Pilot Pay - the Realities

I get paid $13 an hour. Per flight or ground hour. Not a bad pay if you are figuring on doing 2,000 hours a year (as in a typical 9-5 job).

The problem comes in when you get down to the nuts and bolts. The typical lesson schedules 2 hours and I get paid for about 3/4ths of it. If it gets canceled due to weather, student reschedules, or any other reason, I get paid nothing. Any preparation/setup isn't typically paid.

For instance, let's take today: a 3 hour groundschool and a demo flight. A solid 4 hours of pay, I'm officially there from 9AM - 3:30PM (at the office 6 hours, 30 minutes). That neglects to mention I have to spend time coming up with lesson plans (90 minutes) before the groundschool (unpaid). So now we are from 7:30AM - 3:30PM, still the same 4 hours of pay. Then the demo flight canceled due to weather. And the person behind the desk tried to schedule me for a sightseeing flight. I can't do sightseeing flights (legal reasons, I'm not covered under the waiver). So I spend 2 hours trying to free up the demo flight from my schedule and put it on someone who can do demo flights.

So the final result was 7:30AM-3PM (7 hours, 30 minutes), and I get paid for 3 hours. Sadly, it doesn't get any better at the airlines or most charter companies. The only time pilots get paid is when they are flying, usually non-flight hours are not paid... It's very easy for pilots to end up working a 12+ hour day and get paid for under half of it.

And people wonder why pilots are fleeing from aviation jobs. With the skills and responsibilities that they have and the hours they work, they can easily make more as a manager of Burger King or another job that has less responsibilities and duties and requires less time.

At times I'm responsible for $100,000 worth of equipment and a million dollar insurance policy plus a 4 year degree and $30k worth of specialized training, do you think getting paid $25k a year is enough?