That paycheck has a lot of zeros in it. Pilots’ paychecks vary depending on the airline they work for and the hours they’ve flown in a given year. According to an American Airlines captain’s paystub that was shared on X, pilots’ earning potential is so high, it’ll cause most people to rethink their career paths.
Supposedly, the screenshotted paystub was of a Miami-based American Airlines Boeing 737 captain. If you look closely, you can see that the pilot’s yearly salary is a jaw-dropping $458,000. Part of the reason this pilot probably earns as much as they do is because of their high hourly wage, around $360, which isn’t even the highest tier for pilots.
Captains of planes as massive as Boeing 777 or Airbus A350 can earn up to $450 per hour. Considering the average pilot flies around 900 hours per year, 75 hours per month, according to Flying, do the math — and that’s one fat paycheck they earn.
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A military friend of mine is leaving the "force" due to this style of salary. He stated that if he didn't leave now, after 13 years of service, he would lose out on $1,000,000 PER YEAR (for each of the last 4 years) before he has to retire from flying from the commercial airline.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't want them to make less.
ReplyDeleteWorked with Boeing for decades in flight and maintenance training, and with SAS on maintenance. Pilots can be an arrogant lot, to be sure, but think of what they do. They take a long metal tube full of people, sling it into environments that, if expose to, would kill everyone within moments, and, usually, return both ship and souls safely to the earth. That is worth a few hundred thousand shekels in my book.
ReplyDeleteCockpit conversation right after takeoff goes smething like this: Positive climb rate....Gear up....Autopilot engaged. Guess who's flying your airliner now? The $30 an hour (if we were extremely lucky) aircraft mechanic who last worked on that autopilot system. Mechanic duty day limits? What're those?
ReplyDeleteThere is currently a shortage of commercial pilots. The world's militaries used to train vast numbers of pilots who would leave the military and enter the airlines. Since the end of the cold war air force budgets have been cut repeatedly so would be pilots have to spend up to $50k for training and then take shitty jobs to fill their log books because even a small feeder airline wants a minimum of 1,000 hours PIC (Pilot In Command) flying time before they hire you. The oil rich countries of the middle-east pay huge money for pilots from the USA, Britain, Canada and Australia and in Saudi Arabia there is no income tax....
ReplyDeleteAl_in_Ottawa