Why Airline Pilots Are Currently Making Bank
Due to overarching pilot shortages and surging demand for flights, airline pilots are seeing monumental spikes in wages.
A pilot shortage has galvanized airlines to enact a pay hike until 2024. Airline pilots at two different American Airlines-owned carriers are receiving 50% higher paychecks, which will hopefully offset the employee deficit. Fewer available flights, and a massive cutback of already scheduled flights, have pushed airlines to make drastic changes to draw in more pilots.
The 50% pay hike for airline pilots at American Airlines would make them the highest-paid pilots in the US. This could also incentivize other carriers to include pay bumps for their employees if the American Airlines hike helps suppress flight shortages. The subsidiaries of American Airlines, Envoy Air, and Piedmont Airlines, are implementing the salary bump, which will end in 2024.
For Piedmont Airlines, new airline pilots will receive hefty paychecks as well as their tenured counterparts. Pilots in their first year of flying for the carrier will receive a $90 an hour boost from $41 an hour. First-year captains will also get a significant salary jump, from $78 an hour to $146. Though these hikes are temporary for now, the CEO of Piedmont stated that they could extend the promotion into the future. If the hikes work to stop all flight cancellations, competitive pay would be a more consistent opportunity for employees at Piedmont.
At the beginning of last year, airlines started seeing a significant increase in travelers. This pushed companies to hire more airline pilots to meet the heightened demand, but the hiring agenda didn’t mitigate the entire pilot shortage. This left many travelers stranded over the past month when flights worldwide were unexpectedly canceled. The issue partially lies with airline executives, who pressured some pilots into early retirement when flights were suspended during 2020’s global quarantine. That push made many employees leave the company, only to have fewer workers when the airlines suddenly bounced back in mid-2021. Now, airlines are doing everything they can to attract experienced pilots to their companies.
For larger airlines, the pilot shortage hasn’t been as devastating. But smaller airlines with less funds have been losing needed employees every month. For Piedmont, 25 pilots a month leave the company to work at American Airlines’ mainline facilities. Due to the airline pilot shortage, Piedmont hasn’t been able to use 10 of its 60 planes, severely damaging its revenue. In an attempt to stabilize their income, Piedmont proposed a pay hike to the pilot union, which ultimately accepted the 50% salary increase.
Other airline pilot unions are now conversing with their carriers for better, living wages. Southwest, Delta, and JetBlue are all discussing higher paychecks for their valuable employees. The strategy isn’t only to attract new pilots to their carriers but also to retain their hardworking employees. American Airlines is extending a pay hike to its own mainline pilots, but that increase has only gone up by 4%. Thousands of pilots at the company will also be eligible for a 3% pay increase in 2023.
Flights are being suspended and canceled globally due to the airline pilot shortage. With the recently implemented payment hikes, better salaries may bring in more employees to end the pilot deficit.
