Originally Posted by
otter1
I agree. I don't know of another pay scale as steep as ours. Especially considering it's a 15 year pay scale which makes it even worse. There are many of us here who don't have that many years left before retirement.
The legacy carriers got it right with the way they set up their pay scales. We should do the same.
Our scale is a 3% raise each year. That's long term inflation of the CPI. When I'm a 4th year Captain, I shouldn't have to take a pay CUT to be a 5th year Captain in spending power while waiting for a new contract. You guys are advocating that a 4th year CA makes more (adjusted for inflation) than a 12 year Captain, and then the 12 year guy gets stuck at his pay forever - losing even more $ each year.
Legacy carrier pay scales for CA year 1-8 are just #'s. Nobody is a 777-320 CA before year 8 anyway at Fedelted. We work for a different carrier, and should structure our pay to benefit US, not to emulate a company with different realities than ours.
Buy that Ferarri and Beach house as soon as you upgrade - yeah, when you're only making $130 an hour. Think that's peanuts? Wait till you see what $185 and hour is in another decade.
I get it - there's a lot of 2-5 year pilots on property. That doesn't mean there always will be. Don't lose sight of the big picture. Year 3 FO is 12 months long. Year 15 (or whatever) CA is a lifetime here. You're not moving on to a bigger airplane for more $, or staying on the smaller one for QOL. That choice is not for us. Don't make it worse by advocating to take a pay cut each year so that you can have some silly bragging rights on a forum with pilots that don't exist.
And no, I'm NOT a 15 year CA. I'm not even close. I just don't want to look back 25 years from now and say - man, I can't believe I had more buying power then than I do now.