Does the size of the plane determine the salary?

Airline Pilot Questions & Answers
1

Does the size of the plane determine the salary?

2

Yair,

Good question. At the vast majority of airlines yes the size of the airplane will determine the payrate but there are few exceptions. UPS for example payscale is based purely on seniority regardless of airplane but again that’s rare.

Adam

3

Yair,
Generally speaking yes… It can be a combination of years of service and airplane.

For example there is a pay scale for first year pay FO on the 737, 2nd year, 3rd year… then when you upgrade you go over to 3rd year CA pay, 4th year… now at the beginning of year 5 you move to the 757. Now you’re on the 757 pay scale (which is higher) 5th year pay FO. Does that make sense?
So there is a pay structure for each airplane… you’re either on the FO or the CA column and for each year of service there is an associated salary. The years of service goes with you as you move airplanes.

Check out this link below with a helpful graph to further explain it:
https://atpflightschool.com/become-a-pilot/airline-career/commercial-pilot-salary.html

-Hannah

1 Like
4

Thank you adam and Sarah for your help.

5

Yair,

For those of us that like visuals take a look at United’s FO pay scale:

image
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Tory

1 Like
6

Thank you Tory, this was helpful. What about smaller regional jets like the Embraer ERJs?

7

You can view each airline’s pay scales on airlinepilotcentral.com. Here is SkyWest’s for example: https://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/regional/skywest

Tory