Why are US Regional Airline starting wages so low?

Question

With 2,000hrs of flight time, a commercial ticket for ASEL and AMEL, CFI, CFII, MEI, and a Master's in Aeronautical Science I could easily qualify to fly right seat for a regional airline, but I just can't compete with pilots willing to work for \$17k/yr. For comparison, federal minimum wage is currently just over $15K/yr.

Why are the starting salaries at US Regional Airlines so low?
It seems odd that pilots go through extensive training which takes a great deal of time and expense, but they have to be prepared to work for what is a very low salary compared to other jobs that require a high level of skill and education.

Supply and demand is one explanation, but I really don't understand how there is so much competition for flying jobs but at the same time there is a supposed "pilot shortage".
Are there really so many pilots out there that the competition for jobs drives down starting salaries so low?

I am hoping to understand why it is that well-qualified pilots appear to have so little earning power in the marketplace.

Answer 1

Well, the short version is: The airlines pay what they have to pay in a free market. They can get away with it because pilots are willing to accept it. Like any other business they are in it to make money and keeping costs down is just as good as making extra money, so they aren't going to volunteer anything extra.

Now, why do pilots do it? Because of the promise of better things down the road. It isn't as good as it used to be, but after being at the airlines for a few years, you can make a livable wage and as you get further into your career at a major airline, you still get paid pretty well for a "part time" job. As I've heard other pilots say before: It's better than a "real" job!

Other pilots do it just because they love it and can't imagine doing anything else!

Answer 2

You need to look at turn-of-the-century early industrial age history for your answer. Factories were filled with skilled workers who could weave or smith or do some other specialty with great speed. These were not unskilled workers by modern standards, but their skills were common in those days. The efficient factories lowered prices for those products, making those skills less valuable. The workers were dependent on that factory for their livelihood, they could not easily find work outside the factory. If they grew up in that factory town, they likely had no other skills. There were few factories of their kind they could work in, and no unions or labor laws.

Airline pilots are in a similar situation. While airline mechanics can quit and maintain power plants or trucks with a little training, pilots are stuck with now three major airlines and a handful of regional airlines. They have no skills that can cross over to another industry. Their unions cannot strike or even hint at a job action expressing their discontent. But the airlines can outsource their jobs to cheaper pilots, and have done so with over half their pilot jobs over the past decade.

Those cheaper pilots are disappearing, as the major airlines start hiring, and young people realize what the career of an airline pilot has become. This has been leading up to a pilot shortage for many years, and the efforts to stave off that shortage have resulted in fewer pilots getting trained every year. The result will certainly be a wave of much higher pay, but it won't change the underlying cause. The wave of young people who rush into the career when the pay skyrockets will certainly see their pay drop again, along with layoffs and working the bottom jobs, when the airlines have enough pilots and hit another down decade.

Oh, and $17k is a little more than Skywest, Republic, American Eagle, Great Lakes, and other entry-level carriers pay their new-hires for the first several years. Sorry.

Answer 3

There are probably several major effects.

1) Piloting is a "bikini inspector" job, one that people will do because they enjoy it and the social status it may convey. If you have a passion for a profession, you will work in it for less.

After all, people pay to pilot planes as a sport, so some percentage of pilots will work for relatively little pay just so they can fly. Those people making sub-optimum strictly economic decisions, pull down salaries in the field. You see that in other fields as well, such as Chefs.

2) Deregulation and globalization: From the early 1950s through the mid-1980s, airlines were run as government monopolies with government price fixing and protection from competition. Flying was a relatively high-margin business that catered to those flying on corporate money or who were individually wealthy ("the jet set.") People who chauffeur the rich tend to be better compensated.

The deregulation and opening of air travel to international markets drove down all costa as customers sought the best value. It has happened in every deregulated industry. Back when AT&T was a national government corporate monopoly, everyone, even down to the janitors, got above-market wages, unionized or not. After the monopoly broke up, wages went down.

In the past, airlines were semi-militarized and I know for some period back in the 50s and 60s, you had to be a US citizen to pilot commercial aircraft in the US.

3) As a field matures, its wages drop. Most technologies have a sideways-s growth curb where they start slow, have two to three decades of explosive growth and then plateau off. In the growth era, wages are high and then they regress relative to the general wage. In cars, it was 1920s-1960s; in computers, it was 1980s-now; in aviation, the explosive growth was 1930s-1970s. (WWII threw things off some.)

4) People who can be pilots are not as relatively rare as they used to be. My grandfather was a mail pilot in the 1930s and WWII. Pilots back then had to be physically strong, immune to fatigue and able to do a lot of math on the fly (so to speak.) They were very extraordinary people and were often paid accordingly (e.g. clipper plane pilots made ridiculous amounts of money in the 1930s).

As planes gained larger crews and have become progressively automated, the potential talent pool in the general population has expanded. It's not just that more people can become pilots, it's that existing pilots can fly longer. In the 1950s, you didn't see 60 year old pilots. Now you do.

It's easier to become a pilot these days. When I was in my teens circa 1980, I wanted to get a civil aviation license, but couldn't because I was blind in one eye. Today, I can. An expanded talent pool decreases prices.

5) Pilots and aircrew in general are not as key as they once were. Now they are part of a larger team, many of whom stay on the ground.

I would also speculate that pilots just aren't as skilled, relative to the rest of the population, as they used to be. It's not just that the job is more automated and team driven, but that other jobs have reason to and have surpassed the technical complexity of piloting. Compared to other professions out there now, pilots are not the elites they once were. Their pay has regressed accordingly.

If there is a "pilot" shortage, its likely that 1) airlines can't find pilots of a certain rating or pilots who can fulfill some regulation of training or flight time or 2) the margins in the industry are so slim that the industry has a very narrow compensation window.

I suspect its the latter. Flying is commodity now. People fly like they used to take the bus 30+ years ago. If you're working the same economic niche as a bus driver, well, you will get paid like one.