I’m making no excuses for digging up this thread – today I read an article on this accident which was both fascinating and disturbing at the same time. The first officer had been taken on by the airline at a starting salary of $17,000. She had managed to increase this amount slightly by the time of the crash, but it was still not enough to enable her to afford to live in the area where she was based by the airline.
On the day of the accident, she had flown across the country, dead-heading on a FedEx cargo flight, where she got the only sleep that she would get before her shift. The captain got about four hours of sleep in the airline’s crew room that day. CVR transcripts reveal the two crew discussing fatigue during the flight, and it is quite plain that neither of them was really in a fit state to be flying.
By comparison, a cleaner in a restaurant can also expect about $17k per year, whereas a carpenter could earn up to $42,000. The author of this article, in the RAE journal, stated that his belief was that all flight deck crews should be paid the same, and although I don’t necessarily agree with that sentiment (why would anyone want to move up to the big stuff if there were no incentive) it seems clear that at least in the USA, there would appear to be a culture amongst the feeder airlines that they will pay crews as little as possible because a) there is a recession on and many pilots will take whatever they can get, and b) it keeps the shareholders happy.
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