With pilot salaries differing dramatically by airline, location and hours flown, most averages posted in job salary round-ups fail to paint what can be a very different individual picture.
The average pilot flies 900 hours per year, according to Flying, while a captain of a large plane like the Boeing 777 or Airbus A350 earns the highest tiers on a scale that can reach $450 per hour.
As a result, a pilot who shared his American Airlines pay stub on the /Salary subforum of Reddit shocked the internet by what in his case ended up being more than $450,000 before the year was over.
User fso tee posted a screenshot of the pay stub on X (formerly Twitter). The pilot’s exact salary for the month between Nov. 16 and Dec. 15 amounted to $361.04 per hour, $22,154.76 for the month, and $457,894.51 for the year to date.
This particular pilot flies the Boeing 737 plane, which can carry up to 210 passengers, and which American often uses for flights between U.S. coasts as well as different destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean.
“Dude makes what I make in a month in a day,” one of the Reddit commenters wrote underneath a post that quickly went viral for what (to many) appears an absurdly large salary. People from various professions use the subreddit to share how much they earn and compare salaries across the same and different industries.
“Damn is a career change at 33 into this even possible?” wrote another.
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In reality, this type of salary is not particularly shocking in the aviation world, since it represents the top end of a career that most pilots will never reach in their lifetime.
The average pilot salary in the U.S. is $134,000, according to U.S. News & World Report. This is tempered by the mandatory retirement age of 65, as well as the high entry bar of becoming credentialed as a pilot for a commercial airline: 1,500 hours and applicant costs of up to $120,000.
Statistics released last year show that, as a result of pilots’ resource-intensive career path, North American airlines are currently at least 12,000 pilots short of the number they would like to hire.
The U.S. Air Force is also 1,500 pilots short.
The pilot who posted his salary flies a Boeing 737.Shutterstock
“The reaction here is embarrassing,” another commenter wrote underneath the post. “A pilot makes nearly 500k and suddenly people are tripping over themselves to explain why they don’t deserve what they earn. Pilots have strong unions, rare skills, years of training, and massive responsibility, and they collectively negotiated pay that reflects that.”
