A commercial flyer generally earns about $9,000 a year—$2,500 to $3,000 as his base pay, plus $5 for every hour of day flying. $10 for every hour of night flying. To the individual flyer, $9,000 is no great income. But to the operating companies the salary item in the aggregate is enormous. The companies, as they became efficient business organizations, wanted to regularize their salaries, reduce them. None dared until last week. Then Curtiss-Wright Flying Service, which operates two score flying fields in all parts of the U. S., pioneered. The new Curtiss-Wright pay schedule offers as maximum yearly bases: $3,600 to chief pilots; $3,000 to long experienced pilots, plus $3 per hour for single-motored ships, $4 per hour for multi-motored ships; $2,500 for new pilots, plus $2 per flying hour. All pilots get double flying pay for night flying. This Curtiss-Wright schedule becomes the prototype for the entire U. S. aviation industry. A busy expert flyer would earn about $5,000 a year on these scales.
Bitter, of course, was the protest of pilots at this grading and economizing. About 50 flying men gathered at once on Long Island. Practical, they admitted to the Curtiss-Wright company: “The economic condition of Eastern pilots in winter prohibits our direct refusal of the terms you offer.” Less immediately practical, they telegraphed the National Pilots Association at Cleveland, which is a sort of flyers’ union, for permission to join and for its Secretary Carl Francis Egge to go East to organize them.
Everywhere in the U. S. the movement to unionize aviation formally is now active. Pilots and mechanics assemble in hangars and lunch wagons to mull over grievances. Dale (“‘Red”) Jackson travels here and there advocating unions (TIME, Dec. 23). Last week he was in Miami to agitate at the all-American air meet. At Muskogee, Okla., the local men last week received a first union charter from the American Federation of Labor.
More Must-Reads from TIME
- L.A. Fires Show Reality of 1.5°C of Warming
- Home Losses From L.A. Fires Hasten ‘An Uninsurable Future’
- The Women Refusing to Participate in Trump’s Economy
- Bad Bunny On Heartbreak and New Album
- How to Dress Warmly for Cold Weather
- We’re Lucky to Have Been Alive in the Age of David Lynch
- The Motivational Trick That Makes You Exercise Harder
- Column: No One Won The War in Gaza
Contact us at letters@time.com