Airline Pilot Salaries

How much do airline pilots make? That’s the real question, isn’t it? You’re trying to decide whether it’s worth taking on tens of thousands of dollars in debt to pay for your own flight training, sell your soul to the military for the next decade, or just give up on flying and become an accountant. I’m about to show you exactly how much we make, and I think you’ll see that it’s worth doing whatever it takes. Do you want to know the kicker? The money isn’t even the best part of the job!

Table of Contents

1. Background - A Look at the Industry
2. But Seriously, How Much Do Airline Pilots Make?
3. Summary
4. Beyond Money

Background - A Look at the Industry

Before we get started, we need to be clear on one thing: not all airlines are created equal. First, you have the “Legacy” airlines: Delta, United, and American. These are the three remaining US airlines that do significant international flying. Some people also use the term “Major” airlines to discuss this group, adding in Southwest. Southwest only flies one kind of airplane (Boeing 737) and only does limited international flying, but it’s nearly as large as any of these other three and as profitable as American or United. When we talk about “the majors” here, we’ll be thinking about these four companies.

There are also two major cargo carriers: FedEx and UPS. They’re in a class of their own, but I’d forgive you for grouping them with the Big 4 majors. It’s these 4 or 6 major airlines that we’re all shooting for. They have the best pay, the best work rules, and the best Quality of Life. In my opinion, you cannot go wrong working for any one of these companies. These are the forever jobs of the airline industry.

The three legacy carriers all utilize regional airlines to help serve their smaller markets. These airlines fly aircraft with 76 or fewer seats. The smaller aircraft serve smaller markets. Several times a day, great waves of these smaller regional jets (“RJs” for short) fly from small-to-medium sized towns like Boise, Spokane, Huntsville, Appleton, etc. to the big hub airports of the major airlines they serve. In most cases, the passengers switch planes to the larger “mainline” jets of the parent company and fly elsewhere. Those RJs then turn around and take a new set of passengers from the hub back to the small towns from which they just arrived.

The major airline execs who created the regional airline concept were geniuses. They realized that by structuring these operations as separate companies, they could pay the pilots flying these small jets far less than they paid their major airline pilots. Actually, this was the only way to make it work because the smaller RJs are extremely inefficient and cost a lot to operate. As a result, regional airline pilot pay was embarrassingly bad for many years. Starting salaries were around $18,000 per year and stayed that low for a long time.

Thankfully, a looming wave of pilot retirements has reduced the pilot supply available to the regionals. They’ve been forced to start paying a lot more money to attract pilots, and I don’t think we’ve even seen these pay rates top-out yet. We’ll take a look at the range of regional airline pilot pay here, but don’t get discouraged. A pilot who works hard and flies a lot should only be at the regionals for a few years before moving on to the majors. A military pilot who ends up doing a regional airline touch & go should only be at a regional for somewhere between a few weeks and about a year, assuming an otherwise competitive application.

There's also a middle tier of airlines that fly exclusively narrow body aircraft, though they do serve some international locations. In the US these include JetBlue, Allegiant, Frontier, Spirit, and some others. They are smaller companies. In some cases, their pay rates are equivalent to those for pilots flying similar aircraft at the majors, but the overall scope of these airlines' operations is just less. Some of these are still good companies to work for, especially if you want to live in a specific location. They could be a forever airline or a stepping stone, depending on your circumstances.

So with that, let's look at the types of pay an airline pilot gets. We're going to choose a couple of specific airlines for this discussion, but you can get up-to-date information for most airlines at a fantastic website called Airline Pilot Central (APC).

But Seriously, How Much Do Airline Pilots Make?

Hourly Pay Rate

When you look up airline pilot pay, the big number that you'll notice is an hourly rate. This rate is based on the type of aircraft you fly, the number of years you've been at your company, and your seat (Captain vs First Officer).

A Year 1 CRJ200 First Officer (FO) at a regional like SkyWest makes $45 per hour while a Year 1 B717 FO at Delta makes $92 per hour. Rates for Captains increase to just over $100 per hour at most regionals to $354 per hour for a 12+ year A350 Captain at Delta.

This is great information to have, but to put it into context you need to know how many hours a pilot flies. Airlines quote what is called a "reserve guarantee." This is the number of hours they pay a pilot assigned to reserve duty each month. The industry average reserve guarantee is somewhere in the range of 72-75 hours per month. At most airlines, most pilots have an assigned schedule and fly at least 5-10 hours above the reserve guarantee.

It’s also worth noting that most airlines pay a little extra for international flying. In our example below, we’ll be adding $6.50 per hour to the A350 Captain’s pay because that aircraft almost exclusively flies internationally.

Using this information, we can project out monthly and annual earnings for pilots in the categories we just mentioned. We’ll assume each pilot earns 85 hours of pay per month.

Airline Pilot Pay Rate Examples

Category	Hourly Rate	Monthly Pay	Annual Pay
SkyWest CRJ 200 FO	$45	$3,600	$43,200
SkyWest CRJ 900 CA	$125	$10,000	$120,000
Delta B717 FO	$92	$7,360	$88,320
Delta A350 CA	$360.50	$28,840	$346,080

This is a decent amount of money for a regional pilot and an amazing sum for the widebody captain, but it gets even better from here!

Per Diem

To start off, most airlines pay a per diem to help cover the cost of food and incidentals while you're on the road. It's usually in the range of a couple of dollars per hour for domestic flying and a few more dollars per hour for international flying. This isn't hours flown, this is "Time Away From Base." On a 4-day trip, that's usually about 80 hours for me. I find that per diem tends to be $500-700 per month for domestic flying. The value could easily double for international pilots.

Airline Pilot Per Diem Pay Rate Examples

Category	Monthly Per Diem	Monthly Income Sub-Total	Annual Income Sub-Total
SkyWest CRJ 200 FO	$500	$4100	$49,200
SkyWest CRJ 900 CA	$500	$10,500	$126,000
Delta B717 FO	$500	$7,860	$94,320
Delta A350 CA	$750	$29,590	$355,080

Retirement Contributions

The next category of pay is retirement contributions. Airlines used to offer pension plans, but those are all but gone. Instead, most airlines have 401K plans where you can contribute up to $19,000 per year of pre-tax dollars. Most companies will either match your contributions to that account, up to a certain percentage, or they just contribute a fixed amount of money whether you contribute or not. If your company has a match, you'd be a fool to not contribute at least enough to get the full match. The total annual contribution limit for a 401K plan is $56,000. This sounds like a lot of money, but your goal should be to reach that level of annual savings as soon as possible.

Continuing our examples from earlier, SkyWest does a 4-12% match, depending on how many years you’ve been with the company, while Delta does an automatic 16% contribution. (Note that the percentage applies to your pay, but not to your per diem.) Here's the effect that has on total earnings:

Airline Pilot Retirement Contribution Rate Examples

Category	401K Contribution Percentage	401K Contribution Monthly Value	Monthly Income Sub-Total	Annual Income Sub-Total
SkyWest CRJ 200 FO	4%	$144	$4,244	$50,928
SkyWest CRJ 900 CA	12%	$1,200	$11,700	$140,400
Delta B717 FO	16%	$1,178	$9,038	$108,451
Delta A350 CA	16%	$4,614	$34,204	$410,453