Originally Posted by
NedsKid
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.
So let me get this straight, (Assuming current contract rates) you are advocating making $130hr at year three and $185 at year 15 just so you can feel like you're keeping up with inflation and not losing buying power. How about just start making that $185 at year 3? Yes you would be losing buying power assuming year 3 was the top of the scale but you'd be making that pay rate sooner and longer. Either I don't understand you or you are talkin crazy.
FYI there will be 4 year narrow body captains at the legacies in the not so near future so saying that their rates below year 8 don't apply is just naive to what the age of the current pilot population is. Further, even if what you say is true and there will never be sub-eight year captains at the legacies, it really doesn't matter because a captain is still a captain and carries a certain responsibility. That responsibility requires to be paid a lot more than a three year legacy FO on the same aircraft.
I respectfully request you pull your head out of your ass.