Financial advisor for pilots

Financial planning for airline and commercial pilots. Kaetyn St. Hilaire, CFA, builds a plan around what shapes a pilot's career: seniority, an airline pension, a medical certificate you need to keep and a flying career with an age limit, for pilots in Calgary and across Canada.

A pilot's income follows a seniority list more than a salary scale. Upgrades, base changes and furloughs move pay in steps, and the plan has to move with them.

Pay, schedules and upgrades are tied to your seniority number, and seniority usually does not move with you to another airline. That makes changing carriers a financial decision as much as a career one, and it makes the years before an upgrade to captain the leanest.

Airline hiring and layoffs follow the economy and fuel prices. A larger cash reserve than a salaried professional would hold, and fixed costs you could carry through a furlough, protect the long term plan from a short term gap.

Flight training is expensive and often financed. Paying down training debt and starting to save compete for the same dollars in the years when pay is lowest, so the order matters: high interest debt first, then the employer pension match, then the RRSP and TFSA.

When an upgrade lifts income, the raise is easy to absorb into spending. Directing it into RRSP room built up over the lean years, and then the TFSA, turns a pay step into retirement capital.

A pilot's income depends on a medical certificate renewed throughout a career. Protecting that income matters as much as investing it.

Loss of licence insurance pays a benefit if you lose your aviation medical certificate through illness or injury, even when you could still work in another job. Group plans through an airline or union may include some coverage; check the amount and how long it pays.

Some disability policies stop paying once you can do any job. An own occupation definition pays if you cannot work as a pilot. Individual policies may exclude or rate aviation, so the wording matters as much as the price.

Life insurance for pilots on scheduled commercial flights is often available on standard terms, while private, bush or aerobatic flying can bring an exclusion or an extra premium. Disclose all of your flying, because an undisclosed risk can put a claim at risk.

Coverage is set against the plan rather than a rule of thumb: how much income would need replacing, for how long, and what your savings and pension could already carry. Reviewing it at each upgrade keeps it in step with your pay.

A defined benefit plan pays a pension based on earnings and service, and reduces RRSP room through the pension adjustment. A defined contribution plan builds an account you invest. Pilots who changed airlines often hold both, plus locked-in accounts from earlier plans, and they need to be read together.

ICAO standards bar pilots aged 65 and over from flying international commercial air transport. Whatever your airline's own rules, plan as if flying income could end at 65, and test the plan for a medical that ends it sooner.

Retiring from the flight deck at 60 to 65 leaves a gap before full government benefits. Drawing on RRSPs in those years, and deferring CPP to 70 for a payment 42% larger, can lower lifetime tax.

Airline pilots are employees, and employment income cannot be moved into a corporation. Contract pilots who fly for one operator under its direction also look like employees for tax purposes. A corporation fits only a genuine aviation business with several clients.

Kaetyn is a Calgary-based financial advisor who works with high earners and medical professionals, particularly physicians and dentists navigating the financial complexities that come with high-income careers. He focuses on actionable strategies: the salary-dividend mix inside a professional corporation, RRSP and TFSA contributions, and a long-term investment plan.

A complimentary, no-obligation conversation about your career, your pension and your goals, and a clear explanation of how we can help.