this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2023
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How about we just make being a commercial pilot worth people's while instead of replacing them with robots?
Why can't the parasites in the executive board room ever just pay their employees more? "nO bOdY wAnTs tO wOrK aNyMoRe!" No, nobody wants to work in an abusive workspace for shitty pay just to get fired once the time for a raise comes around.
According to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics, the median salary for airline captains, first-officers, second-officers, and flight engineers in the United States is $203,010 as of 2021.
The big problem is actually in certifying people qualified to take those jobs, which takes additional time and money, mostly to pay for flight time for training. It can take a few grand for just a personal pilot license, but to fly an airline, you need instrument, commercial, and Airline Transport Pilot License (ATPL) certifications, plus increasingly expensive type ratings for the various aircraft you will be flying, a minimum of 1500 hours of flight time, and multiple years at the bottom working your way through smaller regional airlines and courier services.
You can get through the commercial licensing in 12-18 months and about $40k in flight time and insurance, but that is barely enough to get your foot in the door making $50k a year, and even then, you’re still not allowed to fly parcels or passengers for money. Getting those licenses will take another 18 months and another $40-80k, again, mostly in flight time.
That said, once you have ATPL, the company will start paying for your flight time, and you will be earning a 6 figure salary. After 5 years or so and about $100k investing in your training, you should be making over $200k, and can begin to recoup those costs.
That's not enough to support yourself in many places. People's rent isn't getting any lower. And being an airline pilot is an extremely stressful job. Being a flight attendant is also extremely stressful. Look up some Karen stories on reddit and youtube and even if you want to say that 80% of those stories are made up, which many of them are true, I know narcissists that are worse than that, that's still a huge number of entitled people demanding first class for free and then lying about being assaulted when the person in first class declines their offer to trade seats.