QANTAS pilots have lashed out at their chief executive Alan Joyce after he claimed he earns less than some of them.After a brief lull in the war between pilots and the airline that culminated in the fleet's grounding six months ago, Mr Joyce has reignited their fury by discussing his salary in an magazine interview. He said if one considered his "conservative" $5 million a year salary and the hours he worked, he was lower paid than some senior pilots and captains.
"Alan Joyce is a mathematician, but I think he probably needs to invest some of that $5 million in a new calculator," Captain Richard Woodward, vice president of the Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA) said. "To put that sort of package in perspective, if Mr Joyce worked 14-hour days, six days a week and never took a holiday -- he'd be on an hourly rate of $1145.
"To describe $5 million a year as conservative is outrageous and insulting."
Mr Joyce made the comments to GQ magazine, saying: "What Qantas pays me as CEO is actually very conservative compared with the other ASX 100 companies and if you ranked salaries by hours worked, I'm not even the highest paid person in Qantas because the pilots and senior captains get paid a lot more."
However, AIPA said even the top handful of pilots employed by Qantas, senior A380 captains, would have to work an impossible 357 hours a week to get Mr Joyce's annual package.
The average hourly rate is $175 and the minimum guaranteed hours per year is 1040. Salaries range from $37 an hour for the lowest paid to the highest at $269 -- and these pilots have more than 12 years of experience.