Airline Pilot Salary 2026/27: ONS Pay and Take-Home
ONS classifies aircraft pilots together with air traffic controllers as SOC 2020 unit group 3511. The group's full-time median was £82,746 in ASHE 2025, with a quarter earning under £61,511. ONS did not publish a reliable upper quartile, 90th percentile or mean, so no official figure describes the top of the profession. Pay is set airline by airline rather than on a national scale.
Typical pay & take-home
- Median gross
- £82,746
- ASHE 2025, 25th percentile to median (upper percentiles suppressed)
- £61,511–£82,746
- Take-home at median
- £58,550 England, no pension applied — use the salary calculator for your scheme.
At the median for this profession, you earn about 112% above the UK full-time median (£39,039), which is above the 90th percentile of UK full-time earnings (£76,903), the highest point ONS publishes.
What influences airline pilot (commercial) pay
There is no national pilot pay scale. Each airline sets its own pay and seniority structure, so two pilots in the same seat at different airlines can be paid very differently. This page therefore anchors on the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings: for SOC 2020 3511, the April 2025 full-time median was £82,746 and the lower quartile £61,511.
The ONS group is wider than airline flying. It includes air traffic controllers, and pilots flying for helicopter, cargo, business-aviation and training operators, and it does not split them by seat (first officer or captain), fleet or employer. It also measures employee jobs only.
At the median a pilot is a higher-rate taxpayer: about £32,476 of the £82,746 sits above the £50,270 threshold and is taxed at 40%, with 2% National Insurance on the same slice. Pay above £100,000 of adjusted net income loses personal allowance at £1 for every £2, and above £125,140 the allowance is gone and the 45% rate applies.
Career progression
- ASHE does not publish pilot pay by seat or seniority. These are the points it does publish for SOC 2020 3511, April 2025, full-time.
- Lower quartile: £61,511.
- Median: £82,746.
- Upper quartile, 90th percentile and mean: suppressed by ONS as not statistically robust.
- Progression is set by each airline: commands and seniority steps are in company agreements, not a published national scale.
Frequently asked questions
- What is take-home on the £82,746 pilot median?
- With no pension contribution, take-home in England is about £58,550 a year or £4,879 a month in 2026/27, after £20,530 Income Tax and £3,666 National Insurance. At the £61,511 lower quartile it is about £46,234 a year. A workplace pension changes both figures.
- How much pension would bring a median-paid pilot out of the 40% band?
- About £32,476 a year: that is the part of the £82,746 median above the £50,270 higher-rate threshold. Paid by salary sacrifice, a 39.3% contribution covers it, and take-home falls to about £39,683 a year, £18,867 less than with no contribution, because the sacrificed pay would otherwise have been taxed at 40% and charged 2% NI.
- When does the pension annual allowance taper apply to a pilot?
- Only when both tests are failed: threshold income above £200,000 and adjusted income, which adds back pension contributions including the employer's, above £260,000. The allowance then falls by £1 for every £2 of adjusted income above £260,000, to a floor of £10,000. A pilot on the £82,746 ONS median is well below both tests.