Jessica is Executive Editor of Business & Commercial Aviation magazine. She started as Editor of ShowNews Online, Aviation Week's on-site trade show daily published at the Paris Air Show, NBAA Annual Convention, Singapore Air Show and at other significant aerospace gatherings.
Jessica has worked in television production and management consulting. While not yet a licensed pilot, Ms. Salerno has received flight instruction and has soloed.
Sure, we're all in aviation because we love it. But at the end of the day, we also have to face cold, hard economic reality. B/CA gets calls every week from readers wondering how much money pilots make in general, and how a particular pilot's salary, bonus and benefits compare to his or her peers. We've done salary stories in the past, but this time, we went straight to the source--our pilot readers--for answers. Our data reveal the average annual salary a corporate pilot is $61,548. The median salary reported is $57,100.
Over the last few months, we logged responses to a salary questionnaire included with the November 1996 issue of B/CA. In all, almost 600 postage-paid cards were returned, predominantly from corporate pilots in the United States. Our response rate of a little over two percent of pilot readers was about par for a direct-mail survey.
