CARGO VS PASSENGERS - difference in salary?

Question

So I was looking on airlinepilotcentral.com, and I found out that cargo pilots make a fair bit more money than airline pilots. Can anybody tell me why this is ??? Aren't humans more precious than a bunch of boxes??

Answer 1

Humans ARE more precious than bunches of boxes, but that has nothing to do with pay;.

Cargo pilots fly on demand,  world-wide. They do not have regularly scheduled runs like passenger airlines. They may be gone for months at a time, and be in some of the worst places in the world to have to take crew rest. They have to stay proficient in their training, yet fly into places of marginal suitability for aircraft, particularly in Africa, to name a place. It is for this reason that the pay is sometimes higher.

Regards,

Dan

Answer 2

well I'll tell you one that pilots themselves told me when you're flying cargo there are some amenities if you can call it one.

Let us say you're flying from point A to point B, you have a full load of cargo as you reach point B then you loaded the cargo as instructed but still some extra tons, A shipper talks to you that he has some perishable good which was left by another airline and would you be willing to take it for a measly sum. Of course this is done with your load (cargo) controller knowledge and some operators is OK to this set-up as long as the airplane has no risk of doing illegal cargoes.

Answer 3

Cargo companies such as FedEx & UPS are currently making money. The pilot unions at both have negotiated their fair share of the profits. For the most part passenger airlines are not making money and have taken pay cuts in the past few years amongst other benifit reductions.

Humans are more precious but if you think about it a cargo 747 if it's running late has the potential to upset millions of people(millions of packages over nighted), were as a 747 full of people running late will only upset about 450 people. lol.

Answer 4

of course yes cause they are diffrence

Answer 5

Precious humans have nothing to do with pilot salaries. All that matters is company profit. Jeez man. Nobody goes  into business because humans are precious.