[Red in Blue PA]

I was shocked to read this. Never would have guessed this in a million years.

[BwanaNdege]

Back in the 90’s the Forest Service was offering me $9.95/hour to fly their Vietnam era Huey water-bombing forest fires.

The helo was based about 2 hours drive from my home, so I said that I would camp out for the duration of the fire season. Instead, they insisted that I must rent an apartment in that town to establish residency...for a 3 month Fire Season contract.

“Thanks, but I don’t need the hours or the job that bad.”

Many, many flying jobs are prime examples of the Law of Supply & Demand. There is a large pool of pilots needing to accumulate flight hours to make insurance companies happy. Now, with the FAA’s new requirement that co-pilots have 1500 hours for scheduled commercial operations, low time pilots will almost pay their employers in order to accumulate those magical 1500 hours.

[Joe Boucher]

We call people we fly “souls”.
I wouldn’t take responsibility for that for so little.

[Pappy Smear]

It is simple economics. They pay it, because they can. All the professions where the top performers get big bucks, can pay squat for new people to the industry.

Minor league baseball players in Class A ball get a couple hundred bucks a month. But they will make millions if they make the Majors. TV reporters in sub-100 markets barely make minimum wage. Same deal for pilots on the regionals. They will get paid 6 figures if they can make it to one of the majors. But they need hours in a plane to get hired on there. The regionals offer hours, so they offer squat wages because they can.