British Airways has a rather interesting job offer for pilots who could earn up to $100,000 a year just to drive, or taxi in aviation speak, one of its airplanes a couple of kilometers on the ground at Chicago O’Hare a few times a day.
No, really, there’s no flying involved. The job is really just to drive an airplane from one terminal to another.
British Airways finds itself in need of so-called Taxi Crew because of the rather unusual way it runs its operations at Chicago O’Hare (ORD).
Terminal 5 is O’Hare’s main international terminal, where Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) are based, so BA’s three daily flights arrive at this terminal, like many other international services.
But British Airways flights do not then depart from Terminal 5. Instead, the planes are driven to a gate at Terminal 3, which is the main American Airlines terminal at O’Hare.
The reason for this is the transatlantic joint venture between American Airlines and British Airways, which means that many passengers on BA’s flights to and from Chicago are connecting to and from domestic services operated by American Airlines.
If British Airways were to require passengers to transfer from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 after arriving on an American Airlines flight, it would run the risk of lots of misconnects, which would end up costing it more money in the long run.
Instead, it’s cheaper for British Airways to move its airplanes from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3, ensuring that the departure gate for transit passengers is as close to where they will be deplaning in O’Hare as possible.
And while some airports around the world will let airlines taxi a plane from one gate to another using a pushback tug, this isn’t the case at O’Hare.
As a result, British Airways requires experienced Airline Transport Pilots with recent experience on either the Boeing 777 or Boeing 787 Dreamliner to taxi its planes from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3.
The current job offer from BA reads: “You’ll play a critical role in helping achieve On Time Performance by safely ground taxiing British Airways Boeing 777 and 787 aircraft between terminals at Chicago O’Hare airport.”
“The base salary range for this position is $90,000 – $100,000 per year, depending on experience, skills, qualifications, and location.”
By U.S. pilot standards, an annual salary of $100,000 doesn’t sound that good, but it’s worth mentioning that this job isn’t really aimed at full-time pilots at the height of their career.
Instead, this role is ideally suited to recently retired pilots who are no longer legally permitted to fly a commercial airliner in the United States, but are allowed to taxi planes around an airport at low speed.
In other words, it’s easy money for not doing a huge amount of work… that is, of course, if you are accustomed to the complexities of operating at Chicago O’Hare, which is notoriously difficult.
