I know a guy who flies less than 20 hours a month but makes well over $100k/year. He's been a pilot for over 20 years and knows how to work the rules so he makes money even when he's not flying (being on standby and such).
(Actually, the regional carriers that employ newbie pilots are non-unionized.)
Unfortunately "The Market" optimizes for profit, which is almost never in my (and the consumers') best interest.
He was so upset with the airlines that he quit (also trying to save his marriage). But he loves flying so much that he went back to the same airline, and had to start over again at the bottom of the seniority ladder.
He says that flying is so much fun that he just thinks it's great that he gets paid to do it instead of having to pay to do it, ha. Still, though, he's enrolled in classes again so that he won't have to pay off his student loans because he can't afford the payments.
Paramedics, who do even more, including being entrusted with cardiac drugs, narcotics, and skills up to and including cricothyrotomy, often fare barely better than said barista.
> Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.
http://www.indeed.com/salary/EMT.html
Shows EMT-B salary at $19,000, and EMT-Paramedic salary at around $41,000.
Source Two: I worked as an EMT-B. Starting salary was $9.60/hr ($19,200), with 3% annual pay raises.
http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/06/16/pilot-pay-want-to...
P.S. Professional pilots are known to whinge quite a lot so you might want to take what he said with a little pinch of salt... try lurking on www.pprune.org for a few weeks and you'll see what I mean :)
P.P.S. Having said all of that, some shocking stuff really does occasionally go on (I've personally seen it happen) so there are genuine grievances out there.
They get paid per SBH (Scheduled block hour) which lands them - during the first few years, on average - a gross income of €4000. Since most of these pilots are contractors but technically have only one client they'll have to pay for everything themselves (social security, pension, medical insurances, liabilities, income races). Depending on the country your based in this may tax your income by up to 78%.
Not to much to live from, let alone pay for interest on a student loan. And don't even think about repaying that debt.
But like mentioned in earlier comments: flying is like a drug, it's a beautiful job.
Finally, most of the European States have funny regulations about building new house, so most of the cities are crowded and rents are way too expensive.
Although one part of travel is about the physical experience of visiting different places, another major part has to do with connecting people. Here, the real disruption is the internet. I'm not saying flights will ever go away, because we'll always want to move around, but I am saying that we'll feel the need to travel less as connectivity improves.
Like this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2324358/Welco...
On a more serious note: there's a lot of talk on this page about the finance and logistics of starting a company like this - but I think the human factor is also worth mentioning. I fly a moderate amount, and whenever I have an hour or so to spare on a layover, I try to find interesting people to talk at the bar. While I've had varying levels of success, last layover at O'Hare, I spoke to a pilot who had been with a major airline for about a decade.
Having seen "Catch Me If You Can" and surmising that the situation must have changed, I asked him about his job. That was the most dismal response I've received from that question. We talked for about half an hour about how terribly pilots are treated, and how (maybe a bit of an exaggeration) a good number of beginner pilots for airlines are on food stamps because they're paid so poorly. I asked about benefits, and his response was, "just about every benefit you can think of is basically unusable." I asked him why he did it, and he told me that flying was like a drug.
Pilots are responsible for lives, and I'd feel a lot safer if my pilot was paid enough to survive. Yet, with dwindling margins and a thriftier consumer base, it's going to take a lot to disrupt this industry. In reality, I don't see anything major happening without some drastic innovation that cuts associated costs significantly in order to build up that margin.