You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. If you're a working pilot, please join our free community and you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!
If you don't want to register (or not a working pilot), you can still use the Google search box in the upper left of this screen to search all forum posts!
In 1980 Horizon Air paid starting captains 40K. It is equivalent to 118K in today's dollars. Pilot wages are being forced down by a collection of conspiring forces.
It is easier to get trained as a pilot today. When the market is strong flight schools pop up all over the nation cramming candidates through 5 month programs to create fully trained commercial multi-engine pilots who are ready to be seated in the apprentice spot in an airliner. Easy financing has made it so that most any middle class kid with foolish parents can co-sign for a dead-end. No matter how many pilots drop out when times get good again thousands of new ones can be quickly created to fill the need. There is no value in pilot certification as a result.
In 1980 commuter airlines flew airplanes equipped with crude steam gauges. At the time it was common to have several years of single pilot instrument experience before you could become competent enough to be hired as a First Officer. Today modern automation has made it so that airlines can hire 300 hour pilots. When hiring is slow companies can hire high time people and when things heat up a 300 hour wonder will do. They are not forced to raise wages in order to hire more experienced pilots. As such pilot experience really has little value anymore either.
Low Cost Carriers have reduced margins to razor thin. Unions have realized the loss of ground and have been in full retreat. Passengers do not care enough about brand loyalty to pay the balance of a union bloated bottom line. As a result airlines are forced to push hard to cut costs. They have asked a lot of pilot groups all over the country and they have conceded. And, most airlines have a lot more yet to give. Each cycle will insure a new bottom for the profession. Furthermore new pilots are constantly reaching the market with lower career expectations than the previous group thus insuring that future union actions will have a difficult time bringing unity in the pilot group.
In the near future open skies could become the open door to letting foreign pilots take our routes for less wages. Most global tankers and container ships are crewed by foreign workers who are flown in and eager to do the job for less than the local hands since they can take their meager wages home to lower costs of living. The same could happen here.
Flying demands a lot from pilots. It is an huge investment to become trained and educated for the job. The job market is treacherous. Our livelihoods rest on frequent medicals and everyone is only one pro-check, violation or misstep away from becoming unemployed and nearly worthless on the street. Our credentials are not worth much anymore. The majors are bursting at the seems with paper from well qualified pilots. It seems to me that the only thing of value that we have left is the ability to sell ourselves out over the next pilot. And that is not a very good position to be in. Sometimes the only way to win the game is to not play at all.
SkyHigh
__________________
Pilots are paid for what they will do, not for what they can do.
"Sometimes the only way to win the game is to not play at all."
Yeah, that's why I don't bother much anymore....
Don,
You and every other gainfully employed SWA, UPS or FedEx pilot over 40 have my permission to consider yourselves excluded from general statements that I may make about the condition of the airline industry.
Lottery winners can also exclude themselves from public service messages about gambling.
Skyhigh
__________________
Pilots are paid for what they will do, not for what they can do.
In 1980 Horizon Air paid starting captains 40K. It is equivalent to 118K in today's dollars. Pilot wages are being forced down by a collection of conspiring forces.
It looks like the current 1st yr CA on the Dash (trying to make an apple to apples comparison) is about $45k. Not quite the $118k.
There is no such thing as a first year Capt at QX. It's probably closer to a 10 year Capt, which is a 87/hr, which should equate to about 87K a year.
Good? Bad? Indifferent? The job isn't for everybody. More power to those who choose another path. More power to those who think it's worthy.
My problem is with those who leave the career for their own personal reasons but think those personal reasons apply to the rest of us (UPS, Fedex, and SWA over 40 excepted). I say.....to each his own.
By the way, the more people that listen to Jim's weekly depressing sermons on the state of the biz and leave, the better it gets for the rest of those who decide to stick it out. So...you go that going for you...which is nice.
__________________
Go here to see how I became a UPS pilot:
I think the reason that I left applies to a lot of people facing the same financial ruin. It may indeed be a stretch for a UPS captain to relate to, however, this forum is for those seeking alternatives. For those who are/may be facing a dilema that warrants more advice than "stick it out" or you're a looser-that's what Sky and I provide here.
If our message didn't ring so true-why then is there such opposition from the flag wavers?
I've got nothing to do with anyones decision to leave or to stay-but I have over 100 pm's from guys seeking a different path.
Last edited by TonyMontana : 10-14-2008 at 12:02 AM.
Reason: ...
It is a fact that pilot wages have fallen. It is also likely that they have much farther to go. Little remains to stop the free fall. Why would any airline offer to pay more than they have to?
Most people negotiate their worth from a position of strength and value. Either they possess prized job skills or have the ability to do jobs that most others would not. Pilots however are willing to give up the store for the chance to fly a plane. They are prepared to be poor, lonely and abused in trade for the opportunity.
