Airline pilots purchasing power
 

Hi, I am writing an article for our union paper, and would like to highlight the loss of purchasing power our profession has suffered over the decades.
Perhaps somebody can help me out here:

I am trying to locate a list/graph I've seen before (perhaps in an ALPA magazine) that compares the income/purchase power of airline pilots in NA over the decades:

- 1950s - a months pay could buy you a house
- 1960s - a 2 months pay could buy you house
- 1970s - a months pay could buy you a car
and so on

Anyone remember seeing that somewhere?
Thanks for your help.


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Take offs are optional, landings are mandatory

It would be interesting to see the numbers compared with the relevant risk, skill & judgement required for the job at a particular time.

They used to get payed? :8

1990's A months pay could buy you a motorcycle

2000's A months pay could buy you a push bike

:rolleyes:

Really? Sounds like pilots back then used to be well overpaid.

- 1950s - a months pay could buy you a house
- 1960s - a 2 months pay could buy you house
- 1970s - a months pay could buy you a car

......

- 2009 - a months pay could barely pay the mortgage....:*

One criteria I think is good when comparing employers/professions/countries etc is the unit of time one has to work for to earn a unit of capacity of petrol at the pumps! (ie how many seconds/minutes one has to work to earn a litre of petrol).

2010- you pay to work for the first six months.

It will be inversely proportional to what politicians are paid.

Crikey, you must work for a legacy carrier... :}

Everybody is able to fly an A320 I'm afraid and it's been a major reason, unless the one, to explain among other issues the fall of pilots salaries. And it's not going to stop.
but for a clerk job, armchair + table, in a flying office, spending time to monitor automatisms is it finally so low ? not at all

First of all, 12435 is actually asking for figures about pilots working in NA. Now I presume that this means North America (as opposed to Not Available).

I worked for a (fairly notorious) Part 121 carrier based at JFK as a DC-10 check airman and I was paid $68 per block hour in the 1980s (with a 50-hour guaranteed month).

In different money, my salary whilst training on the DC-10 with Fred Laker was £4500 pa. I can well remember coming out of the hotel in Bangor, Maine and seeing the photographs on the front page of the newspapers of the AA DC-10 disaster at ORD (1979) and wondering if I had made a very bad career move!

As it worked out, things worked out OK and I ended up being paid £7500 pa as a fully qualified DC-10 F/O.

You could in no way have bought a house for even my annual salary. If my memory serves me right, a 3-bedroomed house in Sussex at that time cost at least 4 times my annual salary.

Wow
Looks like the 30s was a good time to be a pilot. Being paid more than a doctor!!! As mentioned before it may have been due to the higher skill required to fly the early types of airliners.

Yeah and if you extend that line of thought into the future what will the technological advances bring?

3 buttons to be used in an emergency and a salary roughly equal to that of an office clerk (except for the first 2 years of course, when you will be paying them).

Great times ahead :ok:

wow 30's were the day!!! Notice the congressmen still got paid more for screwing up the world:}

Yeah, but how often airline pilots got killed in accidents in the 30's

Lads, we should make even more today for killing fewer people!
Get real, flying today is simpler????
Anyhow, thought I'd give it a shot here. Thanks

yeah back then, every day at the office might have been your last :ok: