Pathetic Pilot Salaries

Keep your day job, get your ticket, buy a plane, start an aviation-related
side business (like a school or charter shop) and fly for your own account,
not someone else's. Who knows, you might succeed to the extent that you
could start a jet air taxi service like POGO with one of these new low-cost
jets recently certified or in development. If you run your own shop and hire
pilots, you'll appreciate the low starting salaries



"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

(Vic) wrote
I am a 35 year old software programmer thinking about a possible
career change into aviation.

You and about 20,000 like you.

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.

Yup, that's what starting salaries are like.

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.

They are, and top end salaries are lower than the airlines.

He also said that in a few
years there will be a pilot shortage.

There are periodically shortages of highly qualified pilots with
plenty of jet PIC time who are willing to take entry-level jobs -
meaning military pilots. Truly, I don't even see that on the horizon,
but it could happen.

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?

It will be easier to find a job as a CFI, where if you work really
hard, don't take any weekends off, and hustle to get students you
might make $13K/year if you're lucky. Nothing else. There will NEVER
be a shortage of such pilots. You know how long it takes to turn a
college-educated private pilot with 80 hours into a
commercial/multi/IFR/CFI/CFII/MEI? 90 days. AllATP's does it all the
time. With that short a pipeline, what makes you think there could
ever be a shortage?

Michael

William W. Plummer wrote:
and Air Traffic Controllers at
56.

Not anymore. The age 56 rule is on its last gasping breath. The FAA
can already allow needed controllers to stay past 56 and within a few
years the limit will be gone all together.

gatt wrote:




The people paying the salaries, and the pilots earning them, ought to know
better. Salaries should always be high in an occupation considered (by the
general public) to be dangerous.

Why? Being a pilot flying an RJ nowadays is easier than being a bus
driver.

Mike Rapoport wrote:




Additionally the $200k is somewhat of a farce because the pensions are so
underfunded. There is a recent newspaper article on the United
restructuring saying that many of the pilots recieving $175K a year in
retirement may be getting $28K from now on.

One of the guys at work his father is a retired United pilot. They are
expecting to lose everything. No pension. Also United is not paying
into the pension fund, as ordered by the bankruptcy court.

On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 11:56:17 -0500, Bill Denton wrote:
May I suggest that you take your hiring blinders off?

I didn't even BECOME a developer until I was 38.

I didn't even finish junior college (I got hired after 1-1/2 years)


But by that very fact, you're showing that you're not
a traditional developer. Let me put it this way - how many people
do you know who took IT/software development courses in college,
graduated by age 23, and are still active developers, with current
knowledge, 20 years later? Not many, I'd wager.

I am a damned good developer - MS Visual Basic, MS SQL Server, MS Visual
InterDev, NT/2000 Server, TCP/IP, Active Directory, DNS, DHCP. And I taught
myself all of these. I read a couple of chapters in a book on TCP/IP, and
another couple of chapters in a book on DNS. Otherwise, I learned it all
from MS helpfiles and MSDN.


What you're describing is programming knowledge - a relatively small part of
software development. A person can know Strousoup inside and out, be able
to recite Win32 API calls at the drop of a hat, but that doesn't
mean they can develop software. For that, you need, at the very
least, domain knowledge. You can't built good software for doing
weight and balance calculations without knowing a little bit of
physics and math. You can't build a good system for controlling an offset
printer without knowing how printing presses work, etc. And these
are not things that you learn from a help file or MSDN.

I "skim" a few articles and magazines to find out what the new technologies
are, but I usually learn them without the aid of books are courses.


If I was interviewing you, I'd ask what resources you were using.
And I'd weigh the responses very carefully - if you got your info from,
say, PC Magazine, as opposed to the Java Developers journal or
SysAdmin, my opinion would be quite different based on your answer,
because there are a lot of people who read, but don't question what
they read, or try to evaluate the accuracy of the articles. If you said
that you read comp.lang.perl, and could tell me who Tom and Abigail are,
I might even hire you on the spot.

So, while I'm learning new technologies by non-traditional means, you are
interviewing people in a traditional, hidebound manner.


Oh, I don't know. Interviewing people while hiking the canal
path probably isn't too traditional. The question asking how many
barbers there are in the U.S. tends to confuse them, too.

So who's out of step with current technologies and methodologies?

Probably the person who doesn't read for content, I expect.

- Rich

"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message k.net...

Salaries will always be low in an occupation considered to be glamorous.

When was the last time a large segment of the population considering
flying a Beech 1900 or CRJ glamorous? Once upon a time, back in Pan
Am's glory days perhaps, it was a "rock star" kind of job. Now most
people view them as bus drivers who program autopilots. And most of
them don't even know about the dog!

To be fair, I'd love to have my brother-in-law's job. He flies 767s
for UPS all over the world, spending two days at a time in downtown
hotels in Manila, Bangkok, Singapore, Bombay, Dubai, Copenhagen, etc.
Good pay, expenses, etc. I'm 28 and single, he's 42 and has an
adorable 2 year old son. Anyway, I'd go that way (I work in IT sales
now) but I also watched him work his way up from CFI through traffic
watch, night freight, and so on over close to ten years before he got
that "glamorous" job that one little medical issue could yank out from
under him.

