Pilots who are striking at British Airways are better paid than peers at their budget rivals but appear to be less well remunerated than their main European competitors, according to a Financial Times analysis.
A starting basic salary for a BA captain is about £75,000, according to Balpa, the pilots’ union. BA said the average salary for a captain was £167,000, with £16,000 of flight allowances on top of this. The airline has claimed the pay rise it has offered would take average captain salaries to more than £200,000.
In comparison, the starting salary for captains at German rival Lufthansa is €144,000, which rises to €170,000 with additional flight hours and profit sharing. Toplevel captains earn a fixed salary of about €240,000, rising to €285,000 with the additional pay benefits. At Air France, the average salary for long-haul captains is €230,000, which does not include benefits, bonuses or profit shares.
UK budget carrier easyjet said its UK captains earned an average of £120,000 and a maximum of £145,000. Ryanair’s pilots can receive up to £170,000, according to the low-cost airline.
Industry commentators stressed that pilot pay was very difficult to compare across airlines. Pay varies depending on the seniority of the pilot, but airlines also offer different bonuses on top of fixed salaries, such as flight allowances, food, housing and profit-share schemes.
“The devil is in the detail and there’s really a lot of detail because pilot contract structures are a science in themselves, plus there’s the exchange rate to factor in,” said Andrew Lobbenberg, aviation analyst at HSBC.
At the centre of the BA dispute is the demand for a profit-share scheme. BA’S pilots are disgruntled that comparable national carriers such as Lufthansa, Air France and KLM give a proportion of their profits to pilots.
A BA captain, who has been with the airline for more than a decade, said pilots were frustrated that they had taken cuts to help the business “rebuild” after the economic downturn, but were not sharing in its recovery.
