Airlinepilotmentor.com

Per Diem - Per Diem is meant to cover costs incurred while on the road. These include but are not limited to: food, toiletries, replacement costs, etc. Per Diem is typically an hourly rate that is negotiated in a union's CBA (contract). Per Diem gets paid differently than straight compensation. Typically it is computed beginning at the time you are required to be at your base airport to the time you get released at your base airport to days off. Generally speaking a pilot reports to their workstation an hour prior to flight time on the first day and ends their duty 15 minutes after their last flight. All hours in between are paid at the Per Diem rate.

Additional Pay (Add Pay) - Additional Pay is any flight time pay for work a pilot performs above the minimum guarantee to include any paid vacation time, voluntary additional flying, or mandatory reassignment or loss of days off. 

Consideration should also be taken in how a pilots monthly pay is dispersed. A common method is to pay pilots bimonthly with the following breakdown for each paycheck

The first paycheck contains half of the pilots MMG.
Example: first paycheck covering approximately two weeks will be payment for 37.5 flight hours. No Per Diem, No Add Pay.

Paycheck 1
862.50 (23/Hr X 37.5Hrs)
862.50 (Total Payment)

The second paycheck contains the second half of the pilots MMG, all Per Diem accrued during the previous month, any Add Pay from the previous month.
Example: second paycheck covering approximately two weeks will be payment for 37.5 flight hours, 322 hours Per Diem, 5 hours Add Pay.

Paycheck 2
862.50 (23/Hr X 37.5Hrs)
579.60 (1.60/Hr X 322Hrs)
115.00 (23/Hr X 5Hrs)
1557.10 (Total Payment)

Total income for the month
2419.60 (Income for the month)
80 flight hours
322 hours away from base

Pilot Pay, a personal look

By Eric Stoltz
Captain, EMB145
ExpressJet Airlines

“I know an airline pilot. He makes 10 times more per hour than I do! Sure must be nice earning that kind of money.”
So says our neighbor, the press and the general public. However, very few people, other than airline pilots themselves, really know how we are compensated. Our hourly rates may look impressive to the casual observer, but that is just the beginning in explaining how an airline pilot gets paid.
Being a pilot for ExpressJet Airlines, I have a good understanding of our compensation and I will be relying on my experience for this article. Most other airlines get paid very similarly, although a few have highly distinctive systems for paying pilots.

To begin, all aspiring airline pilots need to understand that ALPA (Air Line Pilots Association, Inc.) carriers work under collective bargaining agreements, or contracts. Every pilot at an ALPA airline works under the same rules and pay schedule, based on the collective contract the pilot group has with that company. This contract dictates pay rates, how they are applied, per diem, quality of life, vacation and any type of leave. All of these influence how we get paid.

Simply put, we only get paid when we are in charge of the aircraft. That means we are in the cockpit, all the aircraft doors are closed, check lists are complete and the aircraft brake is released. When all of these conditions are met, the aircraft’s computers record the “out” time, or departure time. The computer transmits the out time to the company’s operations department and we have successfully “punched in” on the time clock. After we land, taxi to the gate, set the parking brake and open the main cabin door, the computers transmit our “in” time, our pay stops, and we have “punched out” for that flight.

You can see now that we get paid only when we are “flying.” Even so, there are countless hours during a trip that we work but receive no pay. For example, we need to be at the airport one hour prior to departure. At least 30 minutes of that hour are spent working on the flight deck, performing crew briefings, and preparing the aircraft for flight. First Officers do not get paid to do an aircraft walk-around, examining the aircraft exterior for any possible problems. Captains don’t get paid to program flight computers, make decisions about fuel, weather, passengers – or drink coffee while the First Officer completes the walk-around. Then, of course, there is the time spent to debrief following a flight. Many check lists and duties are performed off the clock: receiving before start/pushback, parking and terminating at our company.
The hours a pilot gets paid – flight hours – are regulated by federal rules and the company, which put caps on a month’s pay. When you bid and are awarded a line of flying for the month, you can expect to own those trips and the days off between those trips. Depending on what you bid, you may have all 1-day trips, all 4-day trips, or a mixture of 1-, 2-, 3- and 4-day trips.

