...

Except they fly a lot less than a pilot working at a major airline; 200hrs a year vs. 1200hrs. And they aren't always flying in combat areas.

[ILSfan07]

Forgetting all about the what ifs, and the isolated untypical abnormal situations, and the truth is the job is not longer about having experience and knowledge. It is about being able to program and follow a checklist...

I think you just glossed over the most important point... experience and knowledge is what gets you through that statistical 1/1000 or 1/100,000 occurrence to keep the airplane in one piece and land it safely.

[godsrcrazy]

I personally am sick of the attitude that we are just 1 step below God and how many lives we in our hands everyday. I know people hate when they hear this and I will take a beating for saying this but here I go. We hate when people say we are just glorified bus drivers. But we truly are. Yes we have to do medicals twice a year that are tax deductable. Yes we have to train and do PPC’s that we get paid to do.

But face it we all drive car’s and how many times in a day do you have some jack ass that is not paying attention doing things like Talking on their cell, Texting, reading a book or putting on makeup the list goes on and on. Some how these bus drivers that move millions of people per day do it with out crashing and killing people on a daily basis. They accomplish this with minimal training working longer hours more days for a pile less pay. Yes I know none of them spent 30 to $40,000.00 getting a pilots license. Maybe after you earn $40,000.00 more then a bus driver you should have your wages rolled back to what a bus driver makes. There are a lot of people out there that work double the hours we do for less then half the pay. Do I want to make bus driver wages NOT but let’s be just slightly realistic about what we are truly worth?

Let name calling and the fire works begin

[True North]

I personally am sick of the attitude that we are just 1 step below God and how many lives we in our hands everyday. I know people hate when they hear this and I will take a beating for saying this but here I go. We hate when people say we are just glorified bus drivers. But we truly are. Yes we have to do medicals twice a year that are tax deductable. Yes we have to train and do PPC’s that we get paid to do.

But face it we all drive car’s and how many times in a day do you have some jack ass that is not paying attention doing things like Talking on their cell, Texting, reading a book or putting on makeup the list goes on and on. Some how these bus drivers that move millions of people per day do it with out crashing and killing people on a daily basis. They accomplish this with minimal training working longer hours more days for a pile less pay. Yes I know none of them spent 30 to $40,000.00 getting a pilots license. Maybe after you earn $40,000.00 more then a bus driver you should have your wages rolled back to what a bus driver makes. There are a lot of people out there that work double the hours we do for less then half the pay. Do I want to make bus driver wages NOT but let’s be just slightly realistic about what we are truly worth?

Let name calling and the fire works begin

Okay, I'll start.

You're an idiot.

I've driven a bus and I've flown airplanes. You have obviously done neither.