Pilot Salaries

[Matt Molnar]

How much do pilots make?

I just heard on the news that construction workers at Ground Zero are having some sort of labor dispute, and that heavy equipment operators make up to $82 an hour. Certainly, operating a tower crane requires a lot of training and a mistake can kill people and cost millions of dollars, but $170,000 a year sounds high to me in the grand scheme of things.

Aside from Michael Moore's idiotic reference to the relationship between pilot skill and salaries in his book "Stupid White Men" (he suggested that regional pilots start at around $25,000 a year, therefore they probably don't really know how to fly and he doesn't feel safe with them) I really have no idea what pilots make, other than that even the tower crane operator with 25 years experience probably makes more than the 747 captain with 25 years experience. So how much is the discrepency? How much does a fresh jetBlue pilot start at? Etc, and soforth.

[T-Bird76]

Brand new jetBlue pilots start at about 48,000 a year, lower then most mainline pilots. On the other hand Southwest pilots are some of the highest paid in the industry and they just asked for a raise. The labor issues at WN have begun.

[Midnight Mike]

Brand new jetBlue pilots start at about 48,000 a year, lower then most mainline pilots. On the other hand Southwest pilots are some of the highest paid in the industry and they just asked for a raise. The labor issues at WN have begun.

Southwest, in addition to being one of the hight paid pilots out there, are also the most productive.