aircraft maintenance is more important than flying with respect to safety and responsibility?

Question

aircraft maintenance is more important than flying with respect to safety and responsibility. so why is aircraft maintenance engineers and mechanics payed less than pilots and air hostesses?

Answer 1

Because the pilot and crew are ultimately responsible for the operation of the aircraft and the safety of the passengers. But are you sure that the pay scales are tipped in their favor? Where did you get your figures?

Answer 2

Who says Engineers and mechanics are paid less than cabin crew. It is not correct. They are paid less than the Pilots, may be true. Aircraft maintenance and flying an aircraft are very important and one can not say which is more important. Regarding safety of aircraft and passengers it is very important that the aircraft handed over to a pilot has to be airworthy in all respects. And importantly, a pilot will fly an aircraft only when it is fully maintained. Engneers and mechanics do a ground job whereas a pilot does a flying job. So there is a difference in salary. Also the cost of learing flying is enormus and we have a shortage of trained pilots in the country.

Answer 3

The pay scales aren't what you think. I am a commercial pilot and an aircraft mechanic and I do maintenance because it pays much more than an entry level pilot. As a mechanic I make about as much as a senior regional captain-with better hours.

Airline pilots make big bucks but they spent many years paying dues flying for small operations on ancient aircraft.

Also, having done both, being a pilot requires more knowledge and skill of the get go. And pilots are directly accountable for their mistakes.

Answer 4

It is because when there is an accident, the fault will blame on the pilot not the ground crew. In fact, more than 95% of aircraft accident is caused by a bad pilot decision. Therefore, the pilot has more responsibilities than the ground crew and which is why pilot has higher salary.

Answer 5

I don't know that you could say maintenance is more important, but I believe the performance, skill, and training of maintenance personnel is just as important and the performance, skill, and training as the flight crew. It doesn't matter how well we fix it if it isn't flown correctly, and vice versa.

There is a huge disparity in pay from the maintenance personnel to the flight crew. If you consider an old military aviation saying, "Planes are designed by people with PhD's, flown by people with Bachelor's degrees, and maintained by people with high school diplomas." There is a disparity in the way that the US Department of Labor sees maintenance personnel too. They consider aircraft maintenance personnel to be unskilled labor, and so companies can obviously pay less to these employees. It definitely isn't right, especially considering all the training the FAA and many foreign NAA's require for personnel to work on aircraft. I would like to see more parity in pay for us maintenance folks. Our jobs may not be as glamorous as the pilots', but we're just as important.

Answer 6

only top end pilots like captains or those working for corparate bosses make the big bucks. Your average flight instructor probably averages 10$/hr. While they may post 20-30/hr that is air time and doesnt include ground instruction or the fact that that in an 8 hr work day after preflights and ground instruction they may only fly 2-3 hours. Also that doesnt include the vast amount of time they sit on the ground due to weather.

Answer 7

i guess its a case of supply and demand and what type of engineer you be licensed or not and lenghth of service ,airline you work for ! ultimately it is the engineer that deems an aircraft servicable or not , and paramount "safety" for all policy should determine your employee , engineering is costly and unfortunately in certain sectors is a dying breed , my opinion without these guys you lose reliability trust and an aircraft full of defects and a cabin that would look like a rabbit hutch where no one would wish to fly on no punters no job , a lot of cabin crew are temp workers and seasonal so their rates of pay should reflect this , i think engineers should be on par pro rata age experience as the flight deck.

Answer 8

Statistically maintenance may cause the most problems, but if you had idiots flying the aircraft the statistics would change really quickly.

Answer 9

That is a really good question
but probably because they are responsible for more

My question is why aren't most mechanics employed

Answer 10

Plain and simple...
Because the pilots and flight attendants have a better union.

Although, those who work for express carriers are poorly paid compared to the employees of the mainline carriers.