easyJet pilot salary: how much do they get paid in 2023?

BUDGET airline easyJet operates over 1,000 routes covering over 30 countries, specialising in short-haul flights.

But how do you become an easyJet pilot, and how much do they earn?

An easyJet Airbus A320 NEO (G-UZLM) departing from Manchester AirportCredit: Getty

How much do easyJet pilots get paid and what is the starting salary?

An easyJet first officer pilot salary in the UK ranges between £40,000 and £75,000.

A first officer flight also pays roughly £25 per hour, meaning easyJet first officers can make nearly £100,000 a year.

Captains at easyJet receive a basic yearly salary of around £115,000.

They also get a five to 15 per cent bonus depending on how long they have flown for the airline.

After two-to-four years of service they will see a five per cent rise in their yearly pay.

After five-to-nine years they receive a ten per cent increase in their salary.

And following their 10th year they will get a 15 per cent bump to their annual wages.

So an easyJet captain will most likely be earning over £130,000 annually after working for the airline for 10 or more years — which doesn't take into account other incentives such as pensions, share schemes, profit sharing and so on.

There are currently over 2,800 pilots working for easyJet, spread across 26 bases in the UK and Europe.

Which UK airline pays pilots the most?

According to LoveTheMaldives.com, Virgin Atlantic is the UK airline which pays its pilots the most, with an average salary of £75,202.

In second place is British Airways, which pays pilots £73.550 per year on average.

And Jet2 comes in third, annually paying its pilots an average of £68,970.

How do I become an easyJet pilot?

If you want to become a pilot with easyJet, brilliant hand-eye coordination skills are essential.

According to the easyJet website, you need everything on the list below before you're ready to apply for a licence:

You must be at least 18 at the start of the course (there’s no upper age limit)
You need a minimum of five GCSEs or equivalent at Grade C or above, including maths, science and English
You must be able to get an EASA or CAA Class One medical
You need the unrestricted right to live and work in the UK, EU or Switzerland and the ability to travel across the easyJet network without restriction
You must be able to speak and write fluent English

If you tick all of the boxes above, you will then need to earn an Airline Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL) or Multi-Crew Pilot Licence (MPL), which you can do in the following ways:

Integrated ATPL Course: This is the traditional route to becoming a pilot — a full-time course with an abundance of hands-on flying time, which takes up to 18 months.

Type Rating Course: After completing your Integrated ATPL Course, this is the next step — once you’ve secured a job as a co-pilot you require specific training for the aircraft you’ll eventually fly, which at easyJet would mean an Airbus A320.

Multi-Crew Pilot Licence: This is the one offered by easyJet, giving you all the standard operating procedures and teaching you about working in a commercial airline environment — a lot of training is done in a simulator and once you graduate you’ll have a Type Rating and be a qualified co-pilot with easyJet.

EasyJet partners with CAE for its training programme. The Generation easyJet Pilot Training Programme is a Multi-Crew Pilot Licence (MPL) course, which is recognised amongst the best in the industry — it is competency-based and designed specifically for easyJet.

The course takes between 18 and 22 months to complete and is ‘tagged’ — this means it leads directly into a co-pilot role on an easyJet Airbus A320.

The easyJet European aviation academy ground schools are embedded in professional CAE Training Centres.

These contain state-of-the-art tech, dedicated classrooms, pilot lounges and brand-new CAE 7000XR A320 Full Flight Simulators, as well as the CAE 600XR Flight Training Device.