Tartare
Whilst I'm not going to explicitly agree with the comment made or implied in these pages recently re Qf flight crew being 'overpaid', I do have to remind all here that a reasonable measure of the salary in relation to others is available.
Prior to the privatisation of Qf, pilot salaries were pretty much on a par with the salaries of those in CASA who were responsible for their oversight.
That is , a CASA inspector on the 737 was paid pretty much the same as the pilot on that aircraft type in the airlines.
Now , moving forward 20 years or so, the disparity is noticeable, and particularly noticeable on the larger aircraft, A380,330, 767, 747 where around $100k is the figure.
This is not a comment on the relative merit/difficulty /value of those who operate in each role, so please don't waste discussion or resort to invective on what everyone thinks of CASA people etc. The point is that even with the public service indexed wages growth , they lag behind the salary growth of the flight crew significantly, whereas once they were much more aligned.
Interestingly, the alignment is probably closer to the Jetsar salaries although even there jetstar are probably a little higher( not sure of the figures with jetstar)
Also I think that the CAA in the US inspectors , are paid relative to the commercial counterparts too.
As I said, not a comment on the relative merits of each profession, although you will probably find that since volatility in the aviation market in the last few years, there has been a significant rise in the experience and quality of many of the staff there due to those who had enough and exited the airlines for one reason or another.
Not being aligned to either side, I am just making an honest and impartial observation re the salary discussion .