Ask the pilot

No time to shine the Bentley -- the real truth about a pilot's life.

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Airplanes, Airlines, Business, Airports, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

March 24, 2006 | [Pilots] just don't seem to understand how good they have it. They make more than most corporate Vice Presidents, while working 20 hours a week.

-- Anonymous posting to an online bulletin board

Pilot pay is back in the news again, courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the New York Times, among other places. I'd like to take credit for getting the ball rolling with my Feb. 17 column, but in fact aircrew salaries are something of a topic du jour, due in large part to the turmoil at Northwest and Delta Air Lines.

At Delta in particular, where pilots are talking strike under the threat of deep concessions and/or termination of their collective bargaining agreement, a recent BLS report, as analyzed in an article from Bizjournals, is a public relations disaster with the worst possible timing. According to BLS/Bizjournals, salaries for "airplane pilots and navigators" rank second only to physicians, clocking in at a wallet-stuffing $128,406 per year. (I wonder if there aren't thousands of apoplectic doctors out there experiencing the same frustrations that I am.) Not only that, but hourly pay for pilots -- a lurid $118.58 -- outscores all other professions.

Or so it would seem. Where to begin on this one?

For starters, not to disparage the efforts of BLS researchers or Bizjournals reporter G. Scott Thomas any more than is necessary, there hasn't been a navigator on a U.S. commercial flight in approximately 35 years. The last reported navigator sighting was that of the hapless Howard Borden on the old "Bob Newhart Show."

Otherwise, nothing in the report is false, exactly; the trouble is the context. Basically, there isn't any. Utterly absent from the caricature is the reality that tens of thousands of airline pilots earn under $50,000 per year, many less than half that amount, and only a fraction will have the good fortune of landing with the right airline and accruing enough seniority for one of those celebrated six-figure windfalls -- or what exists of them after the next round of cuts. The high wages garnered by senior crews at the best-paying carriers, of whom there are relatively few among the nation's 100,000 or so airline pilots, skews the BLS data, implying that all pilots are, as a rule, compensated so handsomely.

That hourly rate, especially, is in sore need of asterisks. Sure, $118 an hour will strike the average citizen as awfully high, until you realize it pertains only to actual in-the-air time, which accounts for only a portion of crewmember duties and obligations. Thomas' synopsis at Bizjournals includes this blatantly misinformed nugget: "Physicians have a clear edge over airplane pilots in annual earnings ... but pilots have an edge of their own. They work a lot less, averaging just 1,038 hours per year."

Heck, that's fewer than 20 hours per week -- a veritable part-time job -- leaving plenty of time for golf, polo, and polishing the Bentley.

Typically, pilots are paid based on a schedule of 75-85 flight hours per month. Yes, that multiplies out to around 1,000 hours for the year. Actual monthly duty time, however, can be 150 hours or more, not including layovers. A pilot works 75 hours a month much the way a football player works one hour a week. All the preparation and paperwork of a journey by air -- weather planning, preflight inspections, flight plan review, etc., etc. -- are off the clock, strictly speaking, as are those nights at the Ramada or La Quinta.

Example: A pilot, let's call him Steve, wakes at 5 a.m. in a hotel room in Jacksonville, with a scheduled departure for Washington at 07:00. Steve is a first officer for a major U.S. airline and makes $65,000 annually. He and his crew fly to Washington, where they have a 90-minute stay before taking off again for Boston. After a two-hour sit and a maintenance delay in Boston, they fly to Toronto, landing just after 5 p.m. An hour later, they're dropped off at a hotel near the airport to spend the night. Total elapsed time from curbside to curbside: more than 12 hours. Total pay hours: fewer than five. Oh, and there's a 4 a.m. wakeup call on tap for the next morning.

Repeat this scenario, or something close to it, 16, 17, or 18 times a month.

Most pilot contracts provide for a so-called duty-rig, guaranteeing compensation for a set portion of on-the-job time. At one airline I worked for, we called this the "one-third rule": spend 12 hours on duty, get paid for four, regardless of time aloft. That was pretty generous. Even with those provisions, that $118 an hour is a farce once you do the division. Going by time on duty, which is, by any measure, a much truer gauge, a pilot's $65,000 yearly income boils out to roughly $34 per hour. For a regional pilot -- say a first officer with a salary of $23,000 -- it's about $12 per hour.

Next page: What about the pilot-as-hero theory?