The average cockpit wage cost per average passenger fare per hour of flight is just $3.73 — almost half the minimum wage — according to analysis by Robert Herbst of the Web site Airlinefinancials.com.
Pilots at Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines fared the best, making $6.09 and $4.14 an hour, respectively, while JetBlue Airways and AirTran Airways ranked the lowest, earning $2.93 an hour and $3.03 an hour, respectively.
Herbst puts the numbers into some perspective:
Since 9/11 and the bankruptcy or reorganization of every legacy airline, pilot hourly pay rates have been reduced to what they were almost 20 years ago. In addition, work rule changes force pilots to work more and longer days than they ever have.
Fatigue is a growing problem as long scheduled days get even longer when weather and maintenance delays are encountered.
Pilots from United (UAL), Delta (DAL), Northwest (now merged with Delta) and USAir (LCC) all lost significant amounts of their pensions as those airlines went through bankruptcy after 9/11.
Recognizing the above, how much of the average passenger airline ticket fare is now used to pay pilots to accept the responsibility they have? Not very much!
Something to keep in mind the next time you see a story about pilot salaries.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Pilots are losing benefits + suffering salary reductions. But calculating a rate per pax is misleading + a waste of time. How about as a percent of their airline CEO’s total compensationn including current + deferred, stock options, and benefits…and throw in the golden parachute.
“Pilots at Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines fared the best, making $6.09 and $4.14 an hour, respectively, while JetBlue Airways and AirTran Airways ranked the lowest, earning $2.93 an hour and $3.03 an hour, respectively.”
This is incredibly misleading…to say that pilots are getting paid half of minimum wage….absolutely not true! That is a :”per passenger” #. I fly RJs a lot…from a small town…on average, 20 pax per flight. So, 20*3.45 = $69/hour. On a “real” plane with say 150 pax , that is $517/hour. Many planes have many more passengers. None of this takes into considerations how many pilots are in the cockpit (2 on RJs, more on overseas flights, I think). You can make up numbers all day long to get headlines, but no pilot makes less than minimum wage!
If your concern is pensions they have given up, etc., say so!
This sounds so terrible until you think about the number of passengers on each plane and then you realize that the pilots still earn a pretty decent wage. Yes, they’ve taken hits over the last decade however they haven’t been as hammered as the ticket counter agents, ramp rats and reservation agents who have lost more as a percentage of their income and who had a small amount to start with.
If you divided their wages by the number of passengers per flight, you would probably find that they are earning less than 75 cents per hour.
When you see how little some of the pilots at the regional transport companies (Mesa, Comair, etc.) make, you begin to question how they are able to find quality pilots willing to work for so little.
Pilot pay per passenger per hour of flight has to be the most irrelevant correlation for that issue that I have ever seen! Perhaps we need to pay the mechanics who maintain the aircraft on a per seat basis?
The calculation does not make sense. The key question is “what is a pilot’s wages/hour, including duty time when they do not fly”.
Attorneys and physicians typically charge about US$ 200 – 250/hour – pilots should get about this.
I agree this is a very irrelevant statistic. My kid’s teacher, by this measure, is making about $1.00 per student-hour.
anne November 9, 2009 at 10:56 am
“This is incredibly misleading…
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I agree with Anne.
PILOT PAY is based on “equipment” and “years of service/left seat or right seat:
http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines.html
This is actually a very interesting calculation since you can multiply that number by the number of hours on a typical flight to see how much of the ticket price is being applied to the cockpit as compared to the rest of airline expenditures. If pilot wages are decreasing then where is the money going. ALWAYS FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL.
Remember to be extra easy on cabin crew on your next flight…times are tough for them too!…
http://www.icheapairfares.com/blog/2009/09/23/will-turbulent-times-affect-aircrew-attitude/