Airline pilot salary guide
The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the May 2025 median annual wage for airline pilots, copilots and flight engineers at $232,140, and for commercial pilots at $123,220. Those are medians across a whole career, and the mechanism behind them matters more than the headline.
What does an airline pilot earn?
$232,140 is the median annual wage for airline pilots, copilots and flight engineers in the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for May 2025. For commercial pilots — a different occupation code covering charter, corporate and instructional flying — the median is $123,220.
Two things about a median are worth holding onto before anything else. It is the midpoint of everyone currently doing the job, which means it is dominated by pilots with a decade or more of seniority. And it is a national figure across every employer, aircraft and seat, so it describes a population rather than a person.
The Occupational Outlook Handbook publishes a combined figure for airline and commercial pilots together, and it puts the 2025 median pay at $210,020 a year across an occupation of 154,900 jobs. That combined number is the one most often quoted out of context, and it sits between the two separate medians for the obvious reason.
What none of those figures describe is a first year. Pay in this profession is not set by skill or by hours flown; it is set by a seniority list, a contract pay scale and the aircraft you are assigned to. A pilot in their first year on a small aircraft at a regional carrier and a captain in year eighteen on a widebody are both inside the $232,140 median, and they are not in the same financial universe.
Which produces the honest position this page takes: the headline number is real and it is also a poor basis for a decision about the next three years. What should drive that decision is whether you can reach the seniority list at all, and how long the unpaid and low-paid stretch before it lasts.
What exactly do the BLS numbers say?
Four figures, each with the occupation it covers and the reference period it belongs to. Every one comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and nothing here is our own estimate.
Bureau of Labor Statistics figures
| Figure | What it covers | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| $232,140 | Median annual wage, airline pilots, copilots and flight engineers | BLS wage data, May 2025 |
| $123,220 | Median annual wage, commercial pilots | BLS wage data, May 2025 |
| $210,020 | Median pay, airline and commercial pilots combined | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025 |
| 154,900 | Jobs in the combined occupation | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025 |
How is airline pilot pay actually calculated?
By a contract pay scale, not by a salary. Three variables set the number: your year on the seniority list, the aircraft you are qualified on, and the seat you occupy in it.
The three variables
A pay scale is a grid. One axis is years of service, the other is aircraft type, and the seat — captain or first officer — selects which half of the grid applies. Move up a year and you move one row. Move to a larger aircraft or upgrade to the left seat and you move to a different column entirely, which is a far larger jump than a year of service produces.
The unit underneath is the flight hour, or a monthly guarantee of them, rather than an annual salary. Pay therefore varies with how much you fly, and per diem for time away from base sits on top of it as a separate line.
Why the first years look nothing like the median
Because you enter at the bottom row of the smallest column. First-year pay at a regional carrier on a small aircraft is at the bottom of the distribution the $232,140 median summarises, and the climb from there is driven by time and by upgrades rather than by performance.
There is a stretch before that which is worth naming honestly: the instructing years. A commercial certificate arrives at roughly 250 hours. The airline transport pilot floor in 14 CFR 61.159(a) sits at 1,500. Most people cover that distance by instructing. That income exists and it is not large. It is also the period during which you are repaying whatever you borrowed to train.
What seniority does and does not buy
Seniority governs pay, schedule, base, aircraft and vacation, and it is carrier-specific — changing employers usually means starting again at the bottom of a new list. That single fact explains more about pilot career behaviour than any other, and it is the reason the first airline you join matters more than the salary it advertises.
It also means the median is a lagging description of decisions made years earlier. A figure published in 2025 describes people who reached the seniority list long before you will.
What does it cost to reach a pay scale at all?
$89,000 here for the training, plus one to two years of instructing income while the logbook fills. That is the outlay against which any salary figure has to be read.
The training is the visible cost and it is the smaller half of the commitment. The larger half is time: twelve to eighteen months of full-time training, then commonly a year or two of paid flying to reach the hour requirement, before the first row of any pay scale becomes available to you.
Financing changes the shape of that but not the size. A plan opening at $2,500 down turns a capital outlay into a monthly obligation that starts running immediately, while the income that repays it does not begin at instructor rates and does not reach a pay scale for years. That mismatch is the single most important thing to model, and it is more useful than any salary comparison.
None of which is an argument against the career. It is an argument for arithmetic. The page on whether flight training is worth it works through the same question without a sales conclusion attached.
What does the training cost against these figures?
The published training prices, so the two halves of the arithmetic sit on one page.
Comprehensive Private Pilot
Phase 1. 60 hours logged.
- ✓55 hours single-engine
- ✓5 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓50 hours dual
- ✓10 hours ground
Instrument Rating
Phase 2, and required before an ATP can be issued.
