Congress expressed shock and dismay to learn that regional airline pilots start at very low salaries after the NTSB said the co-pilot on the Colgan Air commuter plane that crashed near Buffalo on Feb. 12 earned only $16,000 a year.

　　That situation has existed for decades, though the financial difficulties of the industry have clearly driven pilot salaries lower. There was a time when wide-body international captains worked a few trips a month and earned $300,000 or more a year. Economic pressures have choked that golden goose.

　　But regional airline pilots are essentially paid in hours of experience, not cash. They build jet flight time that gets them higher-paying positions as captains, and eventually, they hope, jobs at major airlines. They accept low pay in order to get a big payday later in their flying careers. Right or wrong, that’s how the industry has worked.

　　Just how much do pilots at major airlines earn these days？ FltOps.com, an information source for pilots, recently released a salary survey. On the low end, first-year pilots at US Airways would, theoretically, earn a minimum $21,600 a year. At the top end of the airline scale, Southwest Airlines has a first-year minimum of $49,572.

　　And how big is that big payout they hope to get someday？ FltOps said on average, captains top out at minimum salaries of $165,278.

　　The lowest top-scale captain's salary was $123,480 at JetBlue Airways, and the highest among passenger airlines was again at Southwest: $181,270 a year.

　　The only airlines offering higher pay right now: UPS and FedEx. Their captains max out at a minimum of more than $200,000 a year.