Pathetic Pilot Salaries

G.R. Patterson III wrote:

Paul Tomblin wrote:

What's the next technology trend? I don't know, but I'm damn sure I'm
going to teach it to myself before Java on Linux jobs dry up.


Yep, you've done things the right way so far. I missed the step over to C++ and
sidestepped to writing requirements. Wrong move, but the job market's picking up
there again. Pick up PERL while you're at it. For some reason, that's hot now.

George Patterson
If you want to know God's opinion of money, just look at the people
he gives it to.
I worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory a long time ago. It was strongly
oriented toward hardware devices, circuits, radars, etc. Software
engineers were second class citizens. My boss used to snarl, "If you
can program a computer, you'll never have to work for a living."

"Michael" wrote:
market is destroying the unionized carriers. The $200K left-seater
is a
fading anachronism.

Actually, Southwest is unionized and they're doing great. Of course
they are not an ALPA shop, and their pilots don't make what the rest
of the industry is making. Still, they do fairly well - and Southwest
is probably a pretty good indication of where the salaries will
stabilize. Maybe.

Southwest is a very special case. It's the child of a brilliant
manager/founder. Such individuals are rare - vanishingly scarce in
publicly traded corporations.

Your point is valid, though: management likes to blame unions for
competitive disadvantages, but management agreed to those contracts.
Often this is a case of throwing money at unhappy people because it's
easier than dealing imaginatively with the workforce.

[snip]

My bet is that is stabilizes right around $100K in today's dollars for
major airline captains, and the quality of the pilots (as measured in
accident rate) will not change.

I'll bet you lunch at Carl's that it will be ~$75K in today's dollars in
10 years. Hope I can still fly in to collect.
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...

"Michael" wrote:
market is destroying the unionized carriers. The $200K left-seater
is a
fading anachronism.

Actually, Southwest is unionized and they're doing great. Of course
they are not an ALPA shop, and their pilots don't make what the rest
of the industry is making. Still, they do fairly well - and Southwest
is probably a pretty good indication of where the salaries will
stabilize. Maybe.

Southwest is a very special case. It's the child of a brilliant
manager/founder. Such individuals are rare - vanishingly scarce in
publicly traded corporations.


I don't know if I would agree that SWA success was dependent on brilliance.
It seems pretty simple. SWA seems to be the only airline that realizes who
the customer is, what they want and set up a business to provide it. The
other airlines talk about restructuring but, as soon as the economy gets
good, they go back to their old ways and the cycle repeats.

Mike
MU-2

So $17K? This is up quite a bit. There must be a shortage.

They used to charge YOU for the opportunity
of pounding around as a first officer in their 1900s. After all, the
training
was worth a lot. Kinda an "intern" program, I guess.

A friend was in Continentals 1900 program the day of 9-11. Classes
cancelled.

Another friend is an aircraft owner, econ full professor, highly
qualified human being.

He took his sabbatical and went to work for Quarter Share flying
Citations
right seat. On two weeks, off two. Decent pay. Great training.

He quit after about 6 months and paid them $10K or so reimbursement
for all
the training.

Reasons:

1) The scheduling interfered with teenage kid activities too much

2) Airplane wasn't going where he wanted; too much dead time

3) Didn't turn out to be as much fun as he thought.

4) Didn't turn out to be as much fun as he thought.

Probably, the time off was much worse than being a professor :-)

So you can see his new book, "Structured IFR" which is a real
winner. He wrote that during his spare prof time.

Bill Hale

Trying for an aviation career is somewhat like trying to be a rock star.
Because of the "glamour" of the job and the big bucks you can make it you
make it to the "big time" airlines, people are willing to work for peanuts
to have a chance to grab the brass ring. But unlike artists, pilots not
only have to work for almost nothing, they also have to first spend lots of
their own money to gain the experience and ratings necessary to fly for pay.

--

B-58 Hustler History: http://members.cox.net/dschmidt1/
-

"Vic" wrote in message
m...
Hi,

I am a 35 year old software programmer thinking about a possible
career change into aviation. I am currently working on my PPL.
I've come to know some pilots who are currently flying for ASA and
Comair. Both of them made UNDER 17,000.00 last year. They are both
young guys without families, homes,etc.. so it's a bit easier for
them to ride this through. Anyhow, since I haven't made up my mind
yet, I would love to hear from any of you who have been in a similar
situation. Especially if you are around my age, made the switch from a
previous career, are married, have children and a mortgage. You get my
point. How do you pay continue to pay the bills? I will obviously take
a huge hit salary speaking, but I was shocked at how low the starting
salaries are!! With my wife, children and mortgage, I could qualify
for food stamps on that kind of pay. Also, since that would put my
family below the poverty level, would I even have to pay income tax?
Not to mention I will also have to make payments on student loans if
I choose to go ahead with this.

