How to pay tandem pilots: per flight, per day, or a share
The three ways tandem operations pay their pilots, what each one does to behaviour, and the number that actually decides it.
Every tandem operation settles this question, and almost none of them settle it on purpose. It gets decided in the first season by whatever felt fair that week, and then it never changes — even when the operation triples.
There are three models. Each one quietly changes how your pilots behave.
1. Per flight
The pilot gets a fixed amount for every tandem flown. In the Alps this is typically €60–85, with €70–80 the common band, and often a higher rate when photo and video are included.
What it does well. It is the only model a pilot can verify without seeing your books. He counts his own flights. That matters more than operators expect: a tandem pilot is not an employee, he flies for three companies, and he will not accept a number he cannot check.
What it does badly. It pays nothing for the day that gets cancelled at eleven. Your pilot drove ninety minutes, waited, and went home with zero. Do that three times and he stops answering on marginal days — which are exactly the days you need someone willing to come.
Fix: a small show-up fee. €20–30 for turning up on a day that gets called off. It costs you almost nothing across a season and it buys you the marginal Saturday.
2. Per day
A flat day rate, typically €150–250, regardless of how many flights happen.
What it does well. Predictable for both sides. Nobody argues on a bad day.
What it does badly. On a good day it is expensive, and worse, it removes the reason to fly the eighth tandem at six in the evening. The pilot who is paid per flight will squeeze in one more. The pilot on a day rate will start packing.
That last flight of the day is often the most profitable one you have — the van is already there, the passenger is already paid.
Fix: day rate plus a per-flight bonus above a threshold. Day rate for the first four, per-flight after that.
3. A share of the price
The pilot gets a percentage of what the passenger paid, usually 40–50 %.
What it does well. It aligns everything. The pilot who upsells the photo package earns more, so he actually offers it. Operations that run this model see visibly higher average revenue per tandem.
What it does badly. It requires the pilot to see what the passenger paid. Which means he sees your margin on every agency booking — including the ones where you took a package at a discount. A lot of operators discover this is a conversation they did not want to have.
Fix: share of a published price rather than the actual price. The pilot gets 45 % of the standard rate whatever the booking came in at. You absorb the discount, he absorbs nothing, and neither of you has to discuss the agency contract.
The number that decides it
Work out what your pilots cost as a share of takings.
In a model Alpine season built from real ratios — 557 tandems, €83,190, pilots at €70–80 a flight — pilot pay was about 47 % of revenue. That is the benchmark. If yours is well under 40 %, you are probably about to lose a pilot to the operation down the valley. If it is over 55 %, you have no margin for a wet June.
What matters is not which model you pick. It is that the number comes out the same place each month, and that the pilot can check it without asking you.
What actually goes wrong
It is almost never the rate. It is the settlement.
The common failure looks like this: the day gets logged in a notebook or a WhatsApp group, the month ends, someone reconstructs who flew what, and there is a disagreement about two flights. It gets resolved in the operator's favour once, and in the pilot's favour once, and both sides quietly conclude the other is sloppy.
Three seasons of that is how a good pilot ends up flying for somebody else.
The fix is unglamorous: the day has to be closed the same day, by the person who was there, and the pilot has to be able to see his own line. Not your books — his line.
That is the entire design principle behind TandemHQ: the operator keeps his book, the pilot keeps his, and the only thing that crosses is "who flew this shift". Nobody has to trust anybody's memory, and nobody has to show anybody their margin.
A short checklist
- Write the rate down. In a message, if nothing else. Unwritten rates drift.
- Pay for the cancelled day, at least a little.
- Decide who owns the photo/video upsell money before the season, not in August.
- Close the day on the day.
- Let the pilot see his own line without asking you for it.