Airline Pilots spend a lot of time on the road, as you probably already know. The specific amount of time each pilot spends away from home varies with airline, domicile and seniority. By the way, the terms domicile and seniority mean the city you are based in and the length of time you’ve been with the airline, respectively. The more seniority a pilot has, the less amount of time he or she has to be away from home, typically, and for that matter the greater choice in domiciles we can choose from to boot. I’d go into greater detail on seniority, but I’d like to stick to the meat of this post (pun intended). Note to self: Make a post about seniority in the near future.

I’m back out on another trip as I write. The airline put us up in a Marriott this time, and in the way of crew hotels, this one isn’t bad. The area is nice (that’s ‘crew code’ for safe to walk in), the hotel is clean, the furniture looks new and the air conditioner control unit on the wall is state-of-the-art, a tell tale indicator of basic hotel ‘air’ worthiness!

So it was no surprise this morning when I went downstairs for breakfast to find a full buffet for only $8.95; $7.71 after my crew discount. At first I was a bit skeptical that I could get a quality buffet for such a low price. I thought the food had to be limited in choices or perhaps it was served in such minute quantities that a double serving was in order on everything just to get a regular sized meal! But to my smug grin it was none of the above. As a result I actually felt that I had discovered a rare find and was quite happy.

We airline pilots spend a significant portion of our annual income on food. Not hard to believe, considering the amount of time away from home our career demands. I’d be able to give you a very accurate amount of 2007’s airline food bill if I was at home right now, since that’s where I keep track of it on my desktop computer via Quicken. But for the sake of expediting this post to ‘press’ so to speak, I’ll try to figure it out here in the hotel room as opposed to waiting.

We’ll use a typical three day trip as an example. Day one, the show time is usually so early that I just grab a banana and some water on my way out the door. I’m hungry again by 11:00 AM or so and that’s when I usually grab a sandwich from the terminal. I find the cost of an airport sandwich is usually around $10 bucks. Come dinner time I’m getting the munchies again and by now since we’re usually at the hotel the crew and I will generally grab something in either the hotel restaurant or in a restaurant near by. I usually spend another $20 dollars there but sometimes it’s higher if we go out for specialty food like sushi, etc. So we’ll say day one’s total food bill is around $30 dollars. Day two’s show time is usually early if day one’s release time was late afternoon and in that case day two pretty much matches day one as far as eating habits go. Day three can sometimes show later in the afternoon in which case I’ll grab breakfast like I did this morning and then catch dinner in the terminal later on in the evening.

All and all, I figure I spend $30-$45 dollars per day on food while I’m out on a trip. If you take the average of that ($37.50 per day) and multiply it by each of the days I’m gone:

• A 2 day trip costs $75.00
• A 3 day trip costs $112.50
• A 4 day trip costs $150.00

Now, the question of how many days I’m gone per month/year needs to be answered and it varies, so again we’re back to averages but they won’t be that far off from the real numbers. I figure, depending on the month, that I’m gone between 12-18 days. So we’ll use the average of that:

• 15 days per month
• 180 days/6 months per year

So now let’s take the average daily expenditure on food and multiply that by the number of days per month/year I’m gone:

• $37.50 X 15 days per month = $562.50 average monthly expense on food
• $37.50 x 180 days per year = $6750.00 average yearly expense on food

I look at the yearly expense and think, “…damn, that could be another motorcycle!”

Now, this post wouldn’t be complete or fair if I didn’t tell you that the airline compensated us for what’s known as TAFB, or Time Away from Base. TAFB is a calculated hourly per-diem amount for all time from initial trip check-in to the final release time after the trip is over minus that time where the main cabin door is shut and the parking brake is off. In other words, it’s an hourly wage outside of the time where I’m flying the airplane- Which makes sense because we crew members ought to be paid for the time we’re sitting in the hotel (away from our families) for the airline. That amount varies by airline but it’s usually not over $2.00 per hour - Yes, $2.00 per hour. It’s not a wage that’s governed by individual state minimum wage regulations; rather, it’s covered under the Railway Labor Act which is Federal in nature and therefore overrides state labor laws.

In a nutshell, if I do 6 hours of flying in a day, that’s covered under one wage- the higher one, while all the other time is covered under the lower, per-diem wage.

I must say though that most crew members I know just count their per-diem wage towards their ‘total’ wage and take the subject of food pretty seriously, since in the end it all effects the bottom line still.

And with that I need to hit the gym and get ready for work, so I’ll sign off for now. Look for another blog post tomorrow.

Capt’n Chris

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