Best,
-cwk.

My comments are in the body text...

"Here to there" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 11:56:17 -0500, Bill Denton
wrote:
May I suggest that you take your hiring blinders off?

I didn't even BECOME a developer until I was 38.

I didn't even finish junior college (I got hired after 1-1/2 years)


But by that very fact, you're showing that you're not
a traditional developer. Let me put it this way - how many people
do you know who took IT/software development courses in college,
graduated by age 23, and are still active developers, with current
knowledge, 20 years later? Not many, I'd wager.

I'm not sure what you are saying/asking here, but in my own case the only
language I learned in college was COBOL, and I have not written a single
line of COBOL since I left school. I taught myself dBase II while I was in
school, and that was what I used on my first job.



I am a damned good developer - MS Visual Basic, MS SQL Server, MS Visual
InterDev, NT/2000 Server, TCP/IP, Active Directory, DNS, DHCP. And I
taught
myself all of these. I read a couple of chapters in a book on TCP/IP,
and
another couple of chapters in a book on DNS. Otherwise, I learned it all
from MS helpfiles and MSDN.


What you're describing is programming knowledge - a relatively small
part of
software development. A person can know Strousoup inside and out, be able
to recite Win32 API calls at the drop of a hat, but that doesn't
mean they can develop software. For that, you need, at the very
least, domain knowledge. You can't built good software for doing
weight and balance calculations without knowing a little bit of
physics and math. You can't build a good system for controlling an offset
printer without knowing how printing presses work, etc. And these
are not things that you learn from a help file or MSDN.

Technologies, and staying on top of them, was the portion of the post I was
responding to. That's why I discussed technologies.

But I read Date & Codd and began implementing their relational database
theories back in the days when they could only be barely implemented in PC
databases. I am probably one of the finest designers of relational databases
in the game.

As far as W & B software goes, I wrote a COGO land surveying program without
knowing the slightest bit of trigonometry (or whatever math I used); I just
had someone give me the formulas and the rest of it was just a matter of
manipulating variables. For me, W & B would be the same situation, just give
me the forumulas and I won't need to know about physics, although I would
need to know some very basic math.

I wouldn't need to know anything about printing presses to write a program
to control one. But given the task, I would spend some amount of time with
various people so I could put together a well designed user interface.

And speaking of user interfaces, I independently developed a large number of
the interfaces you see today based on observations of the world around me
and a knowledge of how people work.

Believe me, I know that development is far more than just technologies.


I "skim" a few articles and magazines to find out what the new
technologies
are, but I usually learn them without the aid of books are courses.


If I was interviewing you, I'd ask what resources you were using.
And I'd weigh the responses very carefully - if you got your info from,
say, PC Magazine, as opposed to the Java Developers journal or
SysAdmin, my opinion would be quite different based on your answer,
because there are a lot of people who read, but don't question what
they read, or try to evaluate the accuracy of the articles. If you said
that you read comp.lang.perl, and could tell me who Tom and Abigail are,
I might even hire you on the spot.

And here is where your thinking goes off track. I don't develop in Java and
I don't intend to, so Java Developers journal would be useless to me. I'm
not familiar with SysAdmin, but based on the title, I would guess that it
has to do with datacenter operations or possibly UNIX. I don't run a
datacenter or do UNIX, so SysAdmin would be useless to me.

So, based on the work I actually do, PC Magazine could well be the most
valuable resource to me (although I'm not saying it is).

As far as comp.lang.perl and Tom and Abigail go, I don't do perl and I have
no use for any of this.

However I do read Windows & .NET Magazine, Microsoft Certified Professional
Magazine, and MSDN Magazine, all of which are relevant to my work and which
I read. Would you care to have me grill you on the last couple of copies of
each?

Now, you would never have the opportunity to interview me because it appears
you are not a Microsoft shop and I'm a Microsoft developer. I would not
waste your time or my time by applying for a position I am not qualified
for.

But throwing out the names of a few magazines doesn't demonstrate a
programmer's abilities any more than throwing out the names of a few
technologies. And if these are the criteria upon which you base your
interviews, that's really sad. You're probably missing a lot of good people
who just don't happen to read the magazines you do. That's a bit
short-sighted in my book.


So, while I'm learning new technologies by non-traditional means, you
are
interviewing people in a traditional, hidebound manner.


Oh, I don't know. Interviewing people while hiking the canal
path probably isn't too traditional. The question asking how many
barbers there are in the U.S. tends to confuse them, too.

So who's out of step with current technologies and methodologies?

Probably the person who doesn't read for content, I expect.

- Rich

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.

Amen.
I've gone from 8051 assembly to C++ on VxWorks and Unix.
Back to HW design, then FPGAs, and back again.


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
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".

That's pretty much where I see my career going, too!

Adam

"Here to there" wrote, "... The question asking how many barbers there are
in the U.S. tends to confuse [people he's interviewing], too."

How many barbers in th eUS? None. They are now all hair stylists, coiffeurs,
hairdressers, beauticians, cosmetologists, folicular engineers, or personal
appearance consultants.