Source? I'm pretty sure this isn't true. I worked in aviation for a while and you either work commercial, military, or private and there aren't a lot of private jobs.
Edit: BLS says average pilot salary is 126k[2] and majority are employed by airlines. [1] You're wrong.
I don't think you read the BLS page correctly. The 126k figure is for a subset of pilots. Read the next sentence to see what the rest make. The page also doesn't give a figure for the proportion of airline pilots, only "pilots, copilot'slls, and flight engineers". I also said "major airline" to specifically make the apology with "big 5 software companies".
126 is for airline pilots. Barely any modern aircraft flies with an actual flight engineer. There are probably less than 100 flight engineers in service at the airlines. The BLS page clearly state the difference b/t the two. BLS also has 105 for 'airline and commercial pilots', but a big gotcha here is that the commercial jobs they included are typically the low paying jobs that pilots take to build hours in order to get an airline job (i.e. crop dusting, sightseeing, air tours, oil and gas flights). Think of them as internships. So, you're going to see a disproportionate number of <1-2 year pilots in the commercial group who are still trying to get their first actual pilot job. Regardless, the numbers clearly indicate that more pilots are airline pilots than not and that the average salary of an airline pilot was 126k in 2016. The BLS numbers also note that they don't include pilots' per diem. For every day away from home, a pilot receives a stipend to cover their expenses. Considering that all of their work is away from home, this is a not insignificant amount of untaxed additional income. A final big hidden value is the low end of the airline pilot spectrum. New airline pilots need what is called a type rating in order to pilot a specific aircraft. These are expensive and a source of income for pilots. So, new pilots at airlines are again taking low salaries for other forms of value. I don't know if all airlines do, but some definitely offer new pilots type ratings as part of their salary. This, again, would lead to a $20,000 salary but closer to $40-50,000 in benefit received.
