Commuter pilot's dad: Pilots barely make a living
The father of a pilot for a regional airline writes regarding Saturday's column on the Flight 3407 tragedy and the experience and working conditions for commuter-air pilots, Low standards aren't likely to give a lift to regional fliers.
My daughter is Captain on a regional jet. You are correct the starting wage is miserable considering the cost of her education. She is a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. What you also have to consider is in the airlines everything is driven by seniority. You have to wait your turn. It took my daughter five years to get promoted to Captain. This doubled her wages. After five years as a First Officer, she was making about $28K. So there is no “quick increase” to the $50K mentioned in your write up. A beginning accountant starts at $40K without having to worry about million dollar equipment or people’s lives.The recent change by the FAA allowing pilots to fly until 65 further delays upgrades to Captain for newer pilots. Then there are the reserve rules. Until a pilot can get a “line” which is a regular route, they fly reserve which is determined by where you are based and seniority. She has had to be on “hot reserve” many times. This means she has to sit at the airport in uniform for 10-12 hours uncase they need a pilot. She is basically not paid for this time believe it or not. I think she gets like $3.50/hour.
The eight hours of sleep between flights is calculated from when they get off their flight and when the next one begins. Some contract hotel facilities are 40 minutes away from the airport so at best they might get 5-6 hours sleep. All this is negotiated with the unions, however from my daughter’s perspective the union takes care of the older pilots, not the entry level members. Like many occupations it is considered doing your time. Then when and if she decides to jump from the regional airlines to the major airlines where the money is in the $100-180K range she can expect to take a 25-35% drop in pay the first year. Entry level pay for a first year First Officer is $35K for most major airlines. It does double the second year to the $70K but there is no reason for this other than “that’s the way it is.”
To conclude let your readers know that a lot of pilots are barely making a living and working long hours to do it. Will it change? I doubt it. My daughter would love to change jobs but in this economy she at least has something.
Comments
I am a pilot.
Well, I'm a certified flight instructor, instrument rated, and have my commercial license to fly both single engine and multi-engine airplanes.
Needless to say, I've got deep in debt to enter this industry. I love flying. I have an unquencable thirst for flying and learning more about it. I have 2 college degrees. (A B.A. in linguistics from BYU and a B.S. in Aviation Science Professional Pilot from UVU)
I worked hard. Never scored below a 90% on any of my written tests, and have never failed a checkride.
Currently I have been scouring positions available for a CFI. This is because in order to get hired on to an airline, you need to meet certain minimum hour requirements.
One problem I see is that the government will raise the number of hour requirements for their jobs. Many jobs require total time to be 1000 hours, and multi engine hours at 100. An airplane at my school is about 110/ hour. The multi-engine airplane is about 250. Not only that, but when a flight instructor is used, they are in the mid 30's per hour. Which is not included in the rental price.
If the airlines increase their hour requirements, it will be impossible for many, many aspiring pilots to realize the dream of being paid 17,000 per year.
Although I do not like the embarassing wages that I will make (considering my hellish schedule) I am the type of person that has worked very hard, paid a lot of money, and went into almost unpayable debt. I love to fly, and the sacrifice now for big payouts later is attractive to me.
Currently I can't even find a flight instructor job (14 per hour [with the student, not on the job] I recently talked to a fellow instructor who said for 2 weeks, he had worked only 10 hours with students. (Weather, illness, and student cancellations)
The life of a pilot is 2 jobs, meager pay, and as one airline captain I talked to put it: 'You need to be divorced at least 3-4 times to be successful in this business'
If I chose to have 2 jobs, low pay, and a great family life, I better look somewhere else. I'm only willing to let one stay firmly established. My family life. That means my other two options have to stay the same.
Work one job, have a good family life, or have high pay. Pick one of the above.
Ben Ellis
3228464CFI.
Posted by: Benjamin James Ellis | May 19, 2009 6:34 PM
Ben a question for you about how often did you actually see water in your sump cup during the pre-flight of any high wing aircraft? Are you aware of undetectable water in the fuel tanks of many general aviation aircraft? You are right on about the pay scale but were you aware of NTSB Safety Recommendation A-83-6? How about FAA Safety Recommendations 99.283 and 99.284 about undetectable water in the integral fuel tank? Our you aware of tank tests on the Cessna 150 and Cessna 152? Not only is the pay scale flawed but so is the lack of oversight on the part of the NTSB and FAA.
Posted by: Robert Scovill | May 20, 2009 4:26 PM
It's not a matter of just minimum flight times going up for safety, there has to be higher minimum pay at the regional level. I've been instructing for about 2 years now and the mentality among many pilots at my flight school is after all these loans, and all of this experience built, why go to an airline to be treated like crap when there is a great corporate or cargo flying gig as well.
It's sad, the majors used to have good pay and quality of life, but they got rid of it for executive compensation (The execs even got bonuses when they brought their airlines near bankruptcy). Worse off, now the major airlines are shrinking as a result of handing flying over to their much cheaper regionals. So now, as a pilot, you may never even reach a major airline because it is most likely going to be a bunch of large "regional carriers" doing much of the domestic U.S. flying. This brings many pilots, "if they are smart," to the realization they may never make up for that incredibly low pay.
There will be another hiring spree in the future, but instead of good, experienced pilots with a couple thousand hours going to the regional airlines, your going to have 300 hour, just passed their commercial multiengine license pilots heading to the regionals, because the experienced pilots will want the higher paying, better quality of life style jobs that corporate flight departments offer. And yes, 300 hour pilots have been hired by regionals, at our flight school back in 2007, many students skipped getting their flight instructor rating and went right to some regional carriers out east. Whether they passed the airlines' training program or not, it just goes to show the regional airlines don't really care about the experience of the pilots rather how low are you willing to be paid.
Posted by: Waltpilot8 | May 29, 2009 8:09 PM