sheldon sacks nearly a quarter of own staff!, page-7

Britelite,

Mathematically, my maths was correct. The sticking point is on how you play with or manipulate the numbers.

Worth noting a couple of things here.

1) You can throw the News Corp figures that you refer to out the window. There are very few pilots at QAN earning in excess of $350K, let alone $536K as you point out. If the general public think that the avergae QAN pilot is earning $536K, then News Corp journo's have a lot to answer for!

To give you a rough average, most Captains are on between 200K to 300K per year, F/O's are on $160-180K and S/O's are on anything from $80K to $120K (once again this varies, these are just rough averages), depending on what aircraft they fly and what trips they do i.e. overtime, Long Range Flying Allowance etc.. Given the above figures, this is why I settled on a $300K salary for arguments sake. As I said, most pilots do not make this.

2) Your pilot hour assumptions are wrong. If pilots could get away with 8.9 hours per week, every man, women and child would want to be a pilot. That would be nice indeed. In the case of standby hours, they are paid for (pro rata, not one for one) and non flight duties are usually paid but not always.i.e. delays can work in the favour of the company and be unpaid due to pay agreements in the EBA.

Pilot roster limitations are governed by CASA to ensure successful Fatigue Management, therefore pilots are limited in how many hours they can actually work. The current regulations allow pilots to fly no more than 90 hours per 28 days or 1000 hours per 365 days. Taking an average of 950 hours per year, the average pilot's per hour salary is $300. Remember, pilots do not or cannot control the maximum number of hours they can work or be rostered, this is strictly governed by CASA (for obvious reasons).

In the case of Mr. Joyce, he can work as much or as little as he likes. Granted, CEO's do usually put in the hours but if you say Mr. Joyce takes home $5000,000 (approx) and works an average of 90 hours a week (x 48 weeks a year), his average hourly pay based on this assumption is as you said $1,157.40. If Mr. Joyce worked the same hours as pilots (950 p.a.), his average hourly rate would be $5263.15, a lot more than $300/hour.

Anyway, I am not overly concerned at the differences in hourly pay rates at QAN, I merely think it is wrong for Mr. Joyce to tell lies on national TV re the pilots earning more than him per hour. Think about it, not possible with the huge wage differences of $5000,000 v $300,000 for any of the QAN staff

p.s. Not sure what mining company you are referring to and I am not a plumber, but I will gladly give up my day job to become a Janitor for $500K a year. Let me know where to sign up. he, he.

Christmas Cheers to all.

Surfrat.