should train drivers earn the same as airline pilots, given their responsibility?

Question

train drivers in fact often have more lives in their care than the average airline pilot, yet are paid a fraction. Something amiss there?

puntojo: but bus drivers only carry dozens of passengers at most, not hundreds

e.siller: thanks for your contribution. You are clearly american.....we call our train drivers "train drivers" in britain. But I agree with you on the complexity of the job being much greater than many give credit for.

Answer 1

I work on the railway and can tell you there is more to driving a train DAY IN DAY OUT than meets the eye. Sure just to get it moving is easy but knowing your route, memorising every signal, alarm, crossing, points, and station cant be that easy. Then there is the stress. Imagine flying down the line at 125 with workers stood just 6'6" from your train. "Did they all live?" etc etc. It requires more concentration than flying a plane as you never have any oppertunity to look away and relax unlike flying a plane for even just 1 hr. Auto pilot is a good thing for those guys.

Answer 2

As a train driver, I feel that airline pilots should be paid more than us. But some of the answers on here already are an absolute joke. Anyone who thinks driving a train is easy is not living in the real world. Admittedly, physically moving a train from A to B isn't hard but all the stuff that goes with it, particularly stock and route knowledge is where the money is earned.

I'm forever getting stick about the money I earn but my reply is this: If it's so easy and overpaid then why aren't you all doing it? (Take note, London's Evening Standard).

Another accusation is that train drivers are paid too much in relation to professions such as nursing. Could it not be that nurses are vastly underpaid as opposed to train drivers being overpaid?

Answer 3

Yes, something is amiss. While it is true that it's harder to fly an airplane than it is to drive a train, the difference in skills required doesn't always match the difference in pay. Today the disparity is smaller than it once was, and more in line with the actual differences (mainly because pilot salaries have dropped, not because engineer salaries have risen), but in the past it was much worse. However, it's hard to compare occupations in a truly objective way that permits putting a dollar sign in front of each one, so any conclusions are necessarily speculative to some degree. Should doctors be paid more than pilots, or less? Doctors have fewer lives to take responsibility for, and while they require more training, they also are far less regulated than pilots. And what about cruise-ship captains? They have the responsibility for the safety of thousands of people. Should they be paid 30 times more than pilots if they have 30 times as many lives to worry about? And so on. I can see that a lot of people here haven't driven a train. Everything looks easy when you're not the one doing it.

Answer 4

Train Drivers Rule Book

Answer 5

Fantastic question, as for the answers so far, give or take a few, i've never read so much crap in my life.

Train Driving is a science, not an occupation. The amount of knowledge and skill required to drive a train in the UK today is un-beliveable. That's probably why so many answers to this qusetion are so far off the mark.

To carry out my job i've had to......

Pass various medical tests
Pass various Psychometric tests
Carry out training in rules and regulations of Train working (on which I get tested every 2 years. just an example of this is that the Network Rail Rule Book for Train Drivers is about 6-8 inches thick, we have to know it from cover to cover!)
Be trained to drive several different types of train, and know exactly how they opperate, how to prepare them for use and how to dispose (stable) them properly afterwards.
You have to learn and experience different train handing techniques. Small passenger trains react alot differently to 1900tonne Stone Trains!!!!!!!!
Learn and have an exacting knowledge of all railway lines that we/I am/are required to drive Trains over (Speed's, Gradients, Geographical location, areas of Low Adhesion, Location of EVERY SIGNAL over 1000's of miles, local working instructions.....I could go on, but as an example, an average Driver would take around 15 - 20 weeks to learn the road from Crewe to Euston.

Also, as someone else has taken into account, the unsociable hours.....and yes we do spend time away from home when we are on long job's (known as "Lodging Turns", I was away from home 3 nights last week for example)

I am fully aware that as a Train Driver I do earn more money than some pilots that work for some of the smaller airlines or freight companies, and on the whole the money is good, but compared with the responsibility, the fact that there is no "Auto Pilot", of "Navigation System", and the only radar or guidance we have during bad weather (thick fog, heavy rain, snow fall etc....) is the good old Mk1 eyeball, then yes, I think we do deserve an equal pay structure.

Answer 6

Some of these answers: 'if you can drive a car, then you can drive a Train'' what a load of cobblers!, driving a train is 100x harder than driving a car.
two years minimum training, extensive route knowledge, traction fault repairs,1000 people on board in the rushhour, poor railhead season coming up..vandalism and yobs to contend with, signals in waterloo area which are the most dangerous in the country.....
train drivers, should be paid minimum £50k a year...

AND people, the article in the news of the world the other sunday was all lies, no driver would sleep like it said, its impossible,as the safety systems are there to prevent things like that happen, ive been a driver for 16 years and its never happened.. just press scaremongering again!!

Answer 7

Some of the answers have made me smile. As a train driver I can honestly say it's the most responsible job I have had.
In relation to pilots I don't think we should be on as much as a 747 captain for example, but we should be on a bit more than we are considering our responsibilty.
For example tonight I was braking for a station and the train started to slide due to poor railhead conditions; it was misty. Due to my route knowledge and experience I had anticipated this and ensured that I braked earlier so the train stopped safely. This is the sort of thing we do all the time, both passenger and freight drivers. It's not just knowing rules and knowing a route, it's applying your knowledge so that you can drive your train safely. Were not just sitting there watching the world go by, every second of our job requires vigilance and concentration for who know's what's round the next corner?
What also matters is how both pilots and train drivers respond in an emergency, not just the day to day running of the job. As everyone is saying, there is autopilot, and trains aren't steered etc., but what happens when things go wrong?
That's what we are paid for, that's how we pass the aptitude tests and interviews. We are both trained to respond to emergency situations such as fire etc and deal with it in safety. We also have realistic simulators which can test a train driver's knowledge and application of the rules in an emergency. We are regularly downloaded to monitor our driving technique and sent for annual rules tests to ensure we are up to scratch, much as pilots are tested in simulators.

So there are a lot of parallels with the two jobs. What matters to you as a passenger is that when you are going along at 100mph in the fog, that there is a professional at the front who knows what he/she is doing and as such should be paid accordingly.

In response to the one that said that he had a degree and was surprised to be on less than a train driver, that's a bit pretentious. Having a degree doesn't make you better than everyone else.

Answer 8

I think they should yes. But turn the question round. Should signallers earn the same as air traffic controllers?

This is my job (a signaller) I am responsible for up to 10 trains or more at a time. Each one of these could be carrying over 100 passengers.

Yet drivers of these trains are on £34k and i'm on £25,571.

Wheres the justification??

Answer 9

Like people have said before, Airline pilots have to spend decades training to fly. Drivers take a couple of years.

There is more chance of a rail accident than an air one..there are about the same number of people...more can go wrong with aircraft but trains are more reliable.

The autopilot does most of the work on flights..drivers have to do all of it. Driving a train is hard (i know), but driving a plane is harder..then again, you're only flying in a straight line with most flights...The only hard bit is landing/taking off.

Answer 10

Flying a plane is easier then driving a train. For example all a pilot needs to do is understand navigation equpment, different types of aircraft and flightplans.
A train driver however is paid for knowledge. To be a train driver you have know the route inside out, the traction you will be driving, understanding how signals work, safety procedures, every line speed you will be travelling over, rules & regulations, junction turnouts, dealing with weather conditions, have to take random drug and alcohol tests. My mate is a train driver on Virgin Trains.