Something is wrong here....

[CathayPacific]

Try being in the military.... You wouldn't believe how many US Military members are eligible for or on Food Stamps...

You do it for the job, not the money.

Yes, in a perfect world, or when I have won the lottery.
There are too many times every month I was reminded that I do it for the money, not for the job: when I receive my phone bill, my gas bill, my electricity bill, my condo mgmt fee bill, my...

I think this applies to 99% of the people out there?

[Simpleboy]

I think Emu said it in another thread ages ago
"Flying doesn't put food on the table. Money does."

yes, you want job satisfaction, but its hard to be satisfied when your starving and have kids to feed.

[LH-B744]

I think Emu said it in another thread ages ago
"Flying doesn't put food on the table. Money does."

yes, you want job satisfaction, but its hard to be satisfied when your starving and have kids to feed.

I am not starving but I also dont have yet kids to feed (the latter is a bit sad isnt it, at the age of 31.. ) ...

If you find a workplace which you can say you dreamt of since 15 or 20 years, youll maybe accept one or two disadvantages a pilot has to accept (is pilot a dream job?). But if you take the years an years of training into account, you may wonder what comes after the training. A well paid job?

German news television gives statistics four or five times a year about how many children result from an alliance between two graduates (or people with comparable complex education, like.. pilots?). And its always the same: those people have to do more in their bedroom than just ** around... ... ...

[screaming_emu]

From the headlines on the homepage. Re: the Buffalo Continental/Colgan Air crash.



Now, as a paramedic I like to think that I offer a fairly important service to the people of my county...but normally only ever one at a time....and that only AFTER the occurrance of a medical/trauma emergency.

US$15,000 converts to UK£9,575....per f*****g ANNUM !!!

My basic pay without shift bonus is UK£25,000 'ish. I work a permanent 24 hr. rota system ( a work pattern which I would assume is not a lot different to an airline F/O ), and get a 25% uplift on basic pay for that. This means that I am on a guaranteed minimum UK£31,000 per annum basic pay.

Something is very, VERY wrong here. 49 pax died in the Buffalo crash, I believe the aircraft is capable of carrying a few more than that. Like I say, I'm responsible for peoples' lives but if, God forbid, I ever get it wrong there is at least a chance that receiving doctors will be able to intervene positively.
When a F/O - Captain gets it wrong it's goodnight nurse !

With a bit of overtime I'm on UK£36,000+ per annum. I cannot believe that someone with the responsibilities that F/O Shaw had gets 4X + less than me.

The USA might be the land of the free ....... but it sure as hell isn't the land of the appropriately paid !!

I'm glad the word is getting out. After taxes I made $18,000 last year and I work at one of the better paying regional airlines out there.

[screaming_emu]

There is a drive, however for these folks who are chasing that closely dangling carrot. They see it, smell it, but just can;t get to it...that dream of having 'that job'. Tragically, in the case of the Colgan crash, these two pilots, thoroughly under trained, and woefully skillset created this incident. Would more monies have averted the tragedy? We all can speculate on that. Better yet to focus on the system that allowed them into it, and the management who treats 'staff' so poorly.

That's precisely it. This is still perceived as a glamorous job. Not a single airline in the US is hiring right now, yet there's still huge glossy advertisements in every flying magazine from large pilot schools promising to put someone in the right seat of an RJ within 6 months for $50,000.

I think that is a large part of the problem. Yes, I'm not making as much money as I would like. And if people gave up and moved on to other careers (hard to do in this economy) pay would not go up because there are still people lining up at these flight schools.

Put it this way, the school that the captain of the colgan flight went to has a program where you pay for the "pleasure" to be "hired" as a first officer of a Beech 1900 for Continental Connection. Something to the tune of "give us $40,000 and we'll pay you $7/hr." So there are people who are willing to PAY to do my job. While not usually pro union, this is the reason why unions are so important in the airline industry.

As for being inadequately trained, I don't know if I buy that entirely. Every pilot from day one is taught to push the stick forward in the case of a stall. If he was inadequately trained, he would have crashed much earlier into his career, probably during his initial training. Something happened that made him believe something other than a stall was happening. Could be fatigue, could be that he thought it was a tail stall (happens in icing conditions and has an exact opposite recovery technique), unfortunately we can't get in his head and figure it out.

That being said, as a result of this accident in my last recurrent training a lot more focus was put on stall detection and recovery (including watching the stick pusher do its thing and then recovering). It was all stuff I have seen before, but my airline has an excellent training program so I'm not surprised.

[screaming_emu]

An ex BA 747, and now cargo pilot friend of mine once said that his job is 99% boring repetition......and 1% sheer terror !!

....and it's the 1% times where he earns his pay.

