Dollars and Sense

November 3, 2024

THE OTHER DAY I flew an overtime trip. It was four days long. I spent the morning of day one at home, departing in the afternoon. I was on the road for the next two days, then home again by 6 p.m. on day four.

Over that span, I earned more money than I earned in an entire year at my first airline job.

You read correctly: I made in four days what I made in twelve months flying for Northwest Airlink in 1990. That’s not an exaggeration.

Neither is it a boast, or a humblebrag, or a means of suggesting pilots at the major carriers are overpaid. What it underscores, instead, is just how awful it was to work at the regional airlines in the 1990s. Starting salaries were typically under $15,000 a year, and many regionals required pilots to pay for their own training.

The early ’90s were a long time ago, sure. But not that long ago. You can adjust for inflation all you want; the pay was ridiculous, with hostile working conditions to boot.

Luckily that’s not true anymore. The changes were a long time coming, but they came. The prospect of slogging it out for poverty-level wages at shitty companies drove thousands out of the business and scared away an entire generation of would-be aviators. A pilot shortage (surprise!) eventually left the regionals with no choice but to vastly improve pay and benefits.

And so, today, even entry level flyers can make six-figure incomes.

The justification for the lousy pay was always one of thin margins. The regionals made so little, we were told, they simply couldn’t afford to pay their workers beyond a bare minimum. Except now they somehow can, even as airfares have come down. Makes you think.

Salaries at the majors are much improved also, at least compared to the doldrums of the early 2000s. When I came back from furlough in 2007, after five years on the street, sixth-year pay on a Boeing 767 was just over $80 per flight hour (figure 75 or 80 pay-hours in a month). Nowadays you can earn that much flying copilot on a regional jet.

Those of you who remember my column on the website Salon, which ran from 2002 until 2012, will recall my frequent griping about how little pilots were paid. Things are different now.

These changes are fantastic for those starting out. I, on the other hand, was born about thirty years too early. It’s not that I make a bad living by any stretch. It just took a long, long time.

 

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Paper airplane photo by the author.

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4 Responses to “Dollars and Sense”
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  1. chandelle says:

    Other than it can mess with your circadian rhythms, a pilot’s job is a dream. Find me another enjoyable occupation where you’re limited to 100 hours of work a month, and 1000 hours a year! 🙂

    • Patrick says:

      I don’t dispute the gist of your comment, but trying to quantify the job in terms of hours is misleading. How many hours you fly, or how many you are paid for (not the same thing, normally), doesn’t represent the time actually spend “on the job.” A more accurate measurement is to consider how much time a pilot spends AWAY FROM HOME. Figure about half the month, give or take.

      I average, probably, twelve days each month on the road. Sometimes only ten or eleven, sometimes fifteen or sixteen. I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of how we bid our schedules, but we have a fair amount of control over how much we want to work — another great benefit of the job.

  2. Kevin T says:

    Yup, I remember your Salon days. I first read your column on a Palm Pilot without an internet connection, that only refreshed the content when you set it in a cradle connected to your computer and pressed Sync. “Hand in hand is the only way to land…”

  3. Rich H. says:

    To save others a click, $15K in 1990 is equivalent to a little over $37K today (BLS Inflation Calculator). Yikes. I’m sure glad things have changed for the better!