Flying Right

Regarding the May 29 story, “Pilot Power”:

I must take exception to the statement in the second paragraph regarding veteran pilots working eight to 10 days a month and earning $150,000 a year.

I have been with a major carrier for 23 years, belong to the Airline Pilots Assn. and am 52 years old. My days off, which range from 12 to 14 a month, are usually during the week, not weekends. I fly many all-night trips and am away from home an average of 280 hours a month. Divide those hours by eight and you have the equivalent of 35 “working days” a month away from home.

It makes a 9-to-5, Monday-through-Friday job sound pretty good, doesn’t it? I fly the Boeing 727, and the pay is nowhere near the $150,000 that management likes to portray as the norm. That is Boeing 747 pay, and I will never be senior enough to fly 747s before I retire in 1996.

It is about time that the news media, including The Times, tackled the real problems in the industry, such as bottom-line oriented chief executives and the Federal Aviation Administration. As long as these people are not on the airplane, they are not concerned with fatigue, inoperative equipment or aging aircraft that tend to fall apart. Many of them use corporate or leased business jets and don’t fly with us anyway. To them, we are just “work units.” To the traveling public, we are the safety net. We care much more about your safety than MBA bean counters do.

FRED P. EULER

Santa Barbara