So true, most days are pretty easy and (if you're with a good crew, lots of fun). But when things are bad, they're bad.

In addition to being prepared to deal with emergencies, there are some really long and hard days. Our duty days can be as long as 16 hours. Most of them aren't scheduled that way (usually 12-13 hours from duty in to duty out). But when they do get close to the 16 hours its because the weather is bad, you've had maintenance problems, ground/air holds, diverts, etc. So not only has it been a long day, but a tough one. Example:

One of the days I came close to 16 hours of duty I flew one round trip (I forget where to). Then we flew ATL-EYW. That in itself is a challenging flight. Taking a 70 seat RJ into a runway that is 4,801 ft is quite a challenge. That goes really well, we get down to Key West and find out that the storms that were forecasted for Atlanta arrived early and there is a ground stop.

So we take advantage of the 2 hour update time to go grab some food in the terminal as it has been a while since we have eaten. We get in the terminal to find out that only the bar is open and there is no more food being served. So we head back out to the airplane. The update time comes and the ground stop was extended.

Finally 5 hours after we were supposed to have left, we board up, and take off towards Atlanta. Due to the weather we have to have an alternate airport in our flight plan which requires us to carry lots of extra fuel (for holding and diversions). This coupled with a 4,801 ft runway means that we had to leave everyone's bags behind (and a few people). Otherwise we wouldn't even be able to leave.

So we take off and as we are approaching Atlanta we are told there is a tornado near the airport and it is closed so we are told to hold and instructed that our "expect further clearance time" is in an hour. We know we don't have the fuel for that, so while in the hold (just to see if things were getting better) we started making plans (and coordinating with dispatch) to divert to Birmingham.

Eventually we reach the amount of fuel where we know we have to divert immediately to land with the amount of fuel that makes us comfortable. We chose Birmingham because its on the other side of the storms and that will make it so we have to sit on the ground for less time. Dispatch tells us there's a pretty good sized hole in the storms we can get through.

So after poking through the storms (and seeing St. Elmos Fire) for the first time, we make an uneventful landing in Birmingham. While on the ground the Atlanta airport opens again and we are told that because of where we are there would be no delay. We take on fuel and get ready to go. While on the ground one of our passengers learns that his father (who lives in Birmingham) just passed away and he would like to get off the plane. We make arrangements for that.

Then we find out that our ACARS (through which we do all of our weight and balance) has malfunctioned. So now I have to do all of that manually while deferring the ACARS over the phone with maintenance control.

Finally, at about 2:30am we are ready to leave BHM. We land in Atlanta at about 3:15. We were supposed to continue to ALB, but due to us being close to our 16 hour duty day, that flight is canceled.

Pay for that day? Just over 7 hours.

[screaming_emu]

I talk to a United 777 Senior FO quite a bit and if I remember correctly he told me on flights 8-12 hours, they carry three pilots. On flight over 12 hours they carry at least 4. He told me this a while ago, so it may be a little off.

www.airlinepilotpay.com will show you what airlines pay their pilots. It's not uncommon for US Airlines (legacy and the larger ones) to pay their pilots over 100k.

For example starting pay as a FO at Southwest is around $48,000. After your first year you jump up to around $82,000. A 12 year 747/777 Captain at United is making around $160,000 if he works 70 hours per month.

While true, the nature of how we get paid makes Airlinepilotpay.com a bit misleading to those not in the know.

I currently make $38/hr. (About $0.54/hr per passenger on a full plane). But that is only per block hour. Block time starts from the time the boarding door is closed and the parking brake is released for pushback and ends when we open the door with the parking brake set.

A person working 40/hr a week and $38/hr would be doing quite well at 72k a year. For me that works out to about $34,000 before taxes.

Because I don't fly 40/hr a week (that would be illegal per the FAA) and I have a min of 11 days off a month, the idea among the public is that we are under worked. Well here are some fun stats for you from this month.

Duty time (have clocked in at the airport and cannot leave): 123.65
Block time (gate to gate): 48.05
Credit (pay): Monthly minimum of 75 hours

Pay if paid for every hour I was at work like 99% of other jobs: 4,698.70 before taxes

Actual pay: $2,850 before taxes.

[Evan]

An ex BA 747, and now cargo pilot friend of mine once said that his job is 99% boring repetition......and 1% sheer terror !!

....and it's the 1% times where he earns his pay.

Well, Colgan definitely got their 1% worth.

[Simpleboy]

Hey Emu,

If in a really bad delay a passenger somehow got a gun into the plane and came up to you and said "Im hijacking this aircraft to where it was meant to be 5 hours ago, thats right im hijacking this airplane to its scheduled destination."
what would you do?