How much do beginner airline pilots make their first year?

Question

I want to know how much they make maybe a year?

Answer 1

Competition for airline jobs is high. A new pilot would probably end up getting a commercial pilot's job. Those will start at $20,000 to $28,000 a year. An experience commercial pilot will probably make close to $55,000 a year.

If a person can get an Airline pilot's job, then they are set. Airline pilots are among the highest paid workers in the nation. Airline pilots will make somewhere between $50,000 and $200,000 a year depending upon the size and type of aircraft they fly.

Answer 2

After flight school, which can take as little as a couple of years (but cost almost as much as college) to get your commercial license and ratings, you'll still have around or less than 500 hours. Major airlines won't even consider a SIC applicant with less than 1000-1500 hours. Which means you'll be spending at least a year or two doing some non airline flying (flight instructing, small part 135 ops, skydiver flying, buy a plane and fly it, etc.) until you get enough hours to be hired as a second in command (copilot) of a regional airway (smaller jets). Then you'll start out at anywhere from $15/hour-$30/hour which equates to less than $30,000/year since you don't fly 8 hours a day, maybe 3-5. You'll have to deal with the crappy flights and scheduling until you move up the ranks and become a captain.
So to answer your question, not a lot of money, and it takes a while to get there.

the best tip for landing an airline job: It's not what you know, it's who you know.

Answer 3

About 50,000 a year best case scenario, but the air industry is very seniority driven, most pilots log fight time by the hour. I believe to be qualified as a professional pilot you may need at least a 1000 hours of logged flight time. It takes a few years of building up hours/seniority before you can start picking your runs, until then you are basically a gopher guy who fills in all the little slots that other pilots don't want. The site I went to mentions that many starter pilots often fill in other positions like flight instructor or air traffic controller to fill in the time between flying jobs. Obviously the hardest part is building up the necessary hours during training because flight lessons and flight time on the plane are quite expensive.

The site I listed is Canadian, but the general information is relevant to the US too.

Answer 4

In the United States, new hire regional airline pilots start at about $20,000 per year. Any poster that says otherwise for first year pay is seriously uniformed or plain BSing.

Here is the monthly/yearly GROSS pay by airline, without per diem* based on "monthly guarantee":

American Eagle $1,725 x 12 = $20,700/yr
Comair - $1,720 x 12 = $20,640/yr
Chautauqua - $1,650 = $19,800/yr
Mesa - $1,596 x 12 = $19,152/yr
Mesaba - $1,800 x 12 = $21,600/yr
Pinnacle $1,575 x 12 = $18,900/yr
Skywest $1,425 x 12 = $17,100/yr
Trans States $1,628 x 12 = $19,536

Each company also has a set 'minimum guarantee' flight hour pay in their pilot contract. This is generally about 75 hours per month but varies slightly by airline. A pilot will make no less than that, even if they fly under that amount of flight hours.

*Flight crew make about $1-3 per hour in 'per diem' for every hour they are away from their domicile on a trip to cover expenses.

Answer 5

I looked on salary.com and it was 81k to 131k with no mention of experience. Like some posters said it takes many hours to become an '"airline" pilot, not a puddle jumper.
Sad thing is my buddy's dad was a airline pilot in the 70's and made about 150k. It seems to have gone down.Must be demand. Not a bad salary for about 40 hrs work a month.

Answer 6

This all depends on the airline and the plane.
If you are doing a smaller regional jet, you'd look at around 30,000-45,000.
Medium size planes with larger routes about 50,000-75,000.

Answer 7

A freshly minted ATP will probably have to start with a regional or commuter carrier and will be lucky to make anything over $25k.

Answer 8

nothing bad


but it depends on the airline

Answer 9

depends on the airline they work for etc.

Answer 10

go to www.willflyforfood.cc