This is why pilots are paid soo little....

nosehair said:
You go for it! As I also advise the original advertiser of the 35 a day. He seems to be a low time guy gaining experience. That, to me, is just a normal part of the learning to fly experience. Hiring youself out cheaply during the grind to 1500 hours is like an internship. You don't really know what you're doing, so why should you expect the Big bucks?
That's my 2 cents.
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Thats cute... if he doesnt know what he is doing, why in the world would anyone hire him to ferry an airplane? Either you know what youre doing or you dont. Its all learning, thats a given, we all learn throughout our careers. Giving it away has nothing to do with gaining experience.
 
swisspilot said:
In an other thread like this I mentioned that I was going to do a ferry trip for free, well after a lot of thinking I decided to get paid, but at the end I will still do it for free, why? Well I don`t have experience doing this kind of stuff, especially from the US to South America, I`m sure I would do fine but I want ot learn, so I will not keep the money but give it to an other ferry pilot that will ride along, I will try to do most of the work and ask him to be a supervisor, I just don`t wanna lose the opportunity of learning and doing the trip, even just for fun....how do you guys judge this?
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SIUav8er said:
Thats cute... if he doesnt know what he is doing, why in the world would anyone hire him to ferry an airplane? Either you know what youre doing or you dont. Its all learning, thats a given, we all learn throughout our careers. Giving it away has nothing to do with gaining experience.
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You know what guys? I just started a new job in aviation and I have no freaking clue what I'm doing. But I'm getting paid pretty well to do it. Sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone to learn, and learn by screwing up. Nope, I'm not thrilled about screwing up international ops, flying in restricted and prohibited areas, and tooling around the FRZ - but that's my job. I get paid to do it, and I didn't lowball them because I haven't done it before. A lot is at stake for me if I screw up, especially in these types of airspace.

But, I know my worth. So I judge this as some poor sot unable to correctly value his worth as a pilot.

But like JRH said, it really doesn't affect me. If you're going to hire a $35 pilot, that's probably the extent of his skills. If the kid is moving on to a CFI he's going to starve when he charges $4 an hour. He'll learn.
 
Let him do what he wants.

For the first time since I opened my ferry business last year I am managing to scrape off a living. I do so with fair rates and I provide (at least by my customers point of view) very high quality service that they are happy to recommend me to others.

Two weeks ago I secured my first ferry client who came to me from word of mouth and this week I secured a second.

From my experiance, an owner who is looking to hire a "Freebee Flyer" or a low cost ferry pilot has also purchased a low priced aircraft and has put very little into it. That guy on Barnstormers will figure it out on his first ferry (unless he is lucky).
 
Chief Captain said:
FDX8891,

How much money would you need to have stashed away so that $35 is a profit? I'm sure flipping burgers pays more than that. Hopefully airplane owners are smart enough to realize that you get what you pay for. I can think of 2 recent events where the airline paid as little as they could, then wound up making the headlines...
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I'm sure you are right, and I agree with you. I don't know how much he'd need to have stashed away to still make a profit on that little amount of money. All I was trying to do was draw a faint comparison between what this guy is doing and what companies have done with each other for years. Based on just the fact that this guy charges so little, you could make an argument that airlines like SWA, while paying their pilots well, have shaken up the industry by forcing their competitors into cut-throat pricing competitions with one another. And it's all due to SWA's cost structure. They can charge their low fares because they can get away with it and still make a profit.

The reality of this situation is that no matter what, although all pilots are united in a unique brotherhood, we'll always be our own worst enemies because no matter what, there's always another pilot willing to do our job for less.

A big pat on the back to the guy who called this pilot up. Pilot's can't keep under-estimating their worth.
 
I wouldn't do a damn thing for 35 a day. You cant even survive on 35 dollars a day. Hell, you couldn't pay me to sit on my butt all day for that money. Let this jackass do whatever the hell he wants. He will learn that he is worth what people pay.

As well, he will quickly learn that people get what they pay for. I charge 75/hour or 350 a day plus expenses for ferrying any aircraft. If they don't care about their aircraft then they don't hire me. I charge that for a reason, and people that want their aircraft taken care of professionally will pay. All this guy does is further the ability to lowball and undercut people who feed themselves and or their families. And everyone should send an email to him letting him know what he is doing to the aviation community. But at the same time, he is not taking away any business that I would want anyway. If somebody only wants to pay 35 bucks a day, then that plane isn't worth touching, and the person isn't worth dealing with.
 
"Thats cute... if he doesnt know what he is doing, why in the world would anyone hire him to ferry an airplane? Either you know what youre doing or you dont. Its all learning, thats a given, we all learn throughout our careers. Giving it away has nothing to do with gaining experience."

+100

If you are holding out aviation services to the public in any way, you should already have *some* level of experience doing that service and you practice on your own dime. Unlike most other careers, if something goes wrong or if you get into a tight situation, you had better be able to handle it on your own. If the owner is flying with you, you can't turn to them and ask "what do I do?" when you're the one who is supposed to be the professional. The engine doesn't care if you have 500 hours or 2000 hours. It'll quit when it's good and ready to. The weather and hundreds of other factors won't discriminate either. So, you should be ready to deal with situations that arise before taking anyone's money and already have the experience needed to fly that plane in a safe manner. Charging a low amount because "you're building experience" or "you have low hours" is highly unprofessional. I like the suggestion of taking along a more experienced ferry pilot and giving them the money.

