That's fair, but also, salaries for pilots are not great, and Boeing's former CEO got a salary of $865K/year + $1.3M/year bonus + stock and now that he's retired gets a pension of $730K/year. I'm sort of curious what exactly it would have cost Boeing to say, "This is not a 737, but we will pay to retrain any 737-trained pilot who's interested." (Which still would have given them a negotiating advantage over Airbus!)
"The average Southwest pilot made $230,626 in 2015, according to the most recent data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Airline Data Project"
It's very cyclical. For reasons unknown to me, pilot unions have always negotiated a seniority-based pay scale. Where seniority is only how many years you been at the airline. How much total experience you have doesn't matter just how many years you've been with the airline.
So if you stay with the airline for a long time you move up from first officer to Captain and then as years of seniority add up you start making a lot more.
The trouble is the pilots can't threaten to change jobs because if you move from one airline to another your seniority goes back to zero.
Also if an airline declares bankruptcy, all the union contracts are null and void. The airline then has a ton of leverage because the pilots are all out of work. The pay scale that comes out of bankruptcy is typically very low.
Similar if one airline acquires another airline. The pilots at the acquired airline typically get screwed in the pay scale and seniority calculation.
Also jobs like flying cargo planes or piloting for a commuter airline pay very low wages. It's mostly just the big airlines that pay well.
