Here's an investment banker joke I've been hearing oddly often recently: "How do you get a million dollars?" -> "Invest a billion dollars in the airline industry".
On a more serious note: there's a lot of talk on this page about the finance and logistics of starting a company like this - but I think the human factor is also worth mentioning. I fly a moderate amount, and whenever I have an hour or so to spare on a layover, I try to find interesting people to talk at the bar. While I've had varying levels of success, last layover at O'Hare, I spoke to a pilot who had been with a major airline for about a decade.
Having seen "Catch Me If You Can" and surmising that the situation must have changed, I asked him about his job. That was the most dismal response I've received from that question. We talked for about half an hour about how terribly pilots are treated, and how (maybe a bit of an exaggeration) a good number of beginner pilots for airlines are on food stamps because they're paid so poorly. I asked about benefits, and his response was, "just about every benefit you can think of is basically unusable." I asked him why he did it, and he told me that flying was like a drug.
Pilots are responsible for lives, and I'd feel a lot safer if my pilot was paid enough to survive. Yet, with dwindling margins and a thriftier consumer base, it's going to take a lot to disrupt this industry. In reality, I don't see anything major happening without some drastic innovation that cuts associated costs significantly in order to build up that margin.
Pilot salaries are all based on union contracts. Union contracts are all negotiated by union leaders. Union leaders are all senior pilots. Senior pilots have a strong incentive to negotiate contracts that pay senior pilots the most, even if it is at the expense of new pilots.
I know a guy who flies less than 20 hours a month but makes well over $100k/year. He's been a pilot for over 20 years and knows how to work the rules so he makes money even when he's not flying (being on standby and such).
Not just the unions. "Regulations" are at fault too. They're unnecessary and expensive. The number of airliners that fall out of the sky per year due to faulty design/construction/maintenance or due to under-trained/overworked/unfit pilots is something for "The Market" to decide, not the Gubbmint!
Low pilot salaries are due partly to the dismal state of the airline industry and mostly due to the fact that while flying a 747 may be an immensely impressive skill it's not one that's in very wide demand.
I have a friend who's a beginner pilot for a regional airline (American Eagle). He doesn't fly more than 80 hours a month and he only gets paid for the hours he's actually flying, but he has to be on call a lot (sometimes on call in the airport). And yeah, he makes like $20k a year, I think.
He was so upset with the airlines that he quit (also trying to save his marriage). But he loves flying so much that he went back to the same airline, and had to start over again at the bottom of the seniority ladder.
He says that flying is so much fun that he just thinks it's great that he gets paid to do it instead of having to pay to do it, ha. Still, though, he's enrolled in classes again so that he won't have to pay off his student loans because he can't afford the payments.
After he got some experience, he could come to China. They are paying major dollars for pilots right now with enough experience to fly a 737 or 320. There are serious shortages in the world that many of the pilots flying within China (and other countries in Asia) are not from Asia.
Without hijacking the subject / topic, this is one of my pet peeves... many EMTs and paramedics, even unionized, are absolutely responsible for lives, directly, as a job description. Yet you will find that the national average salary for an EMT is $19,000. That's $3,000 less than the person that makes your coffee at Starbucks...
Paramedics, who do even more, including being entrusted with cardiac drugs, narcotics, and skills up to and including cricothyrotomy, often fare barely better than said barista.
This reminds me of the 'Bullshit Jobs' article by David Graeber. While I don't know how much I agree with the article, it does touch on your pet peeve:
> Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.
... the co-pilot on the Colgan Air commuter plane that crashed near Buffalo on Feb. 12 earned only $16,000 a year. (The company later said she earned $23,900.)
I used to work in the aviation industry and had lots of similar conversations with pilots. After a while I began to realise it's essentially just like every other industry: those the flew for well run airlines tended to be happy and those that didn't weren't.
P.S.
Professional pilots are known to whinge quite a lot so you might want to take what he said with a little pinch of salt... try lurking on www.pprune.org for a few weeks and you'll see what I mean :)
P.P.S. Having said all of that, some shocking stuff really does occasionally go on (I've personally seen it happen) so there are genuine grievances out there.
Sure. There's a lot of whining going on. But aspiring pilots (at least in the EU) basically don't stand a chance. Most Ab-initio's (as they're supposedly called) have student loans in the range of 130-170k and - if they're lucky - en up flying for a low cost carrier.
They get paid per SBH (Scheduled block hour) which lands them - during the first few years, on average - a gross income of €4000. Since most of these pilots are contractors but technically have only one client they'll have to pay for everything themselves (social security, pension, medical insurances, liabilities, income races). Depending on the country your based in this may tax your income by up to 78%.
Not to much to live from, let alone pay for interest on a student loan. And don't even think about repaying that debt.
But like mentioned in earlier comments: flying is like a drug, it's a beautiful job.
This says a lot about Europe actually. 4000 Euro should, if taxed decently, be a nice salary (2600 Euro net at 35% taxes). However, in many countries that salary brings your income tax way up (usually between 40 and 50 %). Plus, you are obliged to pay for a pension you will never see (I challenge anybody believing that in 40 years from now European States will be able to pay decent pension).
Finally, most of the European States have funny regulations about building new house, so most of the cities are crowded and rents are way too expensive.
> Yet, with dwindling margins and a thriftier consumer base, it's going to take a lot to disrupt this industry.
Although one part of travel is about the physical experience of visiting different places, another major part has to do with connecting people. Here, the real disruption is the internet. I'm not saying flights will ever go away, because we'll always want to move around, but I am saying that we'll feel the need to travel less as connectivity improves.
On a more serious note: there's a lot of talk on this page about the finance and logistics of starting a company like this - but I think the human factor is also worth mentioning. I fly a moderate amount, and whenever I have an hour or so to spare on a layover, I try to find interesting people to talk at the bar. While I've had varying levels of success, last layover at O'Hare, I spoke to a pilot who had been with a major airline for about a decade.
Having seen "Catch Me If You Can" and surmising that the situation must have changed, I asked him about his job. That was the most dismal response I've received from that question. We talked for about half an hour about how terribly pilots are treated, and how (maybe a bit of an exaggeration) a good number of beginner pilots for airlines are on food stamps because they're paid so poorly. I asked about benefits, and his response was, "just about every benefit you can think of is basically unusable." I asked him why he did it, and he told me that flying was like a drug.
Pilots are responsible for lives, and I'd feel a lot safer if my pilot was paid enough to survive. Yet, with dwindling margins and a thriftier consumer base, it's going to take a lot to disrupt this industry. In reality, I don't see anything major happening without some drastic innovation that cuts associated costs significantly in order to build up that margin.