Originally Posted by
gloopy
PIC time will always be better than not having any, all things being equal. That said, we will likely start seeing more people hired at majors without as much or even any. As for your situation, without knowing all the details, any one of which could change everything, I'd lean towards staying. Taking a paycut and starting over to *maybe* get an upgrade that is *maybe* a year or so sooner than not doing anything is an extremely risky proposition.
I'd lean towards staying where you are, getting 7th year pay and super senior FO QOL, and waiting for the aprox 2 year upgrade versus putting yourself at the bottom of the list at another airline in a very unstable sector (regionals). Again though, it depends on the exact situation. Obviously you might walk into a new regional and become a street captain. If you knew that would be the case, I'd lean towards doing that instead. But changing everything up to chase an estimated 1 year upgrade instead of an estimated 2 year upgrade is a lot of estimating, a lot less pay and QOL and a huge burden on yourself.
If you do stay, try to look for "extra" things you can do, like volunteer work, Safety Dept or CRM work, pro stans or knocking out an online master's degree.
Again to be clear, there are scenarios where I'd say jump ASAP. But based on the limited info WRT your sitch, my default would be to stay unless likelihood of a very, very fast upgrade somewhere else was pretty much assured…and that's a hard thing to assure in the first place. I'm not aware of any actual honest to goodness for sure street captain regionals right now. Yes it may happen here or there, but can you be absolutely sure? You say "immediately" but are you SURE its a street Captain position? Absolutely sure? 100% sure? If so then maybe I'd lean toward going.
Good luck either way!
Gloopy, thanks for help! Well the position is basically a street captain position, however you could also be use as an FO. They are calling it a Captain Qualified First Officer. Its the deal TSA is offering. According to pilots who I spoke too, they only have about 50 pilots currently qualified to upgrade and they are getting about 40 airplanes this year with about a 350 pilot list. So they'd use you on reserve for both positions and when you hold a line, you could pick up open time for the left seat. Holding a full captain seat should occur in about 6 months due to the large amount of growth, but in the meantime you'd still get PIC time. Plus, first year pay would be $43 an hour instead of 23 and if you get stuck as an FO for some reason, second year pay is $53 an hour. However, if I stay where I am, my captain pay rate would be $10 an hour more, but it would be on reserve, where I'd be holding a line as TSA getting more then MMG. I'd also like to be an LCP , which I cannot due here until I upgrade.
So, its a tough call and I keep flip flopping. I do enjoy my super senior FO QOL currently. 3 weeks vacation, weekends and holidays off (until I upgrade), full vested 401K, comfortable with the airline and like the bidding system, to name a few things. Also, reserve time at my current airline would be much longer when I upgrade then it would be at TSA. With that new info, does that change what you think?