At ExpressJet, each line is worth at least 75 hours of pay. That is the minimum monthly guarantee under our contract. Most of the time, lines are built around about an 85-88 hour monthly average – some lines have more, some have less. It just depends how much work you want to do. At the extreme, very senior lines may have 21 days off with 45 hours of flying, yet pay will still be 75 hours for the month – ah, sweet, sweet seniority. Other lines may be built to the FAA max allowed of 100 hours. Though rare, such lines are not as rare as the aforementioned 45-hour lines.

Once you have a line, there are more ways to adjust your hours to increase or decrease your pay than I can detail in 100 pages. However, generally, if you are awarded a 75-hour line and you want more pay, you can pick up some flying that remains after everyone has bid and add that to your 75 hours of pay. If you want to work less, you can drop flying, which will let someone else pick it up. Of course, doing so will cause your pay to decrease below the 75-hour minimum pay because you made a conscious choice to do this. A pilot can also trade trips or pairings that have differing values with other pilots, causing his/her monthly hours, and pay, to change.

Vacation, sick time, per diem can be explained best by taking you quickly through a month’s worth of flying. For the sake of example (stay with me, it’s not that complex), say I was awarded a line with 14 days off worth 85 hours. I wanted a tad extra pay, so I picked up a 2-day trip worth 10 hours. Now I had 12 days off with 95 hours of pay as my new month. I flew the first 4-day trip and had some delays that caused me to fly one hour more than scheduled, so now I’m being paid 96 hours for the month.

Then, because I couldn’t stand spending another night in Podunk, Texas, I traded for a trip with overnights in glamorous places like Pittsburg and Midland. Unfortunately, it was worth less time and reduced my flying by two hours. New pay, 94 hours. On the next trip, I had almost half of my flights canceled due to bad weather. I flew 10 hours less than expected but my monthly pay is still 94 hours! The cancellations were beyond my control. Hooray for a good contract!

The last trip of the month I caught a head cold and didn’t want to make my co-workers sick or try to clear my ears on decent so I called in sick for the 20-hour 4-day trip. New pay, still 94 hours because I was able to use time stored in my sick bank. All in all, I worked 64 hours but was paid 94, and had 16 days off (some spent at home, miserable). At the new hire pay rate of $22.59 per hour, my gross for the month should be $2,123. Take out taxes, Social Security, health care, 401(k) contribution, Union dues, insurance, (I used 25%) and the take home pay would be about $1,593. Not much folding money, but second-year pay increases by $11 per hour! You can do the same math for an eight-year Captain making $73.28 to see how much earning potential you have here. A 30-year B-777 Captain at $210 per hour makes a fine goal, too.

A few more items that contribute to your fat airline pilot wallet are vacation and per diem. At my company, you can take vacation for the month, easily turn one week of vacation into 18 days off in a row, and keep at least 75 hours of pay. Or, you can fly right through it and get paid for both the vacation pay of 26 hours and the flying that you did during your vacation week. Not many folks do this – most airline pilots enjoy their days off.

Also there is per diem. This can add up pretty quickly at $1.65 per hour. Per diem gets paid differently than straight compensation. It is computed from the time you are required to be at your duty airport to the time you get released. If you are gone for four days four times in a month, you could get more than $600 tax free. Knowing that, I guess the First Officer does get “paid” for walk-arounds, carrying the Captain’s and the flight attendant’s bags and waiting for housekeeping to make up a room for you at midnight. Likewise, the Captain gets paid $1.65 per hour to drink coffee and watch his F/O do the walk around in the rain.

If you want some comparable dollars-per-hour values, they are easy to figure. Take your pay rate plus per diem and divide it by how many hours you are required to be at work. A day’s maximum scheduled work as mandated by the FAA is eight hours of flying in a 14-hour period. We will use 11-hour duty days here, a good average, with a full 85 hours flying for the month. If you work four 4-day trips in a month, you will be spending 176 hours working for the month. $1,920.15 base salary for 85 hours plus $620.04 per diem (4 trips x 94 hr. per trip x $1.65) equals $2210.55. Divide that by 176 hours and you get $14.43 per hour, before tax. Or, using the eight-year Captain’s rate from the earlier example yields an equivalent rate of $38.91 per hour. Working four 40-hour work weeks per month is 160 hours. Generally, airline pilots work harder for their wages than meets the eye.

For the most part, most unionized carriers get compensated similarly. Carriers that are not unionized may not have rules that allow them such a level of compensation and quality of life, which is difficult to put a dollar rate to. I do know that no one can put a price on the view from my office window!

Bellow is a basic breakdown of crruent pay rates by type of aircraft flown and seat position.