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.
Update: As some commenters have suggested, I’ve posted a link to Robert’s complete analysis on this issue. Unlike Herbst, I am not an airline analyst, but I found his numbers interesting and worth contemplating.
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{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
The “average cockpit wage cost per average passenger fare per hour of flight” would be like computing the “average fire house wage cost per average person in the fire district per hour of protection from fire.” In other words, a compilation and calculation of meaningless, unrelated numbers. We could divide by the aggregate shoe size of the passengers, too, but that wouldn’t mean anything either.
If you’d like to make the point the pilots are underpaid, then do it, but do it using figures that make sense. Try annual wages divided by hours worked and compare that to norm data for other professions. Or pick a profession that you believe has similar risk/responsibility attributes (I might suggest fire fighters) and compare salaries.
Hmm…
Southwest is known for not-nickle and diming much, keeping fares low, and NOW for paying their pilots almost double of most other airlines? (And if I may add, making the workplace pleasant for other employees. I once had an acquaintance that was a steward/host for them, and he loved it so much, he swore he’d never leave).
What is this, 1950’s America, where employees and customers mean something?
C’mon, Southwest, get with the times! It’s about hidden fees, shareholders and bailouts!
Wage cost per passenger fare per flight hour? Abra Kadabra? Is this a true metric or is it some sort of voodoo economics designed to create a number that sounds particularly low?
My initial reaction is that there is no good reason to divide the pilot’s salary by number of passengers, other than to create an artificially low number to compare to minimum wage. So, at first glance, we think that pilots are being paid at or below minimum wage which is of course not true.
That number needs to be put in perspective. A transcon flight from lax to jfk on a 767-300 at 80 percent capacity carries 180 people. That means that the pilots each made 180*5*3.73 $3357 for the trip. Which averages to $671 per hour.
Not bad for an afternoon’s work.
Was this article ghost-written by the Airline Pilots Association? Come-on, minimum wage? What a bunch of hooey. For comparison, why not take the pay for a Wal-Mart checker on a per-customer checked out basis. What about the pay for a bus driver on a per-passenger basis. To continually hear the pilots moan about being so underpaid and overworked is just getting old. If you don’t like your job, your pay, your benefits, etc. then find another job. Things are tough all over this country right now, and to hear a group of folks who probably make more that 75% of Americans complain about their pay is disgusting.
In fact, the more I think about it, the sillier this calculation seems.
Consider other examples.
My friend is a teacher making 70k a year or about $35 an hour. But he has 30 kids. Using the same calculation as the pilots are, he makes about a dollar per kid per hour. Completely meaningless.
I would be very likely to support any srike actions taken by pilots if their negotiations on salaries and working conditions are not met.
I’m sorry, but the chart showing average salary per passenger is very misleading. The bigger question should be what is the average compensation per hour worked total, not per passenger.
Every time I see pilots having to take cuts I worry more and more about flying. Do I really want to place the trust of my life solely on a person who makes less than my state’s median wage?
The real question is what is the median wage of pilots?
The statistics used in this model are completely useless. As other’s noted, if you translated this formula to other fields it results in even lower salaries. In fact my per student per hour salary works out to less than 1.00 an hour.
I think a number of people wouldn’t mind having the hourly average wage of a pilot.
This is extreamly misleading. And it hurts those airlines that fly bigger planes. Think about it. If one pilot flew a plane with 200 people for 3 hours, they would be making more than another pilot flying the same 3 hour route, but with a plane carrying 300 people. A pilot flying a small puddle jumper would be making double digits according to this calculation. A better way of comparing is just wage per hour of flight time. Then the pilot of the 200 passenger, pilot of the 300 passenger, and the puddle-jumper pilot could all be making the same hourly wage.
If you want to make calculations using number of passengers, then use flight attendent wages. They are the ones having to deal with the passengers on a face to face basis.
OK, so taking the lowest salary of $2.93 per passenger hour, and multiplying it by a guesstimate of 120 passengers on the plane, I calculate they get an hourly salary of $351.60. I could live with making over $350 per hour.
I wonder if the folks who build and program the autopilot make even half as much. I know that being a pilot is a skilled profession, but there are other skilled professions making sure passengers make it from point A to point B safely that don’t make anywhere near that.
I think most of you are missing the point of the calculation. It’s not trying to calculate it back to a pay rate per passenger per hour. The calculation is showing how much of the AVERAGE FARE per hour can be attributed to the pilots’ pay.
For example, let’s assume that the average fare for a one-way IAD to LGB trip on JetBlue is $300. That flight is about 5 hours. Fare per hour is $60. Using the figures above, for JetBlue only $2.93 of the AVERAGE FARE would be used to pay the pilots’ salary. It matters not how many passengers are on the plane other than to move the average fare. I think that using “minimum wage” in the title is highly misleading.
Logic, again, the numbers are meaningless. So what if jet Blue’s planes carried more average passengers? Would that not mean that the pilots weren’t paid as low as you thought? The fact is, the print is trying to show us that the polits are somehow underpaid by a great deal, when in fact how a company breaks down it’s internal numbers are really none of our business. Why should you or I care how much of our ticket price goes toward pilot pay? We should be worried about price and getting there safely, and not necessarily in that order. .
