Posted on 10/15/2009 11:25:48 PM PDT by ozguy
Michael Moore's pointing out something no one in the media seems to want to discuss: How little money the people who are flying commercial planes are getting paid. As he says, these are not the people you want working a second job:
We're on the descent from 20,000 feet in the air when the flight attendant leans over the elderly woman next to me and taps me on the shoulder.
"I'm listening to Lady Gaga," I say as I remove just one of the ear buds. I know not this Lady Gaga, but her performance last week on SNL was fascinating.
"The pilots would like to see you in the cockpit when we land," she says with a southern drawl.
"Did I do something wrong?"
"No. They have something to show you." (The last time an employee of an airline wanted to show me something it was her written reprimand for eating an in-flight meal without paying for it. "Yes," she said, "we have to pay for our own meals on board now.")
The plane landed and I stepped into the cockpit. "Read this," the first officer said. He handed me a letter from the airline to him. It was headlined "LETTER OF CONCERN." It seems this poor fellow had taken three sick days in the past year. The letter was a warning not to take another one -- or else.
"Great," I said. "Just what I want -- you coming to work sick, flying me up in the air and asking to borrow the barf bag from my seatback pocket."
He then showed me his pay stub. He took home $405 this week. My life was completely and totally in his hands for the past hour and he's paid less than the kid who delivers my pizza.
(Excerpt) Read more at crooksandliars.com ...
I know people who pay thousands of dollars a year for the privilege of being able to fly.
SO my guess is it wouldn’t be hard to get some really good pilots to fly a local airline for $25,000 a year. Especially if they had a business on the side that runs itself, it would be a great way to get to fly around without having to spend your own money.
Every single person I know who decided they wanted to fly a plane, and who had enough money to do so, ended up being able to get a pilot license.
On the other hand, I would imagine that would NOT be the case for brain surgery.
I have no doubt that, with 3 months of training, I could fly a plane. It just isn’t all that hard. I’m sorry if this offends you for me to say this, and you of course will probably dismiss this anyway, but my guess is that the job I do requires more specialized skill than flying an airplane.
On the other hand, I get into this same argument whenever I point out to teachers that, while I respect them for their work with kids, that they could easily be replaced, because almost anybody can get a teaching degree. Teaching is a field people from MY field go into if they get tired of working so hard. And I’ve yet to see a retired teacher, or a pilot, show up to take a job in my field.
Not that my field is so special, there are hundreds of thousands of people who can, and do, do what I do.
It’s not that hard to learn to take off and land in the local bounce pattern. I’ve always said I could teach a monkey to do that.
It’s not even that hard to take off on a CAVU day and follow the highway to the next airfield and land there.
But, there’s a big difference between local field ops with no one in your aircraft but you and a passenger filled aircraft in bad weather with not everything going according to plan. It is that hard and not every private pilot has the specialized skill (or stones) required to do the job day in and day out.
The local commuter guys don’t get paid enough in my professional opinion.
I still don’t see how paying them more would mean they were more experienced.
And I didn’t mean to suggest that experience wasn’t important. But the only way to get experience is to actually fly, and the only way for most people to get enough hours flying to gain experience is to get paid to do so, and paying lower wages while people get the experience is a common thing in many industries.
The reason pilots get paid so little is that a LOT of people are qualified to be pilots, and a lot of people would LOVE to be pilots, so there is a lot of supply of willing workers, compared to the demand for pilots.
The rules requiring experience for the major hauls lowers the supply of workers, thus driving up the cost of those workers, so they get paid more money.
So I guess rather than arguing over this, I should have asked the question, is there any evidence that paying regional pilots more money would have prevented any regional airline accidents?
Are there more-experienced pilots out there who simply won’t work the regionals because the pay is too low, and therefore we are stuck with less-capable pilots? (well, the answer to that is probably yes). But the real question is, are those less-capable pilots creating more danger than is justified by the savings people get flying?
Remember, driving is more dangerous than flying. So if we drive up the cost of flying, we will make more people drive, and therefore kill more people. So even if cheap pilots means an airplane crashes once in a while, killing everybody, it could be better than raising ticket prices and getting that many people or more killed on the highways.
The local commuter guys don’t get paid enough in my professional opinion.
Or at least buy them a drink in the airport bar while you’re both waiting for the flight departure time.
But what difference does it make how much they are paid? You think they would be better pilots if you just paid them twice as much?
