That was another typical aircraft comment. He has no real conception on what happens out there and I assume that has something to do with his age. He's probably still squeezing pimples...
But I'm digressing. Have a look at how many passengers an A330 holds then do the sums to see how many of them would be paying for the pilots wages, maybe three of them at $1000 per ticket? That's roughly 1% of the load.