@Logic – thanks for providing a better explanation of these figures. However, the numbers are still extremely confusing, and do not represent a true figure for pilot wages.
The important point is that the numbers are not breaking down pilot pay by the number of passengers on their planes (which would clearly be a meaningless number – pilot pay does not vary based on the number of people who happen to be on the planes they fly.)
If I’m reading this correctly, these numbers indicate what percentage of the money that airlines take in from ticket sales goes to pay their pilots. This gives some perspective as to where pilot pay falls on the totem pole of an airline’s expenses.
However, what it does NOT do is tell us how much pilots make – and that is where this article goes wrong. This data does NOT indicate that Jet Blue pilots only make $2.93 an hour. That is an invalid interpretation…and this article is misleading. Jet Blue pilots make the lowest amount in terms of PERCENTAGE OF AVERAGE TICKET PRICES. But that doesn’t even mean they make less money than Southwest pilots. We wouldn’t be able get a real interpretation on these numbers, and how they relate to actual pilot salaries, unless we knew exactly how much each airline brought in for ticket sales on an average flight.
Christopher, you know I love your blog and your articles almost always give important, valuable and interesting information to frequent travelers. But this one needs some work for your readers to be able to make sense of these numbers.
Even if I shift to the alternate method, my pay actually goes even lower per pupil as my earnings per hour from students equals about .35 cents.
You can always break down the rates even further, but since pilots aren’t piloting a plane with only one passenger, the whole argument is still quite weak.
Seriously… what a horrible series of statistics. I concur with the others that posted saying that this is meaningless and no way to compare their salary to minimum wage. I think the next time I go to my boss to ask for a raise I’m going to use my salary dividined by the average hours I fly and drive to work per average year and then divide by the number of average meetings I attend in any average week. Only then would I be qualified to compare my earnings to minimum wage and be able to demand more money.
Chris, I recommend you simply delete this blog post. You’ve taken a statistic and completely misinterpreted it.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for Pilots, Copilots, and flight engineers is $111,680/year. The 10th percentile wage (in other words, 90% of pilots, copilots, and flight engineers make more than this) is $55,330. http://www.bls.gov/oes/2008/may/oes532011.htm
Anyone, pilot or not, who is being paid less than minimum wage is encouraged to call the U.S. Department of Labor immediately.
@Logic
I understand what you are saying, but I have two objections. First, by comparing the number to minimum wage, the article completely undermines it’s position that its just trying to show how much of each ticket goes to pilots salary.
The second objection is that the calculation is too broad. Average ticket price is itself a meaningless metric as no one pays an average ticket price. Ticket prices fluctuate wildly depending several factors including routing, class of service, days flown etc.
If someone where to ask you, how much is an average plane ticket, you’d be hard pressed to give a useful answer without more information. Hence, average ticket price is as meaningless as the remaining statistics presented.
A better allocation method would be based upon percentage. Since every ticket can be considered a sum of charges and profits/losses equaling 100 percent, you can say that 10 percent (made up) of each ticket goes to pilot salaries. That at least would make some sense.
This is all a big joke, as most here have noted.
What about the ground staff per passenger helped?
What about the ramp agents per bag handled?
Other people do the heavy lifting and get paid a lot less.
And the people attempting to defend this are even worse.
The poor, poor pilots.
Um….what about ALL the other costs that have to come out of the “passenger fare” (read: total revenue!)
Next!
I report, you decide.
@Christopher – Point taken. My problem with this article is not so much the data, but with how you presented it. The numbers themselves actually tell us nothing about how much pilots make. They simply tell us what percentage of ticket sales each airline spends on pilot salaries. They do not indicate how much pilots earn in relation to similar careers, or if their wages have increased or decreased, or really, ANYTHING about how much pilots are paid.
The problem is that you follow up an uninterpreted presentation of this odd data, with some comments from Mr. Herbst about how pilot wages have decreased…and preface it with a statement that his comments give some “perspective” on the data. The truth is, his comments are completely unrelated to this data at all!
It may very well be true that pilot salaries have decreased. And it’s certainly true that pilot fatigue is an issue. But the numbers in this analysis don’t tell us that. They are utterly unrelated.
I actually would like some perspective on this data. I’d like to know what these statistics mean, and how we might interpret them, and what they might be telling us. Can you get that information for us, and let us know?
And while you’re at it, if you’re going to include comments from an industry analyst telling us that pilot salaries have decreased, can you present some numbers to back that up? These ones here say nothing of the kind.
I can’t imagine how quickly I’d be laughed out if I tried to go to a fast-food place with an argument based on “hourly wage per customer served.” The comparison of pilots’ wager per passenger with minimum wage is sensationalist and meaningless and does more to diminish your argument in my eyes than to argue for it.
Clearly all you folks criticizing Pilots for wanting more pay have not given much thought to what a pilot is or does.
