How bout dem apples?
Here it is folks. The quick and dirty of what one can expect to make as a regional airline first officer. The pay rates that I am using are from an airline that is one of the lowest paying airlines out there. The company management knows that they have people lined up around the corner to take the job, so they feel no need to "raise the bar". Pilots will eat their own young for a job. Companies know this, therefore any time contract negotiations come around, they will use and abuse the RLA to the fullest extent possible to keep wages and work rules down. Quite honestly, I completly understand. Why pay your employees more and give them better work rules when they consistantly give you top performance anyway? It doesnt make any sense to reward your employees for a job well done, when you can keep costs down and drag out negotiotions for years on end. I think I heard somewhere that the average legnth of contract negotiations was somewhere around 3-4 years. Think about it, thats 3-4 years a company can continue to operate at old payrates, old work rules, old cost structure with basically no reprecussions. The beatings will continue until morale improves!!!!! But I digress.
Back to the topic at hand, the reality of First Officer pay at airline X. The numbers are ugly folks. No ifs, ands or buts about it. I am going to completely dispell any rumors that pilots make a lot of money being airline pilots at regionals. Especially at airline X.
2nd year First officer pay rate = $24 an hour. Sounds like a pretty good deal huh? You may think that if you are working a normal 9-5 40 hour a week job, but pilots dont get paid like that. Far from it in fact. We typically get paid a monthly rate of hours. For airline X, its 75 hours PER MONTH! So instead of making $3840 a month, Mr. Poor FO would only make $1800. Not good. And thats not even factoring ineverything that gets taken out of a paycheck. Let us dissect this monster paycheck even further.
Ok, as with a lot of companies, airline X is on a 2 week pay schedule. So if we take that $1800 and chop it in 2, we are now looking at a $900 paycheck every two weeks. Ok, not bad. Not great, but not bad. But hold on just a second, Uncle Sam hasnt gotten his cut. Uh, oh.... We now need to start chopping away at that $900. We need to pay, Federal, Medicaid, Soc security, and State income tax. Lets call it15% in taxes. So we take our $900, chop away $135 and we get $765. I suppose that could be a liveable wage, but thats not the only thing to come out of a paycheck. For arguments sake, lets say you need health insurance. Thats gunna cost ya and arm and a leg, HA! That'll set you back an additional $80 a paycheck. Now we are looking at bringing home $675. But oh wait, theres more. Over the last several years, airline pensions have been utterly decimated. Bye Bye retirement. For the younger folks out there, I got bad news for ya, your retirement nest egg is all on you. So this means our thrifty pilot is going to need to add to a 401K. Lets say he really wants to lead a life of luxery when he retires and puts 10% into his 401K. Thats another $90 gone. Now we are sitting at a whopping $585. Uh oh, thats pretty friggin ugly. Now I could keep going, but I'll let the bleeding stop there.
If you take some poor schmuck FO that is sitting reserve and never breaks guarantee, he is looking at bringing home $1170 a month or $14,040 a YEAR!!!! OUCH!!!!!! Better stock up on Ramen noodles by the case, live at home with the parents and have a bicycle as your only mode of transportation because you cant afford much else. For a single person with no responsibilities, I suppose you could live on that, but how can you expect to support a family on wages like that. I cant.
Granted the numbers used in this scenereo are from airline X and most other regionals have 2nd yearpay rates in the $30+ range, this is just to illustrate how ugly things can get. Also, I did not add in per diem into the numbers. I dont count it as part of a salary. That is money provided to defray costs associated with being away from home. Thats money being used, not being made, so I dont include it.
I tried my best to avoid first and second year FO pay. I passed on going to the regionals years ago because freight paid better. I knew there were risks involved in coming to a company as a "street" Captain. I made my choice and now I have to live with it. Its too bad the past year or so in the indstry has been so horrendus because the choices I have made are forcing me to rethink my career path. Even though the wife has a decent paying, stable job, we will have a really hard time making ends meet with me on FO pay. Rent, daycare, car payment, student loans, cell phones, utilities, 529 plans for the boys, food, gas, insurance and medical expenses are going to chew up most of what we will bring home. So, I'm out. Its been fun, but unless something drastic happens at my company in the next few months and I somehow get back in the left seat, I gotta work on an exit plan. I have something brewing, but dont want to talk about it just yet. We'll just have to see what happens, but I can promise you one thing, if by summer I am not a Captain again, I may just have to change the title of my blog. I am not going to wait 5 years to upgrade again at a crappy regional, hope and pray I get my 1000 hours of turbine PIC, just to make me eligible for the next level only to get there (if i ever get there) just to be tossed out to the street in 10 years because the economy hits another rough patch. This career is not a dream anymore. Its just a job. The days of making lots of money, having lots of time off, seeing the world and having a nice fat pension are OVER, never to return! There are many factors that have seen to that (pilots included) So for those of you reading this and are on the outside of the profession looking in wishing you were on the inside, dont say you havent been warned. Once you get in, its not the profession you may think it is. Flying, its like crack for smart people.
