Jan 12
22
What Happens When a Commercial Pilot Salary is too Low
Commercial Pilot Salary
What are the possible effects or consequences of reducing a commercial pilot salary? Well maybe your thinking who cares? what is the difference between a pay cut for a pilot and anybody else who works for a living. It’s a fair point and really it should not make any difference to how you travel from point A to point B when traveling by air. But what happens when pilots are paid such a low salary that they do not earn enough money to cover their basic expenses. In this article I would like to explain how this situation can and will affect your safety as a flying passenger.
With the advent of low cost carriers or as they are sometimes known as cost cutting airlines, passengers were offered a cheaper way to travel. A totally revamped business structure allowed airlines to offer cheaper fares by reducing the costs they incurred in running their operations on a daily basis, the commercial pilot salary was also included. As well as reducing wages, staff numbers were cut so remaining staff are required to carry out extra work as well as earning lower and sometimes substandard wages.
As a comparison Singapore Airlines flies roughly the same number of routes as Air Asia yet they have four times the amount of workers. So doing the math here is pretty simple, workers for Air Asia work harder and earn a lot less income and this includes pilots. Now lets add another burden that many Airline Pilots endure working for Air Asia. Air Asia will pay for a cadets training yet the cadet is indentured to pay back the money over a fifteen year period! Yes that’s right 15 years.
What we now have is an Airline Pilot with major responsibilities to ensure your safety, who is earning substandard wages with a large debt. In all probability many of these pilots will have to supplement their income by other means in order to cover all of the bills? Many airline pilots do this by taking a second job, which while being responsible to his family it may not be to the passengers of his flights. If you are flying 1000 hours a year as the Air Asia pilots do there is not much time left over for a second job unless it is done at the expense of sleep.
Let’s now consider the old adage that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Now this may not be considered by many to be an appropriate or fair statement, as many pilots are prepared to accept the low salaries for a time until they gain experience and can apply for higher paying pilot jobs elsewhere. For many however they will stay with one airline for their entire career. So why would anyone in their right mind take on the massive responsibilities of an airline pilot, working sometimes six days a week for peanuts?? It really is worth considering next time you book your next flight. Are the cheaper tickets the best options? Are the consequences of reducing the commercial pilot salary really worth the risk?
About admin
I am an Aussie living and working in Japan as an Airline pilot. I fly Boeing B767's on international routes from Osaka and Narita on both passenger and freight operations.
I enjoy writing and try to update my Blog and FB Page on a daily basis.
