Airlines offer up to $38.50-an-hour pay to lure new pilots

With a pilot shortage looming for U.S. airlines, two subsidiaries of American Airlines announced Wednesday that they will increase the starting pay for new pilots to $58,000 or more.

Wages for newly minted pilots at PSA Airlines in Dayton, Ohio, will increase from $24.62 to $38.50 an hour. PSA will continue to offer new pilots a $15,000 signing bonus, and a $20,000 retention bonus for co-pilots, or first officers, paid in installments after their first-year anniversary.

Envoy said it will continue with $20,000 signing bonuses and "guaranteed flow-through" to American Airlines, which operates 70 percent of the flights in Philadelphia.

The wages and signing bonuses are an effort to lure new aviators at a time when many senior pilots are near the mandatory retirement age of 65, and it's  more difficult and expensive to become a pilot.

New federal pilot-rest rules and tougher qualification standards since 2013 require commercial co-pilots, or first officers, to have 1,500 hours of minimum flight experience, up from 250.

Fewer young people are opting for cockpit jobs because of the cost of training and low entry pay -- $22,500 to $26,000 to start at the regional airlines, which operate half the nation's scheduled flights. Pilots who make it to the big airlines earn substantially more, $200,000 to $300,000 a year, for a captain on international routes.

While the major airlines - United, American, and Delta - have plenty of pilots, their main source of aviators are the regional carriers.  In Philadelphia, 65 percent of American's flights are operated by regional carriers, including Republic and Air Wisconsin, that fly under the American banner.