Know what you're worth.
Career decisions should rest on real pay, not estimates. For your airline, that starts with your record. Two minutes, fully anonymous.
An email address is all it takes. No name, no employer.
PILOT DEFINES · PILOT'S VALUE
Fully anonymous. Compare real pay, real conditions, real reviews.
Right now none of that is in the job ad or the pay scale.
The only people who know are the ones already flying there.
Airlines that offer better conditions become visible.
Pilots get to choose the better option.
Airlines compete on conditions to attract people.
Over time, that raises the value of the profession itself.
PILOT DEFINES · PILOT'S VALUE
On the left, our estimate from public sources. On the right, what line pilots reported actually being paid. The right-hand column opens only for pilots who have logged their own (Give & Get).
Public estimateA reference range built from official filings and job postings
Actual PayThe median of what pilots recorded actually being paid
| Airline | Seat | Public estimate (range) | Actual pay (median) |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANA | Captain | $138K–$220K Estimate | $179K |
| Emirates | Captain | $211K–$318K Estimate | $250K |
| Lufthansa | Captain | $157K–$272K Estimate | $200K |
| Cathay Pacific | Captain | $189K–$355K Estimate | $235K |
| Delta Air Lines | Captain | $311K–$547K Estimate | $408K |
| Singapore Airlines | Captain | $173K–$261K Estimate | $224K |
To see the right-hand column.
Upload a payslip or type your annual pay in by hand and it opens. About 30 seconds. The payslip is read for its numbers on your own device — the image is never sent.
Add my pay anonymouslyEstimate built from public sources / Self-reported typed in by the pilot / From payslip read automatically from a payslip — all 112 estimate ranges are further down the page.
How training actually runs, what the roster looks like, whether the base is a good place to live, how long the wait for command really is. Written by current and former pilots (Japanese and English are translated both ways automatically).
What was actually paid.
Days off, roster, bidding, allowances, benefits.
How pay, life and upgrade change if you move.
Know before you join what you'd otherwise learn after.
Share your pay once, anonymously, and you can see the pay other pilots have logged.
For your airline, seat and fleet — what really lands in the account.
The full breakdown on every airline page opens for 90 days.
The more you log, the more your Pay Report and Pay History grow.
Your name, staff number and bank details are blacked out in your browser before anything is sent. The image itself is never stored.
No payslip to hand is fine. Typed-in figures and payslip-read figures are kept apart in the data.
An email address is all it takes to create an account. No display name, no real name.
The one report you filed to see everyone else's becomes your own pay history.
Pay History — it builds as you log
Pay Report — this month
Same payslip, two denominators: hours you were flying vs. hours you were on duty. They differ by roughly 2×, and no job ad shows you that gap.
Pay Report — one month, broken down
Benchmark — only pilots on your terms
A sample distribution of annual pay for pilots on the same terms. The median is 20.4 million yen, the 25th percentile 17.8 million and the 75th percentile 23.3 million. Your own position is the differently coloured bar.
Median, not mean. Below five records, this panel does not appear at all.
Everything below is already running. Anything that isn't says so.
Pay records carry nothing that points back to who filed them.
Name, staff number and bank details are blacked out in your browser first.
A self-reported figure and a figure read off a payslip are never treated as the same thing.
Medians and quartiles, never averages / every estimate range has its source on the ledger / Coming soon Verified Pilot — the mechanism for marking a payslip as checked is designed but not yet running, so logging your pay does not earn a badge today. Verified Pilot verifies the person, not the amount.
Everything below this line is an estimate built from published terms. What was actually paid is in Actual Pay above.
The gap runs as high as 2.3x, and Middle Eastern pay is tax-free, so real take-home is better still.
* Converted at USD/JPY=150. US figures are benchmarked to $465,000 per year. Middle East figures are gross, since the income is tax-free. Actual pay varies by aircraft type, years of experience and contract type.
Each airline profile covers pay, operating environment, training, benefits and hiring requirements.
* Overseas figures converted at USD/JPY=150. Figures for tax-free countries are gross. Actual pay varies by aircraft type, years of experience and contract type. Check each airline's profile page for the latest information.
Average captain pay by airline. Select a card to open the full profile.
A data-driven breakdown of the pay gaps between airlines, and between careers.
Captain pay, First Officer pay, time to upgrade and overall package compared point by point, so you know which one to aim for.
Middle East carriers such as Emirates and Qatar versus ANA and JAL: the true take-home difference once tax treatment is factored in.
Captain pay and working conditions at Japan's LCCs — ZIPAIR, Peach, Jetstar, Skymark and the rest — lined up side by side.
ANA Captain $170K vs Emirates Captain $233K+ (tax-free). We work out the real gap once housing allowance is included.
Dubai vs Doha: real earnings, how hard it is to get hired, and life on the ground. Which one should a Japanese pilot pick?
Doctors average $84K vs pilots $107K. Earnings curves from your twenties to retirement, plus lifestyle, compared in full.
The truth behind the $46K lawyer average and its two-tier reality: bar exam vs company-sponsored cadet, the pay gap at 30, and the option to go independent.
Doctor, lawyer, surgeon, investment banker, tech executive, pro athlete and more: eight careers ranked on pay, stability and risk of AI replacement.
Salary simulations for moves within Japan, overseas and to LCCs, plus the licenses you need, a realistic timeline, and 7 checkpoints to keep the move from going wrong.
Compiled from the questions working pilots actually ask
Career decisions should rest on real pay, not estimates. For your airline, that starts with your record. Two minutes, fully anonymous.
An email address is all it takes. No name, no employer.