This article is one chapter from the "Truth About the Profession", a must-read website for anyone thinking about becoming an airline pilot.  -Ed

Professional pilot salaries are probably one of the most misunderstood aspects when discussed by the non-flying public.  If I had a nickel every time I saw or read incorrect information concerning how pilots are paid, I think I'd be a very wealthy person!  I'll discuss how much newly minted pilots, fresh out of university and/or flight training can expect to make, and then I'll discuss salary ranges for airline pilots.  Unfortunately, I think many aspiring airline pilots are going to be surprised as to how low civilian pilot pay can go. 

Hourly Pay Rates, What They Really Mean...
     Let me start off by discussing hourly pay rates.  Very often, you'll hear a pilot school recruiter or a TV reporter or read in the media a quote or statement that a professional pilot, "earns XX.XX amount per hour...."  For example, one time on CNBC I heard a regional airline management representative trying to defend entry level regional airline pilot wages by proudly claiming that a new pilot at his airline earns twenty dollars and hour!  Now to the general public, that's a pretty good wage.  I mean, just doing round numbers in your head that's ($20/per hour) x (40 hours per week) x (52 weeks per year), right?  That's over 40 grand a year, right?  Wrong!  

     Pilots aren't paid like any other hourly worker in other professions.  Despite the fact that professional pilots work 8, 10, 12 hour+ days just like any other professional, they are only compensated for the time considered "in flight."  For most flying jobs, unless it's a salaried position, that usually means that they are paid from when the parking brake is released at the departure point until the brake is set upon arrival at the destination.  It's not uncommon for a flight instructor or an airline pilot to work a 12 hour day and only actually get paid for 5 to 6 hours of that time- and sometimes less!

     So, armed with that knowledge, where does that leave us?  Well, as a rule of thumb, which works well for most airline jobs, take the hourly wage you're looking at and multiply it by 1,000 to get a rough estimate of your annual wage.  So in my CNBC example above, the regional airline management representative who said his airline pays new pilots 20 bucks an hour was really only paying his new pilots about $20,000 per year.  That's a "little bit" different than what he was trying to get his listeners to believe.  You'll find that flight school salesmen, university recruiters, and airline management like to discuss pilot salaries publicly in "dollars per hour" because it doesn't make low annual salaries sound as bad...but I find that incredibly misleading.