velosnow

As a current regional captain hoping to move on, I wanted to start a thread on realistic take home pay for those aspiring to move on to the legacies & majors. There are of course the calculators and hourly data on this site, but between various nuances of bases/aircraft/staffing/etc, it would be neat to see some real world examples. With everyone's financial situations being different it can be challenging to have a solid idea of what the first year or two will hold.

It's fairly obvious that by year 3 or even 2 the pay is higher for even a hard working left seater at the regional level but I think good data would be great. So for those who have recently made the transition any data would be greatly appreciated I'm sure.

If we get some good data I'll update this post with running numbers of min/high/average and such. If it's a bad idea I'll go hide in my corner

Qotsaautopilot

1.Bad idea for a few reasons
2. The answers are highly variable
3. There are only about 6 airlines now and probably only 3 you are looking at if money is the issue. Chances are you know someone at each that has been hired in the last year.
4. The pay scales are public information so do the math on guarantee. Take home is impossible without knowing someone's insurance elections and tax withholdings.

This will only end up getting you grey information and a dick measuring contest.

bohicagain

Delta working 80 hours a month.
4K take home + per diem
Second year 5.5K
Taxes based on family of 4 in a state with 4.35 tax

FTFF

Brown year 2: @ guarantee, no perdiem, premium pay, intl override, etc... per paycheck:

Taxes $1000-1700 (w/ 6% state)
Benefits, dues, ira's etc, $4-900 depending on what you choose. Could probably get it down to $250-300 if you're single and take nothing beyond health.
Appx $5-600 into B-fund.

26 pay checks per year.

Gross is too variable to generalize.

There are lots of little additions: home-study, training on a day off, maybe a small conflict victory...

Albief15

Second year Fedex Hong Kong pilots get $60,000 for housing, $15,000 for education allowance for kids (total, not per kid), and make $165/hour. With international override of 8 bucks its $173. Should be well over 200k with average hours...

I don't know a more lucrative year 2 deal but there may be some out there.

velosnow

Appreciate the replies so far, thanks!

@Qotsaautopilot I know what you mean and I tried (perhaps failed) to make that disclaimer in the initial post. Results will vary but I think it is a good exercise to do. Keep'em coming!

embraerjetpilot

JetBlue... Somewhere around 40-50k first year. It really depends on how quick you get off reserve and how hard you work once you do.

MasterOfPuppets

You have second year pilots at DL making MD80 Captain pay, and I would wager a guess that by this time next year you will have second year UA pilots making Widebody FO pay. United already has year 3 pilots on wide body FO pay.

I appreciate your effort but there is literally no way to find an average between the legacies. Its too life style dependent.

flynryan15

United:
-Year 1 $79.24
- Training pay is 3 hours a day including days off till IOE plus per diem
- Once on line min guarantee is 73 hours
- Length of time on reserve depends on fleet and base. If you work the system on reserve you can credit well over 73 hours.

FTFF

With several of us in negotiations I don't think it's good strategy to post compensation numbers for the media and corporations to feed on. Best option is to make a few calls to buddies you know at whatever outfit you are interested in and ask them what their last few pay checks were like. Also, first year pay is a ship show everywhere, better to concentrate on year 2 onwards for an honest comparison and try to factor in things like profit sharing and number of days working, etc.

Didn't Kit Darby used to have all this information...?