Absolutely, the lack of training and experience makes all the difference. Some of these commuters hire pilots with only 250 hours of TOTAL time. Those people that died in the Colgan Air crash would be alive today if it weren't for the lack of experience AND training by the two pilots (the Captain was the older of the two pilots but didn't start his career in flying until he was in his 30's).
The last six air disasters involving passengers were commuter airlines -- the kind we all fly on thanks to code-sharing.
Anyway the rules are about to change -- all airline pilots will require an ATP, which is the most rigorous rating, and requires 1500 hours total time.
So I guess rather than arguing over this, I should have asked the question, is there any evidence that paying regional pilots more money would have prevented any regional airline accidents?
Are there more-experienced pilots out there who simply won’t work the regionals because the pay is too low, and therefore we are stuck with less-capable pilots? (well, the answer to that is probably yes). But the real question is, are those less-capable pilots creating more danger than is justified by the savings people get flying?
Remember, driving is more dangerous than flying. So if we drive up the cost of flying, we will make more people drive, and therefore kill more people. So even if cheap pilots means an airplane crashes once in a while, killing everybody, it could be better than raising ticket prices and getting that many people or more killed on the highways.
Airline pilots are rare only because we don’t need that many of them, and the costs of entry as a hobby are very high.
how many professional golfers are there? only as many as can be supported by the audience. But there are millions of people who can play golf. Because it’s a competition, the professionals do tend to be the ‘best’, but there’s no reason to believe the next 100,000 golfers, if they did nothing but play golf, couldn’t be just as entertaining.
How many leading actors are there? Certianly you wouldn’t argue that actors are more special than Airline Pilots simply because there are fewer of them.
Question: Are airline pilots paid based on tests of superiority and merit, or are their wages set based on how many years of service they have?
Are airlines constantly looking to replace pilots with others who have done “particularly well” for other airlines, like baseball teams do with pitchers and other players? Or do airlines treat pilots as “assembly-line” workers who can be inserted here or there without much difference in quality?
There are fields where we seek out the absolute best, like surgeons. Airline Pilots are certainly trusted with our lives, so we expect them to be competent, but I’m not looking to make sure my pilot was valedictorian of his university in order to feel safe flying.
As I said before, all things considered I am more concerned about the ability of the bus driver, because he is more likely to encounter a situation in which the bus could crash.
If the plane ever breaks down, I’ll be glad if there is an extra-special pilot in the cockpit who is superior to his colleagues and can save us, like the guy who set his plane down on the Hudson.
But we all know both how lucky that guy was, and also how lucky those passengers were to have THAT GUY flying the plane. It’s not like they paid extra for their tickets to get the pilot “rated number one for the past 3 years”. He was just the guy the airline assigned to the plane that day.
So while I appreciate a pilot with experience, I have no doubt that, if I chose to do so, and had the money, I could train and become an excellent pilot. Follow the checklist, attention to detail, practice the fire drills — being able to evaluate situations quickly, and having coolness under pressure are the big things that are hard to “learn”, but many people in my field have that ability as well.
Like how on Mythbusters they showed that both guys could land a plane if someone talked them through it.
She was on her way to work before the flight from the west coast (not uncommon -- probably where she lived). Nobody held her at gunpoint, but she flew sick partly because she didn't want to pay for a hotel room (a big expense on her salary) according to her own statements beforehand.
She flew from Seattle to Memphis to Newark on a cargo carrier in the middle of the previous night. Then she got a little rest before showing up, then they were delayed for weather before the flight. It happens.
There are about 24 hours of video testimony on the Colgan Air crash investigation available at NTSB.gov. A real eye-opener.
But again, you are saying that it is the experience, not the amount they are paid, that makes them safe or not safe.
Do you think that a pilot will fly more safely if his paycheck is bigger? Will it make him appreciate the passengers’ lives more if he’s paid better? Will he concentrate more on doing his job correctly if he has more money in his wallet?
I think your actual argument supports making pilots have more hours of flying before they are made pilots; it also supports requiring better refressher training for pilots so they know when and when NOT to give co-pilots the experience they need to move up.
And if requiring more hours somehow reduces the number of job applicants, and that means the airlines have to pay more to attract people to the job, then they will get paid more. But they won’t be paid more simply because they have more hours of training. They’ll get paid more because that’s what the airlines will have to do to hire the pilots.
Of course, if the union just sets the salaries, then who knows how or why the pilots will get paid any particular amount.
As a free-market person, I would prefer if we limited regulation in this area to requiring airlines to give to passengers both the hours of training the pilots on their plane have, as well as government statistics showing the probability of crash as related to the number of hours of training a pilot has.