My CFI tells me to avoid the regionals at all costs. He suggests
flying corporate, but after some research the starting salaries for a
corporate pilot seem to be just as low. He also said that in a few
years there will be a pilot shortage. If there is a pilot shortage in
3-5 years, what does this actually mean for newly rated commercial
pilots who are looking for their first job? If anyone has any thoughts
I would love to hear them. Thanks in advance!

Vic

In a previous article, "G.R. Patterson III" said:
Paul Tomblin wrote:
What's the next technology trend? I don't know, but I'm damn sure I'm
going to teach it to myself before Java on Linux jobs dry up.

Yep, you've done things the right way so far. I missed the step over to C++ and
sidestepped to writing requirements. Wrong move, but the job market's picking up
there again. Pick up PERL while you're at it. For some reason, that's hot now.

navaid.com is writen in perl. Even though I've used it for a pretty major
chunk of code like that, I still think of it as a toy language. My next
personal project will probably be in Python.

--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
When the revolution comes, we'll need a longer wall.
-- Tom De Mulder

There is no hard and fast rule that says you can't stay technology-current
as you age. I started off doing FORTRAN on mainframes, went to C and
Unix, then C++ and Unix, and here I am at 44 doing Java on Linux, making
50% more than I was making when I was 35. And every step up the ladder
was done by identifying what I wanted to do next and teaching myself.

And, of course, "Java on Linux" is identical to "Java on Windows", "Java
on OS X", and anything else you can name. :-) My team has produced 100K
lines of code in the last two years developing on OS X and Linux and
deploying the client on Windows (2K & XP) and the server on another
version of Linux, with never a single line of code modified for a
specific platform.

What's the next technology trend? I don't know, but I'm damn sure I'm
going to teach it to myself before Java on Linux jobs dry up. Although I

I've been doing nothing but Java for 7 years straight now and it's not
going anywhere for a long time to come, that's for sure...

have a nagging suspicion that my next "technology" will be "how to manage
a team of programmers in India to make sure that what they produce isn't a
giant cluster **** like every other outsourcing project I've seen".

Amen to that.

And you are right about labor in India. Once they master the
technology, we will be the customer and will completely lack the ability
to compete.

Fortunately or unfortunately, they don't seem to be moving towards that
point very quickly. The thing about a lot of them is that they are into
the field solely for the money and thus lack passion for the art. It
shows, in my experience.

Just talked with a very skilled associate. He prefers Java over C++,
and Python over Java. I've only done a few small projects in Python and
PERL. I found PERL to be a strange language to work with (you
definitely need your PERL hat on, like Scheme).

Paul Tomblin wrote:
In a previous article, "G.R. Patterson III" said:

Paul Tomblin wrote:

What's the next technology trend? I don't know, but I'm damn sure I'm
going to teach it to myself before Java on Linux jobs dry up.

Yep, you've done things the right way so far. I missed the step over to C++ and
sidestepped to writing requirements. Wrong move, but the job market's picking up
there again. Pick up PERL while you're at it. For some reason, that's hot now.


navaid.com is writen in perl. Even though I've used it for a pretty major
chunk of code like that, I still think of it as a toy language. My next
personal project will probably be in Python.



--
Remove "2PLANES" to reply.

On 8/28/04 1:34 PM, in article _m3Yc.159179$sh.9794@fed1read06, "Darrell"
wrote:

Trying for an aviation career is somewhat like trying to be a rock star.
Because of the "glamour" of the job and the big bucks you can make it you
make it to the "big time" airlines, people are willing to work for peanuts
to have a chance to grab the brass ring. But unlike artists, pilots not
only have to work for almost nothing, they also have to first spend lots of
their own money to gain the experience and ratings necessary to fly for pay.

I'd say most artists spend more time learning their craft than pilots. I've
been drawing since I could hold a crayon and that doesn't seem to be
unusual. I remember drawing a caricature of my mother in the dirt as a kid.

It took a lot of money and time (I gave Uncle Sam 4 years in order to have
him to pay for college) to get to the point that people are willing to pay
me for my artwork, and it took a lot of experience (which cost me more
money) before I learned how to charge anywhere near what I'm worth.

But like flying, I can't begrudge a single moment of the work that it took
to get to this point. I have a talent that a lot of people envy and will pay
for, and it finances my flying. How many people have that opportunity?

It's a great time and place to be alive. I was born at a time in history
where piloting a private plane is (nearly) commonplace, the US lets me fly
virtually unrestricted, the internet gives me a global client base to help
pay for it, and technologies like GPS makes it so much safer and easier to
get from place to place I almost feel like I'm cheating when I use it.
--
Jeff 'The Wizard of Draws' Bucchino
Cartoons with a Touch of Magic�
www.wizardofdraws.com
www.cartoonclipart.com