During my time at Horizon Air it seemed absurd to me that the company would spend so much on training new pilots then treat them like garbage. The reason was that Horizon knew that poor treatment would serve as a filter. Out of disgust and self respect 50% every new hire class would be gone within four years, another 25% would leave after they upgraded and the last 25% would be there for life. All the company really wanted was to capture that 25% of pilots out of every new hire class that would take whatever abuse the company would throw at them.
Over time that layer of martyred servants builds up to a point where the pilot group is mostly made up of self sacrificing employees who will never strike, always show up for work and rarely complain. They can do this because they have a large surplus of well trained and experienced applicants to fly mostly automated planes. The value pilot group brings to the table is not in what they can do but what they will do.
The entire industry is headed in the same general direction. The dilution of resolve is coming from the bottom up. In the future the resulting pilot group will be young, single and prepared to be poor. These same martyrs for aviation will make it easy for management to crush what is left of union strength and in 10 to 20 years even the majors will pay little more than mailman wages.
Skyhigh
__________________
Pilots are paid for what they will do, not for what they can do.
Once again, when it comes to evaluating (comparatively) one's job, individual experience is not a valuable metric, only median experience can give you a benchmark. This is why the hard work mantra doesn't work for established professions doing repetitive and standarized work (basketball, flying for a living...).
I can work my tail off, putting all my effort and "attitude" towards being the best basketball player (pilot) I can be. In spite of mentally and physically vesting myself to this pursuit I'll never be Lebron (statistical outlier). Don't give me that "attitude determines your altitude" NASA crap either, attitude only affects whether or not I choose to play basketball, it has no bearing on any appreciable result I may draw from choosing to exhert myself beyond what my body would consider to be a limit (the hard work mantra).
So you cannot sit there like a college freshman during orientation and suppose to yourself that you're beyond the labor realities of the profession you choose, and therefore attaining the statistical outlier (the carrot) is a reasonable and expected outcome. Now, many people continue to do this and fail but do attain the median outcome, which is what you should have been shooting for in the first place. The problem here is, that the median outcome for professional pilots,well... sucks the big one, for all the aforementioned comparative reasons.
It is then up to the individual to weigh these factors and decide whether such opportunity costs suit them. But they have to do it from a rational perspective, otherwise it's a worthless analysis because it's based on unrealistic benchmarks (the "most people can be a 777 CA because most people desire 777 CA pay and schedule/equipment" circular argument). The point of this thread from my POV is to re-assert that the median experience in the pilot profession, the benchmark that mathematically applies to all regardless of how you became trained and found the industry, is a heaping pile of sh$t that can be economically challenged by many professions and skilled trades, and is one that is in continued erosion in spite of its historical inelastic labor force. That was the point.
As to the argument of more people staying away helping the profession, good for all y'all, I actually agree in principle. I do not think the scale of such numbers are effective though. I think this profession has already been undercut by the hobby pilot crowd (trusfund youngn's and career changers oldies) to such an extent that people have ACCEPTED that making this job a source of alternate income is an effective way of coping with the inherent lack of income stability the profession offers the median, therefore only suitable to those who seek the lifestyle and not the income, which is the primary reason for having a job, regardless how passionate you are about any pursuit in life. No amount of pilots about facing will undercut the hobby crowd, and once foreign pilots get the green light, that's all youll be able to attain. Seriously, if I loved being a Taco Bell cook so much I wanted to do it full-time regardless of pay, I could do it, but I shouldn't then complain about my inability of attaining a median individual income just because I could theoretically set the place on fire and my scope of responsibility sits a little higher from my point of view. No, I accepted a working standard based on a preponderance of the value of cooking quesadillas (flying for 121) I put in the context of my daily life. If my peers cross me at the drive-thru window with their kids in tow on the way to a family gathering on the weekend but I only get Tues-Thurs off while they are working and making 3 times what I make, then that was my opportunity cost as well. Stop pointing the finger at those who merely pointed out the alternative.
So yeah, in effect, yall can have it, I don't want it, but don't bag on the advice of the gallactically obvious just because you're functionally addicted to the idea you too can be Lebron.
Last edited by hindsight2020 : 10-14-2008 at 08:04 AM.
If our message didn't ring so true-why then is there such opposition from the flag wavers?
You know TonyM - I don't even have anything to say about whether you should have or should not have gotten out of the business; like I have said - that is your business. I agree with the alternative view and the right that you have the opportunity to express it. But then you go and use derisive descriptions like the one quoted above. Why is it bad that someone else wants to stay in the business and stick it out like you say? For some reason when I read your post - the phrase "flag wavers" seems like you are upset that I would chose to try and find employment in this industry.
Similar Threads
Pilot Compensation
Linear Mode
