Originally Posted by
zoooropa
Making 70 or 80k in year two would be tough.
There are ways to make extra money (flying over vacation, agreeing to JA, voluntary JA, credit over 82 per month, etc) but most of these tools work for line holders.
Reserve pilots do have the advantage of having 75 hours guaranteed credit before they add to it with VJAs and JAs, whereas lineholders would have to fly most of those 75 hours as a starting point, which only leaves 25 hours of flying for VJAs and JAs. During the "happy time" I went 3 years averaging 140 hours per month credit on about 60-75 hours of block. That's become much tougher now with the company adopting a more sensible approach to the VJA/JA process, but even in October I was at 105 hours credit on 23 block (which was quite surprising to me after ZERO luck with VJA and JA in the last 4 months of last year).
In a nutshell, I think a new pilot based in Denver could easily average 100 hours per month if they don't care about having any plans for their time off, especially during summer. I'm personally trying to move on to having a life beyond that.