The other Pilots earn their money on the trips THEY fly passengers on.
But they are still "earning" money when not flying are they not?
What if a pilot only does one flight for the year? According to you, he wouldn't make too much money that year.
As I understand it, there is a base salary, then various allowances and additions on top of that - and some of those allowances and additions may be on a "per hour" basis.
I will try saying it a different way:
The total money a pilot makes for the year has come from every ticket sold by the airline. It is only a small percentage from each ticket (about 0.001% - see below) but it all adds up to make the total annual income for the individual.
Using figures I have quoted in previous posts we can arrive at the following. Note that these figures are not necessarily applicable to Qantas:
$35 of the $221 ticket revenue for the Melb/Syd flight of 2002/03 goes to paying staff. Assuming the pilots are on the receiving end of 25% of the staff pay, then the pilots get 9$ of the $221.
For this particular trip and fee structure, this equates to 4%. But this 4% must then be divided up amongst ALL pilots. If there are 4,000 pilots, for example, then each individual pilot gets 0.001% of the ticket revenue.
Please could a Qantas pilot do a rough calculation to see if this figure is in the ballpark.
Assume an average ticket price, multiply it by your best guess for the total number of tickets sold for a year. Then take 0.001% of that figure. Is the result somewhere near your annual income?