A Pilot doesn’t get paid for the day to day flying that so many of you now consider to be a ride on a bus. He/She gets paid for that one time in their career that they save your life. Let me ask you… who do you care about (besides yourself) if your on a plane and the engine fails? Who is your last line of defense when the airline you are on wants to send you and 100 plus others flying with a known deficiency in the aircraft? Again, better hope you have a pilot who cares!
I could go on and on about a pilots worth, But on this forum I am sure it will fall on blind eyes. You all sound (most of you) like your unhappy in your life. Why would you take the time to poke fun at people who literally take responsibility for your life every time you board an aircraft?
To the previous poster Stephen—- you sound like that POS airline exec. in the southern US. ? Are you really so stupid to compare Pilots to walmart workers? (not that there’s anything wrong with walmart) Also, you say if you don’t like it leave. You know darn well a pilots job isn’t transferable.
Speaking of jobs… who did you bribe to be able to run another airline? (if it is you steve) I’m just glad you wont ever make CEO. ( the government got one thing right)
Well folks thanks for reading my rant since I endured yours. But seriously, If you think pilots are just whining, why don’t you try it? You will see it probably isn’t worth it. Long hours, gone from your family 4-5 days a week, substandard treatment from corporate as*ho%es like steve. Then you get thrown to the curb after 20 years of dedication.
Next time you get on a flight I hope your Pilots are as good as you expect them to be. Especially if the sh*t hits the fan!
Who cares about the figures; I just want to make sure pilots are paid an excellent salary;so that in the future men will be attracted to the job period,
I also want FA to be paid accordingly; they are perhaps the second most important factor in safety. OOPS forgot mechanics definitely.
@Mike – I’m not sure what comment thread you are reading, but it’s clearly not this one. The ONLY person who even mentioned anything that might be interpreted as criticizing pilots for wanting more money is poster Stephen. The rest of us are concerned with the article itself, and the fact that it presented some data in a misleading fashion.
I certainly have no problems whatsoever with pilot pay. And I don’t see any other commenters in here who do either (other than Stephen). I would encourage you to go back and re-read the comments.
Our problem is that the statistical analysis that Christopher presented doesn’t actually tell us anything at all about how much pilots make! It gives some meaningless “hourly” figures that are evidently some extrapolation of a percentage of ticket sales. They tell us nothing about pilot salaries…nor do they give any indication as to whether or not they are making more, or less, than before.
And these numbers have NOTHING whatsoever to do with “minimum wage”. The title of this article is completely misleading and, frankly, mystifying.
I, personally, AM interested in the numbers. That’s what this article was ostensibly about – pilot pay. Instead, we got a bunch of data that none of us can figure out.
In all seriousness, our issue is not with pilot pay. It’s with Christopher putting out a misleading, confusing and ultimately worthless article, which is VERY much unlike him!
Come on, Christopher. We know you can do better! (We see you do better every day!)
As most of you suggest, the chart data and conclusions are confusing.
I went to the author’s website: AirlineFinancials.com. On the commentary page, there is a long version with some additonal charts and explanations.
I think if you read the whole story, you will have a COMPLETELY different understanding.
I’m not sure if this will work but here’s a link to the page with the full explanation:
http://www.airlinefinancials.com/Airline_commentary_Herbst_.html
Note especially the last lines from the link NotSureSometimes posted here:
Perhaps also something to consider.
I agree with Riroon — why are they throwing around all these meaningless metrics?
Here is an easy one — what does a UA 747 captain get paid per year? Pls publish that number — I bet it is more than most of your readers will make this year.
Anyone honestly posting ridiculous comments about wages of pilots have to realize they are being completely out of line. A…if you know nothing about the industry don’t respond, try listening. B…you can’t look at an average salary of a pilot it doesn’t work that way…I’ve been an airline pilot for two years and haven’t made above 20.000 dollars. So don’t get tricked by the numbers. Next time you get on a rj realize that one of your pilots is making 22/hour times 70 hours a month. You do the math!!!!! Pretty sad when people flying you and your child around are making less than the guy feeding you mcgriddles.
To Steve-
It is an easy one.. If you go to AirlinePilotCentral.com you can find the pilot hourly pay rates and a calculator for each airline.
Specific to your request- A UAL 747 CA annual W2 gross guarantee is $159,600 (per the website from Chris’s story, the absolute maximum number of flying hours/pilot permitted by the FAA is 1,000/year. There must be some reason this is a MAXIMUM. I would imagine not many pilots can actually fly that many and would probably be gone a lot if they did).
Since UAL has only 26 747’s, I would guess only the most senior pilots are a UAL 747 CA with probably around 30 years seniority for UAL.
I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like all that much for someone (airline captain) responsible for several hundred lives in a job where mistakes have tragic consequences?
NSS-
Debating the worth of a job is useless and meaningless as Mike’s rant. We live in a more or less capitalist society where compensation is based upon supply and demand. Nebulous concepts of worth are red herrings generally used by folks who believe that their profession is “worth” more than the prevailing compensation.
Or worth more (or less) than what people are willing to agree on.
NotSureSometimes I did go to the that website. I agree with you.