Pilots' pay

A reader asked why the pilot profession is not one of the top 100 jobs. Maybe it's not one of the "common" jobs as defined by the Ministry of Manpower survey.

From today's Straits Times, we get a better picture of how much SIA pilots make. This continues from where the previous post on SQ pilots' pay left off.

Singapore Airlines (SIA) and its pilots have asked the Industrial Arbitration Court (IAC) to settle their disagreements on the salary structure for Airbus A-380 pilots.

The IAC ruling is that A-380 Captains will get a basic pay in the range of $10,700 to $16,500. A-380 First Officers (junior pilots) will get $6,050 to $9,250 as basic pay.

On top of the basic pay, the Captains will get $55 per hour as productivity allowance, while FOs get $36 per hour. This is the allowance paid out when the pilots actually clock flying hours.

Some airlines guarantee pilots a minimum number of flying hours per month, e.g. Delta airlines guarantees 65 hours (see article in AskCaptainLim.com).

However, SIA does not give such a guarantee.

To get an idea of how much SIA pilots get as gross pay, let's assume they fly a minimum of 65 hours every month, and let's take the mid-values of the ranges mentioned above. These are the "average gross salaries" of A-380 pilots according to my calculations:

- Captains: $17,175 per month
- First Officers: $9,990 per month


http://www.salary.sg/2007/pilots-pay/

Hi there,

Just to base on 65 hrs of flying duties is not accurate at all to calculate SIA pilots' gross salary.

MVC( Monthly variable component has to take into account )as well as all other allowances such as transport, location meal allowances and inflight meal allowances have to be taken into account too. A ball park figures for all these allowances in will be close to 5K or more.

Spoken to some pilots ( Capts and FOs ) before hence a rough guide for gross salary will be at range of 19-30K over for Capts ( base on seniority as basic salary differs between a junior guy and much senior guy ) and 10K-16K for FOs ( base on seniority as well again ).

Hence I am also quite surprise Pilots are not in the top 100 Jobs in Singapore list.