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My experience tells me you're lowballing the crew salaries; your pilot alone draws at least $200k. You probably don't pay for the rest of the crew, but you do p

My experience tells me you're lowballing the crew salaries; your pilot alone draws at least $200k. You probably don't pay for the rest of the crew, but you do pay monthly fees for storage, private airstrip clearances, and ad hoc (big) costs each time you fuel it up, 'rent' an attendant, and cater the flight.

AdrianB1 9y ago
A commercial pilot at a regional airline makes less than $50,000 a year, many are closer to $30,000. When you get hired by a big airliner (over 1500 hours of flight time) and eventually you get to captain (not co-pilot) then you increase substantially, but nowhere close to $20,000, unless you fly a drug lord in strange places.
- nugget 9y ago
  I have friends who are pilots at the majors who clear $300,000+ a year. Pay has risen substantially since the round of bankruptcies cleared legacy debts. FedEx and UPS apparently pay the most - although I'm not sure why.
  - SeanBoocock 9y ago
    This is correct (have family in the industry). Pay for pilots at major domestic airlines is based primarily on seniority and equipment you fly. Captains at the end of their careers flying the larger planes - 747, 777, 787, A350 - are easily clearing $300,000 with great benefits.
  - pmorici 9y ago
    Flying cargo is more dangerous than flying people? There is stuff that is banned from being transported in a passenger plane that can be flown in a cargo plane.
    - jonnathanson 9y ago
      I'd also imagine you are logging a lot more hours, facing more intense time pressures, and possibly flying some really irregular or odd-hours routes when you're flying cargo.
- jonnathanson 9y ago
  My gut tells me that calculus goes by the wayside when you're flying Bill Gates around the world, or even just flying your 'garden variety' billionaire and his/her family around the country. I could be totally wrong here, because I'm neither a jet owner nor a pilot. But I've worked around enough uberrich people in my day to know that their domestic staff gets paid really well, and I have to believe a private pilot cracks into the sixes rather handily. Whether or not he/she cracks $200k is another matter, but it seems likely. There aren't very many of these jobs going around at any given time, and they involve exhaustive security and background clearances. You are also privy to a ridiculous amount of inside info flying these guys around everywhere, and you need to be trustworthy, i.e., come with references from other billionaires and such. It's a very hard world to break into, and if flying commercial paid better than this did, no one would bother trying.
  - MrFantastic 9y ago
    You are essentially paying your people to become your confidant and to protect your image. That's worth a lot to a billionaire. A pilot has your life in their hands. Smaller jets can be very 'shifty' when landing which is scary. Also you want a pilot that can land anywhere.
gervase 9y ago
I think it really depends on what you expect from your crew. Let's say you have a rotating pool of four 1-2K hour pilots, with 2 on deck for each flight on a week-on/week-off schedule. Skip the 'attendant', have the crew fuel up, and I think you could probably get away with $200K/yr for the personnel costs, depending on taxes/benefits. Obviously the number, length, and complexity of flights would have a big impact as well. For 1 or 2 round-trip domestic flights per week, it should be doable. Source: Had a friend who worked on several private flight crews that operated like this. Edit: They mostly worked with clients in the $100MM/yr range, who tended to treat their staff like garbage and consequently had high turnover. Über-rich lurkers, YMMV.
- jonnathanson 9y ago
  Interesting. The calculus is certainly different among billionaires (personal experience sample size = maybe 3 or 4, and no, sadly, I ain't one of 'em myself!). The billionaires I've met, who by and large own and don't rent, have what I'd call three distinct use cases for private air travel: business, social, and family. Business travel can range from more or less daily to at least 3x per week. Family travel is less frequent and generally limited to whole-family trips, but said trips can and do occur a lot more frequently when you have those means. And then there are what I'd call social trips -- a bucket into which I'd lump anything from charity events, to fundraisers in DC, to golf tournaments, to spur-of-the-moment trips to the house in Aspen or the Hamptons. Said billionaires, if asked, would consider most of the above to be business trips, because their business lives never stop, and some measure of business is usually baked into most trips -- even if it's a quick stop at one city to conduct business before heading on to the vacation spot.

