This guy doesn't have a clue. Most airline pilots put in serious hours in butt-fuck nowhere until they reach at least 30, after which, if they're lucky, they get picked up by an airline to get paid something like $40K for the first 5 years until they get seniority.
Just because the cream of the crop get paid well, doesn't mean the entire industry is overpaid.
So, although it seems like the people at the top are overpaid the position is a sort of trophy that serves as motivation to underpay a number of grunt workers. For example look at corporate law (the number of lawyers, vs. those that get partner and the real money); or investment banking; or the pilot/airline industry. All have a few top positions that few will make, but many will try to and are willing to be economically underpaid and abused for the chance to win that "trophy" at the top.
There is also a perception Pilots get paid for flying instead of training, training, training to avoid crashing. In my view they don't get paid enough.
1. An airforce veteran, possibly with combat experience. 2. Capable and qualified at flying every aircraft in the fleet. 3. Capable of training younger pilots. 4. Probably has 10000 hours + of flying time.
His point that it's largely an "automated job" is ignorant. Everything is automated, sure, until the engine flames out, you have a major system failure on takeoff or approach, or you run out of fuel, like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
And with your emergency management point, you need to show that senior pilots (as opposed to pilots generally) actually correlate with people who are more capable of avoiding crashes. I'm not sure that's true at all. Note that the fuel exhaustion emergency you reference was the pilots' fault in the first place (along with some dumb procedures by the airline too). History is filled with both young and old pilots who have saved (and crashed) their aircraft with their skills (or mistakes).
Again, the point here was "senior pilots are paid more than they are worth". Your response is more along the lines of "senior pilots are really cool and totally deserve it!", which is sort of non-responsive.
The real reason that senior pilots are paid so much is that they are unionized, skill-essential employees who don't compete in a market with non-union equivalents (the proof here being that non-union pilots in commuter jobs get paid dirt wages). This is exactly the same reason that the longshormen in the article are overpaid. It's dumb, but it's not so dumb that employers want to rock the boat trying to fix it.
Just don't fool yourself into thinking that any of this has to do with their l33t skilz. It's a market thing.
2. Being able to fly multiple aircraft is highly relevant because it makes you more valuable to the company, and to other companies. If Airline x flies A330s, 767s and a bunch of Embreaers, and you already know how to handle all three, you are in an exceptional position.
3. Emergency management going hand in hand with experience is commonplace in the industry, factual or not. Given car insurance premiums, (new drivers pay more for a reason) and the increased complexity of piloting an aircraft, I'd certainly accept the common knowledge.
I'll give you the union deal. That certainly will always have the effect of inflating salaries. I'm not sure I can take that to mean that senior pilots are all a bunch of overpaid bums, as that FA was suggesting.
And the aptitude and training to deal with catastrophic failure. Why is it we demand the "best surgeons" to operate on individuals but not the "best aviators" where many lives are at risk?
Does this not adjust for the kinds of jobs they get? I would expect that to be true of many variables, e.g. people without a degree may perform just as well as people with a degree in the same job, because without a degree you have to impress employers in other ways.
I don't think airlines necessary value "combat pilot", but that a larger percentage of people with the required amount of flight time tend to have logged that time in the military.
Southwest doesn't make money by paying low salaries. In fact, Southwest and UPS pay the highest pilot salaries in the industry. They make money because they made very good management decisions that led to their having lower operating costs than anyone else. The fact is most airlines operate horribly inefficiently and suffer from a lack of decent management.
Anyone who says pilots are overpaid doesn't have a clue. Being a commercial pilot is akin to indentured servitude. You have a couple choices when it comes to training. You can spend $25k+ a year in order to build hours or you can work for free in return for the opportunity to fly right seat a couple times a week. After that, if you're even able to find an airline job, and not flying cargo in some rickety old wagon with wings, you can expect to get about $35k making overnight trips to someplace like Laredo, TX.
Then he has to instruct for several years to build up flight time. Flight instructing usually pays about $15k a year. From there, he has to somehow get multiengine or turbine time, maybe flying small freight, probably at night, laying over in nowheresville, for virtually no money, maybe 15-20k. These jobs are also very hard to get.
From there, he might be able to get a job at a marginal regional airline, paying $20-30k as he moves up as a first officer. Hopefully after several years at the regional, he can move up to captain on the regional, now earning about 50k.
If the majors are hiring at that point in the economic cycle, he can now be a FO at a major airline, making 40-60k for the first few years. After maybe 8 years of that, he may make captain, and perhaps earn 100k a year, increasing as his seniority increases. Getting from 0 to captain at a major takes about 25-30 years.
On top of all of this, if at any time he his not able to meet the FAA's very stringent medical requirements, basically if he has to take almost any medication, or has any illness, he loses his medical and his career is over. Furthermore, if he makes any significant mistake in all of those late nights in bad weather, his career may be over or he will be unable to advance to the next rung. Furthermore, he's moving around every time he moves up a rung, and he can't have a normal family life when he's in some strange city half the time.
Anyone who decides to take this path does it because they love to fly, not because it is an easy buck. What's worse is that now the brass ring at the end is being eroded, and so after all of that hard work to get there, he might only end up making $100-150k at the end.
They have to bust their ass to even get a commercial flight licence, it's harder than going to medical school. They end up heavily underpaid for most of their working life, for what they do.
All to chase that big final reward. Which few end up getting.