How's the market for pilots at this time, JoS3ph?
I believe that Joseph's paycheck is pay back for the many hours. therefore money it took him (and any other pilot) to get to the point where his is sort of evens it out.
For example, when I was learning to fly a single engine Cessna 150 (the training workhorse for starting out), it was $90 an hour in the city, and $70/hour outside of the city. The rate goes up for larger planes such as the 4 seater C-172, and I don't have the rates for that. If one is training in a multi-engine aircraft, my CFI told me that it came out to be a .05/second. And as Joe says, you need 1000 hours to become rated to fly multi-engine. It just keeps going up from there to become an airline transport pilot (ATP). Plus, you need to be IFR rated on each aircraft, which means more time and money.
That's one big advantage of joining the military. If you qualify for flying, they will greatly help you out money-wise. IMHO, the military guys are the better pilots. If you fly a regional jet, chances are pretty good that you're going to get REALLY young guys who are working their way up to flying larger aircraft in the company.
Sometimes it's a truly scary thought, as guys that young aren't quite out of their immortal phase. Case in point: when I was training, I had a VERY young CFI - like ~21 years old. He was a really nice guy, but he'd do some crazy things. One on of my very first flights, I was learning how to taxi using the rudders, and I did horrible. I ran the C-150 of the taxiway into the mud. My CFI gets out, and with the prop spinning, he pushes the leading edge of the wing to get it back onto the taxiway. When he got in, I just about screamed, "I can not believe you did that." There were other incidents, but the one that made me change CFI was really sort of dangerous. It was a typical August and the temp was 104F. Single engine planes don't have a/c, so it was hot and miserable. I won't go into everything, but when we were doing our runup, we had a BAD mag drop. He asked me, "Should we take off (with that mag drop)?" I thought he was asking as teacher to student. I said, "No, that was a pretty good drop. We should take it in and exchange planes" (this particular aircraft had A LOT of maintenance issues). I just about died (almost literally) when he said, "Well, we'll try it and if we have problems we'll terminate." I said to him, "Oh, please, please don't get us on the 6:00PM news!!!" We took off, and we had problems ascending (mag drop combined with the heat). ATC even called and said we were too low. He says the same thing he said to me, "We'll terminate if it continues." I was really upset as he insinuated that it was MY fault. It came to the point that I was ready to say "Eric, it's your airplane (protocol for changing pilots). Let's go back to RVS."
Later on, I told my dad that we had a 300 mag drop and he insisted that we take off anyway. My dad (a pilot himself) was upset. After an accumulation of problems on the behavior of my CFI (another example: he wanted to talk to me about his personal life WHILE FLYING with a student), he immediately insisted that I change CFI's. I went out of the city and met my new CFI, a great former military guy who was 60 years old with 10,000 hours flying experience. He told me that my former CFI installed a lot of habits that although not dangerous, they weren't necessary. I had a great time with this guy until I had to quit due to family matters (a difficult pregnancy and needing to save financial resources will do that. ) As I said, this CFI was more cautious with the exception that he had a little habit of smoking on the flight line while I was fueling... made me a little nervous.
I didn't mean to write a novel here, but I do hope to get back to flying soon. I'm currently in the process of getting my business restarted (non-aviation) and resources are a little short.
I guess I posted this as an example that although the paychecks are the larger planes is excellent, pilots go through A LOT to achieve their positions. I wanted to start flying at a (for-profit) school (a lot of extra expense) and they told me it would take 7 years of flight time starting at $90/hour to even start flying turboprops commercially.
All this to say, the paycheck is pay back for what the pilots put out financially to attain their positions.