Then the passengers can decide if the money they are saving on their tickets is worth the risk.
Is there even a good chart that shows the number of airline passenger deaths as a function of the number of total hours of flight time booked by the pilots of the planes that crashed?
That would be interesting, and would go a long way toward supporting the argument for more hours — if the slope of the curve showed that there was a some knee in the curve that could be used to set those hours.
If the graph is a straight line, it would be a problem, since that would argue that every additional hour required saved as many lives as the previous, which would mean that if you could justify one extra hour, you could justify every additional hour, through infinity.
But I’m guessing there is some nice curve, and that at some point additional experience really doesn’t matter.
But i’m also betting that, contrary to what is being said here, the knee of the curve may actually BE close to the current regulation, and far from the new proposed hours.
Federal aviation regulations prohibit airline pilots from flying beyond the age of 60 years. However, the relation between pilot age and flight safety has not been rigorously assessed using empirical data. From 1987 to 1997, the authors followed a cohort of 3,306 commuter air carrier and air taxi pilots who were aged 45–54 years in 1987. During the follow-up period, the pilots accumulated a total of 12.9 million flight hours and 66 aviation crashes, yielding a rate of 5.1 crashes per million pilot flight hours. Crash risk remained fairly stable as the pilots aged from their late forties to their late fifties. Flight experience, as measured by total flight time at baseline, showed a significant protective effect against the risk of crash involvement. With adjustment for age, pilots who had 5,000–9,999 hours of total flight time at baseline had a 57% lower risk of a crash than their less experienced counterparts (relative risk = 0.43, 95% confidence interval: 0.21, 0.87). The protective effect of flight experience leveled off after total flight time reached 10,000 hours. The lack of an association between pilot age and crash risk may reflect a strong "healthy worker effect" stemming from the rigorous medical standards and periodic physical examinations required for professional pilots.If this study is accurate, it sounds like the knee of the curve is at around 10,000 hours of experience. So I guess we should require pilots to have 10,000 hours before letting them fly people. :-)
Despite your flippant remark, the fact is if these pilots (Colgan crash) had been either properly trained or experienced (and I don't mean hours necessarily, but experience with those conditions, implied with more hours), there would have been no accident, and at least 48 people would still be alive.
I have always appreciated your reasoned discussions on this forum, but today I have to disagree with you. My brother is a commercial airline pilot, who also flew almost 20 years with the Air Force in air transport prior to leaving for a "good paying" job in the airlines, right before 9/11. Since then he has been laid off twice and is at the bottom of the pay scale, at a major airline, not a commuter. He has had to take on a second job to make ends meet. The safety issue does not have to do with the fact that they won't fly as safely as they can when they are flying at low pay. It is that they are tired. Tired people aren't at their best to make split-second decisions. Yes, captains, on the old pay scale, make decent money, but those coming on now, on the second tier pay scale, aren't making a salary where they can support themselves on one job. I would rather pay a little more for a ticket and know my pilots are fresh.
His pizza delivery kid nets 21 grand a year?!
As for the pilots, welcome to life in an industry on the rocks. Airlines are losing money hand over fist, lots of people in the industry are taking pay cuts. Unless we as a nation suddenly decide to either travel a lot more, or pay a lot more for the same amount of travel that’s how it’s going to stay until at least 2 or 3 airlines go under.
“I have some friends who are pilots. Flying doesn’t seem to be like brain surgery.
I’d almost be more afraid if my bus driver had a second job. He’s much more likely to get me killed or injured, because his job is a lot more dangerous than an airline pilot.”
This is a pretty dumb statement man. Here’s the emrgency procedure for a bus: stop.
Care to imagine the emergency procedures that you have to memorize as a pilot? How about Aircraft Limits?
I fly UH-60’s for the Army. Granted this is just a little more complicated than flying a cessna. There’s 96 caution and warning lights in my cockpit. I have to memorize about 50 emergency procedures.
Moore is a Dbag we all know that. But in this case - the pay of young commuter-air pilots he’s correct. They make sh*t. However, they sign up knowing they’ll make sh*t until they pay their dues and move on to the bigger airlines.
How would you like to have a job where if you make one small mistake you might kill 50 people?
My nephew had expressed an interest in becoming a pilot so my sister looked into universities which offered programs for flight training. In the process she discovered the wage prospects for him. I haven’t heard what he’s thinking of doing now. Maybe he’ll become a computer geek and work for Microsoft like his older brother.
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