Also, this attitude may be bringing down the overall salaries in aviation, but there is another factor going on as well. The "I don't care what other people do, because I will be successful" attitude is also bringing down the house. We should care. We should all care what pay and QOL is for our fellow pilots. The 'me, myself and I' isn't doing anything to help things and will eventually hurt everyone's pocketbooks, not just the guys in the lower ranks. Just some food for thought.

Merry Christmas, everyone!
 
pilot1278 said:
The "I don't care what other people do, because I will be successful" attitude is also bringing down the house. We should care. We should all care what pay and QOL is for our fellow pilots. The 'me, myself and I' isn't doing anything to help things and will eventually hurt everyone's pocketbooks, not just the guys in the lower ranks.
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I don't know if I'm the lower ranks or higher ranks, but I still don't care what this guy does.

First, it's a free country. The market sorts out a lot of problems. This guy will probably only do one or two trips before he figures out how dumb he's being.

Second, he's going for a completely different demographic than me. I don't want to do business with any owner who doesn't see the value of my services. Obviously this other ferry pilot does. That alone sets us apart.

When there is a 10x price difference in anything, the two products are automatically on different playing fields. Aston Martin is not trying to be Mazda and Mazda isn't trying to be Aston Martin. Both companies focus on *entirely* different buyers. They compete against other products in their class, not in the entire market. $35/day pilots compete against guys doing it for $50/day or free. People like myself, doing it for $300/day, compete in the $200-$400/day market. Chances are, there's a correlation between the value of the planes being flown, too. I fly a lot of $100k-$500k aircraft, whereas I'd be very surprised if a pilot asking $35/day ever ferries anything worth more than $70k.

Finally, people like this guy have been around for a long time. You think back in the "good old days" nobody did this sort of thing? They did, yet other pilots figured out a way to make a good living. Pilots who get paid well figure out a way to do it regardless of what other people do.
 
jrh said:
I don't know if I'm the lower ranks or higher ranks, but I still don't care what this guy does.

First, it's a free country. The market sorts out a lot of problems. This guy will probably only do one or two trips before he figures out how dumb he's being.

Second, he's going for a completely different demographic than me. I don't want to do business with any owner who doesn't see the value of my services. Obviously this other ferry pilot does. That alone sets us apart.

When there is a 10x price difference in anything, the two products are automatically on different playing fields. Aston Martin is not trying to be Mazda and Mazda isn't trying to be Aston Martin. Both companies focus on *entirely* different buyers. They compete against other products in their class, not in the entire market. $35/day pilots compete against guys doing it for $50/day or free. People like myself, doing it for $300/day, compete in the $200-$400/day market. Chances are, there's a correlation between the value of the planes being flown, too. I fly a lot of $100k-$500k aircraft, whereas I'd be very surprised if a pilot asking $35/day ever ferries anything worth more than $70k.

Finally, people like this guy have been around for a long time. You think back in the "good old days" nobody did this sort of thing? They did, yet other pilots figured out a way to make a good living. Pilots who get paid well figure out a way to do it regardless of what other people do.
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One of the biggest hangups in aviation as a whole, are pilots who are continually worried/angry/concerned/aghast/whatever over what other pilots are doing.
 
yeah, the guy flying ferry for 35 bucks a day is an a hole. But a lot of people who talk him down on here start out for 20k/yr, or about 54 bucks a day, over 365. I know its not a direct comparison, but glass houses and all that...

People will do whatever they deem necessary to justify the pay for their jobs, im not defending the guy, or trying to put anyone down, but everyone has had some hand in degrading the supposed "profession," including me.
 
So what do we do now, ask the government to price fix at 200 per day? The Soviets tried that and look how that worked for them. The simple fact that (so far) we can charge what we want in a mostly free market (for ferry pilots) is a godsend. People do not allways go with the cheapest price and this keeps the whole thing in check. Free markets work by themselves. Yea it pisses me off two, I had a #@$@ss CFI come in and "steal" my potential students at my local airport by giving free ground. It pissed me off to no end. We have to realize however how fortunate we are to still live in a place where we do not have a bunch of beurocrats in charge of what we charge, for the time being anyway. Someone said earlier that this is the downside of Capitalism. I will say that while it may seem difficult to compete with these wads, the truth is they really do not take much of your buissness. What they do is take a market share of clients that probably would not enter the demand side of the equation if everyone charged the same "high" amount. This opens up more clients into the market and provides employment to more people. Someone who ordinarily could not afford to have their airplane ferried can now afford it.

By harping on these people who are undercutting you, you are harping on the same system that allows you to operate your buissness the way you want to without intervention. Capitalism is not perfect but it is the only system that has been proven to work.


BTW - The CFI I mentioned in the first paragraph turned out to really suck. The guy had less than 50% pass rate. He pissed off the wrong people and now he is gone from the airport. Things usually work out.
 
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