- ✓14 CFR 61.65(d) experience
- ✓250 nm instrument cross-country
- ✓Redbird MCX for scan and procedure
Airline Career Track
All five phases, ending at an instructor rating.
- ✓Every certificate on the route
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
Multi-Engine Add-On
The class rating, flown in the Piper Seminole.
- ✓No hour floor under 14 CFR 61.63(c)
- ✓Endorsement plus a checkride
- ✓One to two weeks full-time
What can you verify about the school on the outlay side?
Salary figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These five come from us, and every one is checkable.
Airframes owned rather than brokered
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. Ours, maintained by us, on our own schedule, and none of them chartered in for an afternoon.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Instructors on the roster
Every one of the eleven holds a commercial certificate or better, an instructor certificate on top of it, and a current medical. Your instructor signs as pilot in command on every flight, by law.
14 CFR 61.183 · 61.23A standalone Redbird MCX session
Full-motion, fully enclosed and never scrubbed for weather. Cheap place to learn a procedure, poor place to learn a landing, and that is exactly how we spend it.
Two hours inside Standard and Premium, five inside ComprehensiveTraining-capable days a year
Counted from NOAA ASOS reports at Van Nuys over the twelve months ending 1 August 2026. A day scored only when four daylight hours cleared 3,000 ft of ceiling and five statute miles of visibility.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetProgram prices withheld
None. Every figure is on the pricing page, without ranges and without a quote gate. What you enroll at is what is printed.
Published in fullWhat this page is not
Airline Pilot Flight School operates under 14 CFR part 61 from Van Nuys Airport. We are not an airline, we are not owned by one, and no cadet program, pathway agreement or hiring relationship with any carrier exists here.
Every wage figure on this page belongs to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and describes the existing workforce. None of it is a forecast of what you will earn, an offer, or a representation that any employer will hire you. Pay scales are set by carriers and their contracts, and this school has no part in them.
We publish no pass rate, no graduate count and no placement figure, because this business has no record worth publishing and will not invent one. What is published instead is the curriculum, the hours, the regulation behind each requirement, and the price.
What people ask about pilot pay
$232,140 a year for airline pilots, copilots and flight engineers, in the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for May 2025. Commercial pilots — a separate occupation covering charter, corporate and instructional flying — sit at a median of $123,220.
Because they describe different occupations and different periods. The Occupational Outlook Handbook publishes a combined median pay of $210,020 for airline and commercial pilots together in 2025, which sits between the two separate medians. Always check which occupation a figure covers before comparing it with another.
Three things: your year on the seniority list, the aircraft you are qualified on, and whether you occupy the left or the right seat. Pay is drawn from a contract grid rather than negotiated, and the underlying unit is the flight hour or a monthly guarantee of hours.
No, and it is not close. A median is the midpoint of everyone currently in the occupation, which is dominated by pilots with substantial seniority. A first-year first officer on a small aircraft sits near the bottom of the distribution that median summarises.
Most people instruct across the stretch from a commercial certificate at 250 hours up to the 1,500-hour floor that 14 CFR 61.159(a) sets. Instructing pays, and it does not pay well. That period commonly runs one to two years and it usually overlaps with repaying training finance, which is the part worth modelling carefully.
Usually the opposite, at first. Seniority is carrier-specific, so moving means starting again at the bottom of a new list — which affects pay, schedule, base and aircraft simultaneously. This is why which carrier you join first matters more than its advertised starting figure.
No. Per diem compensates time away from base and is paid separately from the hourly rate on the pay scale. It is a real component of take-home pay and it is not captured in the way most people describe a salary.
$89,000 here for the full sequence from no logbook to a flight instructor rating, or $15,900 plus $11,700 plus $5,100 for the phases sold individually. Financing opens at $2,500 down. The honest comparison is between that outlay plus several low-earning years and the pay scale you eventually reach.
The figures quoted here are national. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also publishes state and metropolitan estimates, and pilot pay is set by carrier contracts rather than by local labour markets, so a metropolitan figure mostly reflects which carriers are based there.
It should not decide it alone. The number that matters is not the median but the gap: several years of training and low-paid flying before any pay scale applies. If that gap is survivable for you, the career arithmetic works. If it is not, no median makes it work.
The career, beyond the pay scale
Find out whether you want the job before you model the pay
A median wage is a poor reason to spend three years training and a good reason to check whether the work suits you. One hour at the controls with an honest written debrief costs $229 and answers a question no salary table can.
Fly the aeroplane once, then decide
The assessment flight is the first hour of the syllabus and a two-way evaluation. You fly it from the left seat with an instructor beside you, they write down what they saw, and you get an honest read on whether the plan is realistic. It is loggable, and it is credited in full against enrolment if you enroll within 24 hours.
What happens on an assessment flight →