AdrianB1 9y ago

A commercial pilot at a regional airline makes less than $50,000 a year, many are closer to $30,000. When you get hired by a big airliner (over 1500 hours of flight time) and eventually you get to captain (not co-pilot) then you increase substantially, but nowhere close to $20,000, unless you fly a drug lord in strange places.

nugget 9y ago
I have friends who are pilots at the majors who clear $300,000+ a year. Pay has risen substantially since the round of bankruptcies cleared legacy debts. FedEx and UPS apparently pay the most - although I'm not sure why.
- SeanBoocock 9y ago
  This is correct (have family in the industry). Pay for pilots at major domestic airlines is based primarily on seniority and equipment you fly. Captains at the end of their careers flying the larger planes - 747, 777, 787, A350 - are easily clearing $300,000 with great benefits.
- pmorici 9y ago
  Flying cargo is more dangerous than flying people? There is stuff that is banned from being transported in a passenger plane that can be flown in a cargo plane.
  - jonnathanson 9y ago
    I'd also imagine you are logging a lot more hours, facing more intense time pressures, and possibly flying some really irregular or odd-hours routes when you're flying cargo.
jonnathanson 9y ago
My gut tells me that calculus goes by the wayside when you're flying Bill Gates around the world, or even just flying your 'garden variety' billionaire and his/her family around the country. I could be totally wrong here, because I'm neither a jet owner nor a pilot. But I've worked around enough uberrich people in my day to know that their domestic staff gets paid really well, and I have to believe a private pilot cracks into the sixes rather handily. Whether or not he/she cracks $200k is another matter, but it seems likely. There aren't very many of these jobs going around at any given time, and they involve exhaustive security and background clearances. You are also privy to a ridiculous amount of inside info flying these guys around everywhere, and you need to be trustworthy, i.e., come with references from other billionaires and such. It's a very hard world to break into, and if flying commercial paid better than this did, no one would bother trying.
- MrFantastic 9y ago
  You are essentially paying your people to become your confidant and to protect your image. That's worth a lot to a billionaire. A pilot has your life in their hands. Smaller jets can be very 'shifty' when landing which is scary. Also you want a pilot that can land anywhere.

gervase 9y ago

I think it really depends on what you expect from your crew. Let's say you have a rotating pool of four 1-2K hour pilots, with 2 on deck for each flight on a week-on/week-off schedule. Skip the 'attendant', have the crew fuel up, and I think you could probably get away with $200K/yr for the personnel costs, depending on taxes/benefits. Obviously the number, length, and complexity of flights would have a big impact as well. For 1 or 2 round-trip domestic flights per week, it should be doable. Source: Had a friend who worked on several private flight crews that operated like this. Edit: They mostly worked with clients in the $100MM/yr range, who tended to treat their staff like garbage and consequently had high turnover. Über-rich lurkers, YMMV.

jonnathanson 9y ago
Interesting. The calculus is certainly different among billionaires (personal experience sample size = maybe 3 or 4, and no, sadly, I ain't one of 'em myself!). The billionaires I've met, who by and large own and don't rent, have what I'd call three distinct use cases for private air travel: business, social, and family. Business travel can range from more or less daily to at least 3x per week. Family travel is less frequent and generally limited to whole-family trips, but said trips can and do occur a lot more frequently when you have those means. And then there are what I'd call social trips -- a bucket into which I'd lump anything from charity events, to fundraisers in DC, to golf tournaments, to spur-of-the-moment trips to the house in Aspen or the Hamptons. Said billionaires, if asked, would consider most of the above to be business trips, because their business lives never stop, and some measure of business is usually baked into most trips -- even if it's a quick stop at one city to conduct business before heading on to the vacation spot.