How do you like them apples?
Back to the topic at hand, the reality of First Officer pay at airline X. The numbers are ugly folks. No ifs, ands or buts about it. I am going to completely dispell any rumors that pilots make a lot of money being airline pilots at regionals. Especially at airline X.
2nd year First officer pay rate = $24 an hour. Sounds like a pretty good deal huh? You may think that if you are working a normal 9-5 40 hour a week job, but pilots dont get paid like that. Far from it in fact. We typically get paid a monthly rate of hours. For airline X, its 75 hours PER MONTH! So instead of making $3840 a month, Mr. Poor FO would only make $1800. Not good. And thats not even factoring ineverything that gets taken out of a paycheck. Let us dissect this monster paycheck even further.
Ok, as with a lot of companies, airline X is on a 2 week pay schedule. So if we take that $1800 and chop it in 2, we are now looking at a $900 paycheck every two weeks. Ok, not bad. Not great, but not bad. But hold on just a second, Uncle Sam hasnt gotten his cut. Uh, oh.... We now need to start chopping away at that $900. We need to pay, Federal, Medicaid, Soc security, and State income tax. Lets call it15% in taxes. So we take our $900, chop away $135 and we get $765. I suppose that could be a liveable wage, but thats not the only thing to come out of a paycheck. For arguments sake, lets say you need health insurance. Thats gunna cost ya and arm and a leg, HA! That'll set you back an additional $80 a paycheck. Now we are looking at bringing home $675. But oh wait, theres more. Over the last several years, airline pensions have been utterly decimated. Bye Bye retirement. For the younger folks out there, I got bad news for ya, your retirement nest egg is all on you. So this means our thrifty pilot is going to need to add to a 401K. Lets say he really wants to lead a life of luxery when he retires and puts 10% into his 401K. Thats another $90 gone. Now we are sitting at a whopping $585. Uh oh, thats pretty friggin ugly. Now I could keep going, but I'll let the bleeding stop there.
If you take some poor schmuck FO that is sitting reserve and never breaks guarantee, he is looking at bringing home $1170 a month or $14,040 a YEAR!!!! OUCH!!!!!! Better stock up on Ramen noodles by the case, live at home with the parents and have a bicycle as your only mode of transportation because you cant afford much else. For a single person with no responsibilities, I suppose you could live on that, but how can you expect to support a family on wages like that. I cant.
Granted the numbers used in this scenereo are from airline X and most other regionals have 2nd yearpay rates in the $30+ range, this is just to illustrate how ugly things can get. Also, I did not add in per diem into the numbers. I dont count it as part of a salary. That is money provided to defray costs associated with being away from home. Thats money being used, not being made, so I dont include it.
I tried my best to avoid first and second year FO pay. I passed on going to the regionals years ago because freight paid better. I knew there were risks involved in coming to a company as a "street" Captain. I made my choice and now I have to live with it. Its too bad the past year or so in the indstry has been so horrendus because the choices I have made are forcing me to rethink my career path. Even though the wife has a decent paying, stable job, we will have a really hard time making ends meet with me on FO pay. Rent, daycare, car payment, student loans, cell phones, utilities, 529 plans for the boys, food, gas, insurance and medical expenses are going to chew up most of what we will bring home. So, I'm out. Its been fun, but unless something drastic happens at my company in the next few months and I somehow get back in the left seat, I gotta work on an exit plan. I have something brewing, but dont want to talk about it just yet. We'll just have to see what happens, but I can promise you one thing, if by summer I am not a Captain again, I may just have to change the title of my blog. I am not going to wait 5 years to upgrade again at a crappy regional, hope and pray I get my 1000 hours of turbine PIC, just to make me eligible for the next level only to get there (if i ever get there) just to be tossed out to the street in 10 years because the economy hits another rough patch. This career is not a dream anymore. Its just a job. The days of making lots of money, having lots of time off, seeing the world and having a nice fat pension are OVER, never to return! There are many factors that have seen to that (pilots included) So for those of you reading this and are on the outside of the profession looking in wishing you were on the inside, dont say you havent been warned. Once you get in, its not the profession you may think it is. Flying, its like crack for smart people.
How do you like them apples?
posted by Windsor at 7:59 AM
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